 | Fugitive Saints How should the Catholic church remember the sins of its saints? This question proves particularly urgent in the case of those saints who were canonized due to their relation to black slavery. Today, many of their racial virtues seem like racial vices. This book proposes black fugitivity, as both a historical practice and an interpretive principle, to be a strategy by which the church can build new hagiographical habits. Rather than searching inside itself for racial heroes, the church should learn to celebrate those black fugitives who sought refuge outside of it. Katie Walker Grimes is assistant professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. She is the author of Fugitive Saints: Catholicism and the Politics of Slavery (Fortress Press, 2017). She has published articles on the relation of white supremacy and the Catholic Church in Political Theology and Horizons and has articles in the Journal of Religious Ethics. She is a regular contributing author to the blog Women in Theology. |
