Sign of the times: What to make of Black Lives Matter

The Men’s Ministry group at the Church of St. Peter Claver is a reflection of the parish it’s affiliated with, historically founded as a faith home for St. Paul’s African American Catholics.

Most of the group’s nine core members are Black, though men from other ethnic backgrounds participate, too. What unites them is their faith and friendship in Christ. It’s motivated them to gather on the second Saturday of the month for over 20 years to pray, read Scripture and discuss current events.

But even with this common foundation, members of the group found themselves taking different viewpoints on the topic of conversation at their July 10 meeting: Black Lives Matter.

Circled up in the parking lot of St. Peter Claver (their normal meeting place, Day By Day Café, wasn’t available due to COVID-19 restrictions), the six men in attendance, along with St. Peter Claver’s pastor, Father Erich Rutten, shared their perspectives on this social phenomenon, which, from NBA courts to suburbia yard signs, has become a ubiquitous presence amid the nation’s ongoing conversation about racism and reform following the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody May 25.

For some, like 79-year-old Cedric Waterman, “Black Lives Matter” is a statement of fact that needs to be said in a country where, even after slavery and discriminatory laws have been abolished, the lives of Black people still seem to be undervalued.

“It’s a cry of ‘what about me?’ Does my life matter?” said Waterman, who believes BLM is also a rallying call for reforming the way law enforcement interacts with the Black community.

Others, like Bill Butchee, 71, don’t disagree that they and their fellow African Americans face discrimination, but they question whether Black Lives Matter is the proper vehicle for change, and express deep concerns about what they perceive as an anti-family, anti-Christian ideological agenda associated with the movement.

“They say they’re about saving Black lives, but when you stand back and look at it from a panoramic view, there’s more to it than that,” he said.

The conversation that took place in the parking lot of St. Peter Claver is one that is playing out within the Catholic Church across the country. From Catholic Twitter to bishops’ statements, parish bulletins to dinner conversations, Catholics are trying to make sense of Black Lives Matter and what a faithful response looks like.

What’s in a name?

It’s a task made difficult by confusion over what exactly those three words refer to: a simple message, a broad movement, or particular organizations and agendas that take the name?

Historically, “Black Lives Matter” first emerged as #BlackLivesMatter, a social media hashtag that began to be used after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death the year prior of Trayvon Martin, an African American teen. The phrase provocatively makes the case that, despite the end of slavery and legalized discrimination, Black people still face unequal treatment in the United States, particularly in interactions with law enforcement.

The statement “Black Lives Matter” has been criticized by some for elevating the concerns of one group, and is sometimes rebutted with “All Lives Matter.” But those who use the phrase often argue that, because of the ongoing effects of systemic racism in the U.S., the injustices faced by African Americans deserve special attention. Some have made this point by comparing it to the Good Shepherd’s preferential treatment of the lost sheep in the Gospel parable.

Black Lives Matter can also be understood as a broad movement calling for racial justice, but even in common usage there are some discrepancies in how the movement is understood. Wikipedia describes BLM as a “decentralized movement” that uses non-violent civil disobedience to protest “incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against Black people,” while the dictionary.com entry states that BLM is “a political and social movement …, emphasizing basic human rights and racial equality for Black people campaigning against various forms of racism.”

BLM made the transition from online moniker into a boots-on-the-ground movement after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Davis in Ferguson, Missouri, when protests and demonstrations began to be carried out under the BLM name. Provocative and confrontational, BLM demonstrations in Minnesota have included a 2015 march to the State Fairgrounds, a protest at the Mall of America later that year, and a 2016 demonstration that shut down I-94 in St. Paul.

The number of BLM-associated demonstrations has surged since George Floyd’s death on May 25. The New York Times reported that between 15 and 26 million people participated in protests through the month of June, which would make BLM the largest mass movement in American history. A Pew Research Center analysis showed that #BlackLivesMatter was used 47.8 million times on Twitter between May 26 to June 7 alone. Public approval has also spiked, with Pew reporting that two-thirds of Americans now say they support the movement.

