Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Wood, Elisabeth
Abstract
This dissertation examines the response of Black faith communities to policing and racial inequality in America. I explore the puzzle of why policing has compelled unique levels of mass mobilization for racial justice among Black faith communities, despite significant disagreement, while other areas of entrenched inequality have not received the same level of attention, despite more widespread agreement. This project draws on historical-archival research, ethnographic work based in New Haven, focus group interviews with Black faith leaders from around the country, and a large national survey to provide a holistic picture of the role of Black faith communities in conversations around policing and racial inequality. Part 1 (chapters 1-2) provides an overview of theory to understand race, policing, and the Black Church: policing as a fragmented gateway to collective repentance. In this framework, racial violence compels mobilization around policing and serves as a gateway through which Black faith communities call for collective repentance, which includes acknowledging histories of racial sins, stopping injustice, and seeking repair from the harms done. Racial violence serves this role because it provides visible displays of injustice and contestable targets in the form of policing. But mobilization around policing becomes fragmented due to internal debates about defunding the police, external resistance to broader racial justice, and religious-political cross pressures. Chapter 1 provides the background, method, and overview. Chapter 2 describes each core component of the argument, with representative evidence from focus group interviews and survey data. Part 2 (chapters 3-4) situates this framework in historical perspective and anchors the voices of contemporary Black faith communities to the Black prophetic tradition. This section does this by providing a historical case study from 1933 to 1945. Chapter 3 provides an analysis of how critical changes in policing during this time set policing on development trajectories and further ingrained racial inequalities. At the same time, Black faith communities offered alternative visions grounded in protecting vulnerable Americans and addressing socioeconomic inequality. This time period both exacerbated inequalities whose sources would be submerged over time, and it also constrained the ability of policing to serve as an agent for bringing socioeconomic inequality. Part 3 provides three contemporary case studies of approaches by faith communities to policing, entitled Reform, Representation and Relationships, and Resistance. I argue that all of these pathways involve Black faith communities who are working toward expansive visions of racial justice that mirror the key tenets of collective repentance. At the same, all of these approaches face significant structural and internal constraints that produce fragmentation. The Reform chapter follows a campaign by a Faith-Based Community Organization in Connecticut to automatically expunge some criminal records in Connecticut. The Representation chapter traces the role of Black faith leaders in influencing the New Haven Police Department through positions of leadership and brokerage relationships. The Resistance chapter draws on examples from around the country to analyze the role of Black faith communities during the George Floyd protest wave in 2020. I argue that, contrary to common wisdom, the Black Church has not experienced a unilateral decline in its role in mass resistance. Rather, it has experienced stability in some areas and decline in others. Specifically, I argue that the Black Church retains the most important pastoral role in mass resistance around racial justice. The prophetic role remains strong as well, but it has experienced some decline. Most significantly, the Black Church has experienced a precipitous decline in organizational strength, and this exerts a downward pressure on its prophetic capacity. Despite the obstacles in each of these pathways, the Black Church still provides a critique of American racism and a holistic vision of racial justice. The conclusion brings together the different themes from the dissertation: the historical developments, the different approaches to policing, and the difficulty of achieving socioeconomic equality. I highlight another approach that has become common since 2020: task forces to reimagine policing. Black faith leaders on these task forces connect policing to fundamental racial inequalities, but they experience resistance and fragmentation. Drawing on the whole of my research and the voices of Black churches and Christians, I describe a vision for reimagining repentance that starts from a posture of repentance, then moves into domains of entrenched inequality.
Recommended Citation
Denney, Matthew G. T., "The Fragmented Gateway to Collective Repentance: Race, Policing, and the Black Church in America" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1093.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1093