Complicating matters is the fact that a number of organizations, many of them with no formal relationship with one another, include “Black Lives Matter” in their name. The most prominent of these is Black Lives Matter Global Network, the organization whose webpage people will reach if they visit blacklivesmatter.com. BLMGN was founded by three self-described “radical Black organizers,” Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. Garza is credited with first using the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” and the organization, which was officially founded in 2014 following the establishment of local Black Lives Matter chapters throughout the country, presents itself as the legitimate development of that first seed. “We’ve quickly gone from a phrase, to a hashtag, to a global network,” said Cullors in a 2019 video produced by BLMGN.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But the Global Network’s agenda and ideology have raised concern among Catholics. Its stated commitment to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” and “dismantle cisgender privilege” are listed on its website’s “What We Believe” page. As part of their #WhatMatters2020 election campaign, BLMGN includes “LGBTQIA+” rights as one of its areas of focus. And a 2015 interview reveals that two of the three founders are “trained Marxists,” suggesting an adherence to a worldview rooted in atheistic materialism that reduces political analysis to questions of group power.

When Catholics criticize “Black Lives Matter,” many of them have in mind Black Lives Matter Global Network, other BLM groups, or even particular activists associated with the broader movement. For instance, activist and writer Shaun King, who has championed the BLM movement over the years, caused controversy in June when he tweeted that statues depicting Jesus as Caucasian “are a form of white supremacy” that were “created as tools of oppression,” and should be torn down. No particular BLM organization condemned his comments, nor is King clearly affiliated with any particular group.

Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down.

They are a form of white supremacy.

Always have been.

In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went?

EGYPT!

Not Denmark.

Tear them down.

— Shaun King (@shaunking) June 22, 2020

Making distinctions

When it comes to Catholic engagement with Black Lives Matter, there’s a consensus among some leaders that distinguishing between the broader movement and problematic organizations that bear the name is a key place to start.

In comments submitted to The Catholic Spirit, Bishop Shelton Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana, said that the phrase “Black Lives Matter” “fits within Catholic social teaching regarding the intrinsic value of each person as created in the image and likeness of God,” and “places before us this reality that Black lives have not always been afforded intrinsic and equal value.” Bishop Fabre, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, added that “it is entirely possible to give a positive response to the concept of Black Lives Matter … without being beholden to an organization with objectives that are in conflict with the Catholic faith,” and that the Church must always respond to social issues “through a Christian worldview.”

This perspective was shared in an essay by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, published online July 27 by America, the Jesuit review. After first raising concern about Black Lives Matter Global Network and platforms and strategies “in direct contradiction to Church teaching,” Archbishop Lori presents an interpretation of the phrase “Black Lives Matter” grounded in the Catholic social teaching principles of human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity and solidarity.

“To be sure, the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ mean different things to different people,” writes the archbishop in his concluding paragraph. “Nonetheless, those same words should resonate with us as Catholics and indeed with all those who embrace the principles of Catholic social teaching. More than that, they should spur us on to action.”

It’s presumably with this type of understanding that practicing Catholics have participated in Black Lives Matter protests. Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso grabbed headlines — and the attention of the Holy Father — when he was photographed kneeling with a homemade “Black Lives Matter” sign at a June 1 demonstration; two days later, Pope Francis called to express his approval. On June 8, priests, men and women religious, and two auxiliary bishops joined with hundreds of lay faithful in Washington, D.C., in a Catholic-centered Black Lives Matter protest in front of the White House. And in Minnesota, Archbishop Bernard Hebda and more than a dozen priests took part in a June 2 interfaith clergy march in response to George Floyd’s death, which, while not explicitly described as a Black Lives Matter event, may be counted as participation in the movement according to standards being used by sociologists and journalists.

Many Catholics who’ve taken part in BLM-affiliated events say the focus is simple: protesting the perceived unjustified use of lethal force by police against black people, and calling for reform. The topics that concern other Catholics about Black Lives Matter — Marxism, transgender ideology and even support for abortion rights — don’t necessarily come up.

“I went to three (BLM) events here in the Twin Cities, I heard a lot of speakers,” said Bernard Brady, a theology professor at the University of St Thomas in St. Paul. “I don’t remember hearing anything other than calls for racial justice and changes through the police.”

At St. Peter Claver, Father Rutten considered spray painting “Black Lives Matter” on the plywood when the parish was boarded up during looting after Floyd’s death. He says the phrase is important to many of his parishioners as a powerful, succinct expression of a deeply-held conviction, and that the agenda of particular problematic BLM groups “doesn’t get talked about in regular life.” He adds that he is sometimes concerned that Catholics “write off” the entire idea of “Black Lives Matter” on the basis of the actions of individual groups and activists, as a way to excuse themselves from asking difficult questions about race and privilege.

For Justina Kopp, 29, the Black Lives Matter sign in her yard ties seamlessly together with the Marian garden outside the window of the master bedroom and the St. Francis of Assisi statue by the front step.

“Mary and Francis defied a lot of societal norms,” said Kopp, a parishioner at Holy Family in St. Louis Park. “And that’s what this moment calls for.” Kopp says the combination of Catholic piety with a call for racial justice “paints a very complete picture” of her faith and the way she wants to witness to her Black people.

“To acknowledge that racism is evil, I think you have to be able to say ‘Black Lives Matter,’” says Kopp. For her, the three words signify a message, though she adds there’s a “good heart” in the movement.

The sign in Kopp’s yard is only one of many different versions of “Black Lives Matter” signs, which all include the phrase but have differences in branding and fonts. This is explained by the fact that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected every application to trademark “Black Lives Matter” it’s received since 2015 on the basis that the phrase is already in widespread use by several unconnected parties. Different entities are allowed to produce and sell items with BLM branding.

Recent rulings by different federal agencies also support the idea of BLM as a decentralized movement. For instance, in a decision that allowed federal employees to display support for BLM on the grounds that the movement is nonpartisan, the Office of Special Counsel described BLM as “an umbrella term for a constellation of ideas, objectives and groups. There is no ‘leader’ of the BLM movement.”

Independent?

Because of the lack of a centralized, legal structure, groups with the Black Lives Matter name are able to exist independently of each other. For instance, in Minnesota, there are several groups with “Black Lives Matter” included in their name, but none are among the 16 official chapters listed on the Black Lives Matter Global Network website. Black Lives Matter St. Paul, for instance, is independently operated by Todd Gramenz, 30, a Catholic who grew up on the East Side attending Sacred Heart parish. Gramenz founded BLM St. Paul in 2014 as part of what he says is a religious calling to “help my Black people.”

“I just had this passion to be like Jesus to come and help all the people who are suffering and cast out and worth nothing, deemed nothing,” said Gramenz, who’s also helped establish the East Side Enterprise Center to aid businesses in the area.

The group’s mission, as described on their affiliated website, blacklivesmattertc.com, is “to bring a halt to the unjust killing of African Americans at the hands of police.” Gramenz says his group does this by drawing attention to the issue, whether through demonstrating at the Minneapolis-hosted 2018 Super Bowl or running an informational booth at the Minnesota State Fair, but also by advocating for legislative change. He also hopes to establish a Black Lives Matter Ministry project that will bring a message of racial healing to different places of worship.

Gramenz operates the Black Lives Matter St. Paul Facebook page, which has over 17,000 likes, but he’s received pushback from other BLM organizations, including a different organization named Black Lives Matter St. Paul, whose previous leader, Rashad Turner, claimed in 2015 that Gramenz was a “fraud” and not part of the official movement.

To be sure, Gramenz eschews some of the typical tactics and positions of other BLM groups. For one, he says he’s defied criticism from BLM Minneapolis leadership who told him he couldn’t be running a BLM group because he wasn’t a “gay woman.” He also avoids some of the confrontational tactics of other organizations, which he says are run by “wicked people” more concerned about creating controversy than working for practical change.

Another difference? You’ll find no mention of transgender ideology on his website. “That’s not our style,” says Gramenz, who says those views are against his Christian faith. Although he says he’ll occasionally share a “Pride month” post on the group’s Facebook page, Gramenz says BLM advocacy should focus on police brutality, and not get distracted by other issues. He also says the national leaders of BLM are “sent by other powers” and are “infiltrated with big money,” which influences their agenda.

“I don’t fold to other pressure,” he said regarding the possibility of someone offering him funding in exchange for adopting positions on gender and sexuality similar to BLM Global Network. “My website won’t ever have that stuff on it. That’s not what I’m fitting to have on there. Not in a million years.”

Concerning influence

For some, the opposition Gramenz has faced might suggest that the BLM movement is less decentralized than it’s often presented. That’s certainly the impression given by Darren Sand’s 2016 6,000-word exposé for BuzzFeed News, “What Happened to Black Lives Matter?” Sands paints a picture of a movement that, at that time, was simultaneously disorganized, but also tightly controlled from the top.

“Repeatedly, activists interviewed for this story described a culture inside the Black Lives Matter organization that suppresses dissent, or hints of any disagreement that could be considered divisive on the outside,” Sands wrote, before quoting a BLM activist who said, “You do what you’re told. There’s a tyrannical element.”

Black Lives Matter Global Network did not respond to multiple requests from The Catholic Spirit for an interview.

At stake for different activists and groups is funding and clout. As the most prominent figurehead of the Black Lives Matter movement, BLM Global Network is in position to receive and, in turn, disperse significant funding. The group has received more than 1.1 million individual donations at an average of $33 per gift since the death of Floyd, and recently announced the establishment of a $12 million fund to support the work of local affiliates.

But this pales in comparison to the funding received by the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of at least 50 (accounts vary) like-minded groups that include BLMGN. In 2016, for instance, M4BL received a reported donation of $100 million dollars from the Ford Foundation and another $33 million from the Open Society Foundations, both donations managed by the Minneapolis-based Borealis Philanthropy, which has established the Black-led Movement Fund to help connect donors with racial justice organizations that share a similar set of ideological commitments.

M4BL’s ideological commitments are clear, many of them in stark contrast to a Catholic vision of human dignity. The group lists “affirm gender self-determination in all aspects of life from birth” as one of its demands, and condemns both religious exemption laws and the rolling back of Obama era policies that required schools to treat students on the basis of their preferred gender identity. “Access to abortion” is highlighted as an essential policy in M4BL’s campaign to “End the War on Black Women.”

M4BL does not view these issues as periphery to its understanding of racial justice. In an interview with Inside Philanthropy, M4BL’s resource coordinator, Charles Long, said people outside the group sometimes tried to take only a “pinch” of M4BL’s policy principles. “I think the only reason you would think that way is because you believe that you have a superior solution,” he said, “and I can only chalk that up to anti-Blackness and white supremacist thought.”

Black Lives Matter Global Network is the most publicly-prominent dimension of this well-funded, ideologically-committed apparatus. That puts it in position to significantly influence not only the movement, but even what a term like “racial justice” might come to mean in social discourse.

There are indications that this shift may already be happening. When asked how Catholics who disagree with BLMGN’s positions on sexuality and gender can still contribute to racial justice, Justin Terrell, who made his comments while serving as executive director of the non-partisan, state-funded Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage, basically said they can’t. “You can’t be anti-racist if you aren’t pro-transgender,” said Terrell, who has since been hired as the executive director of the Minnesota Justice Research Center, equating the racism faced by Black people in America to society’s perceived unacceptance of understandings of gender and sexuality as fluid.

Journalists have also documented the rift between the old-guard of Black civil rights leaders, who tend to be Christian and hold more conservative views on sexuality, and a new wave of activists, who are more secular and radical in their views.

“I can’t tell you how many times I have said something about God only to be quickly told that God is not real or that worshipping God is a form of white supremacy,” said Lex Scott, founder of Black Lives Matter Utah, in a recent story on the absence of Black churches in the BLM movement by Deseret News.

This growing convergence of national influence and secular ideology leads some Catholics to conclude that it’s best to avoid the Black Lives Matter movement altogether.

“We have to recognize, without being naïve, how language is being used and when you have to just come up with something else,” said a Black theologian who teaches at a national Catholic university, and requested anonymity for fear of losing her job for comments critical of BLM. “And now is certainly the time to come up with something else.”

This theologian, who says systemic racism is real, believes that the vision of human flourishing promoted by the most influential voices in the BLM movement is “fundamentally opposed in every way” to the Church’s, concerned more with amassing power than in living in accordance with God’s plan. Furthermore, she expressed concern that BLM provides cover for “broad leftist causes that are just trying to get under one banner, under a seemingly innocuous phrase,” to advance an agenda.

She believes it’s not enough to qualify participation in the movement by distancing oneself from BLMGN, because the terms of discussion have already been set up in a way that distorts reality, defined by “critical race theory” that emphasizes hard-distinctions and power imbalances between racial groups as the interpretive key for social analysis and underlies much of the current secular discourse on racial justice.

“The Church has entered a stage with someone else’s already-articulated narrow self-consciousness, that does not necessarily correspond to reality, already imposed upon us, and now we’re expected to speak within that discourse, and that is a zero-sum game,” she said.

Rather than speaking in those terms, which reduces the Church’s prophetic vision to a kind of naturalism, this theologian says the Church needs to speak her own language, and advised that Catholics look for ways to work for racial justice at a local level, instead of following the lead of a national movement.

“People who really believe in God and love Him aren’t racists,” she said. “So, what the Church should be doing is to double down on the supernatural aspect of this. Without God, there is no justice, there’s no peace, there’s no mercy, there’s no respect, there’s no friendship, there’s no solidarity. There’s just blind activism.”

One local Catholic, who agrees with the significance of the expression “Black Lives Matter” but doesn’t want to indicate any support for BLMGN, found an alternative way to demonstrate her solidarity with Black victims of police brutality and her commitment to racial justice. Kathleen Kirsch, a theology teacher at St. Agnes School, hangs a self-made “Black Lives Are Priceless” sign on the front door of her St. Paul home.

“I wanted to say something clear and direct,” Kirsch said, adding that the message is inspired by the Church’s teaching on human dignity.

Bill Butchee of St. Peter Claver says he isn’t convinced that BLM, at least the Global Network, cares too much about Black lives, given its unwillingness to address violent crime and the demise of families in the Black community, the latter of which he believes is the greatest contributor to disparities between Black and white people in America. He also advises fellow-Catholics to avoid participation in the Black Lives Matter movement.

“In your heart of hearts you want to help families and do the right thing,” he said. “But the Black Lives Matter philosophy has already been established. That’s why they get funding. Whatever your intentions are, you’ll be contributing to that.”

Cause for conversation

Butchee has strong views. And he knows they’re in the minority among his fellow African Americans.

Still, he’s grateful that the ascendancy of Black Lives Matter has kickstarted a national conversation about discrimination, particularly about policing practices that target Black men, which he believes is a reality.

Father Rutten at St. Peter Claver said the fact that “Black Lives Matter” can refer to both a simple saying and a specific organization presents a challenge for Catholics, and leaves the movement’s ultimate impact and direction somewhat up in the air. But rather than avoiding it altogether, he believes Catholics should be a part of the conversation.

“The contribution Catholics can make is to be bold and say Black Lives Matter, and we can play a part in actually deciding how that narrative plays out,” he said, noting that this is a challenge whenever the Church tries to collaborate with secular entities to work for a particular good. “If we abandon it, and just let it go, then the organization Black Lives Matter will definitely … advance their own agenda.”

Ultimately, there might not be an easy answer to the question of how Catholics perceive and engage with the Black Lives Matter movement. And the witness of the Men’s Ministry group at St. Peter Claver suggests that there might be room for disagreement, as faithful Catholics prudently discern how best to apply their faith to a complicated, real-life scenario.

“That’s what our group does,” Cedric Waterman said. “It’s great to be able to have a difference of opinions, but it not to become a situation that keeps us apart. It’s important to be able meet and discuss these things. Very important.”

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