Rebecca Louise Carter, Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City

Abstract

American Religion 2, no. 2 (Spring 2021), pp. 136–138 Copyright © 2021, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.2.2.08 Book Review Rebecca Louise Carter, Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019) Ansley Quiros University of North Alabama, Florence, USA Prayers for the People took Rebecca Louise Carter over a decade to research and write, but it is certainly a book for our moment. As Americans confront the disaster of COVID-19 and the ongoing tragedy of racial injustice, Carter’s central question—what does it mean to grieve well?—is both historically and spiritually pressing. Conducting ethnographic research of religious communities in New Orleans, Carter seeks to examine how religious communities “worked against the violent ruptures of life in Black families and communities” and “asserted Black humanity , in this world and the next.” She examines the pervasive facts of environmental racism, poverty, and violence in post-Katrina New Orleans, focusing not solely on those oppressive systems and structures but also on the “systems and structures of Black humanity”—Black Humanity even in death (6). In doing so, Carter rightly asserts that struggles for systemic justice always require recognition of individual human dignity. To pursue justice in New Orleans, Carter argues through her examination of religious communities, demands love, care, and community. These are deeply personal as well as religious pursuits. The writing itself reflects the book’s argument, shifting from sociological, anthropological, and historical reviews into personal recollections and interviews throughout. Ansley Quiros 137 Carter’s analysis includes several different congregations and spiritual traditions in the Crescent City: white Catholics in Uptown, a Vodou sosyete in the Bywater, a small Episcopal congregation in Treme, and Liberty Street Baptist Church, a Black Baptist congregation led by Pastor Samuel and a group of Black women. Carter catalogues how these New Orleans congregations engage in various forms of grieving death and commemorating life. Father Richard places a rose for every victim of New Orleans’ violence on the steps of the Mayor’s office. Catholics engage in “Peace Prayer,” calling for God to bless “the Crescent City and crush the head of Satan” (73). Martine calls upon Ogou to correct imbalances in an elaborate ceremony. Black Baptists hold a Yes We Care! rally. Different congregations throughout the city do different things, but each, Carter maintains, employs a religious framework in mourning and agitating. In doing so, mourning and agitating become religious work. Prayers for the People, while including diverse congregations and religious traditions, focuses primarily on Liberty Street Baptist Church, centering the experiences, commitments and theological vision of Black women. Placing the church within the tradition of the Black Social Gospel and the theological civil rights struggle, Carter sees the current efforts of Liberty Street as an ongoing declaration of Black Somebodiness in a culture of dehumanizing racism. The church, under the (male) leadership of Pastor Samuel, emphasizes traditional values of nonviolence and biracial cooperation and benevolent relief. And yet, it is through the women of Liberty Street that Carter reveals the significance of the dead; they are Somebody too. Employing the interpretive frame of kinship studies, Carter claims “the labor they performed, therefore, was about repairing family, social, and spiritual bonds—a restorative kinship that affirmed value among the living, between the living and the dead, on earth, and in God’s eternal kingdom” (20). These women, the Black Mothers of Liberty Street, many of whom themselves had lost children, chart a spiritual and communal path necessary for healing. In sharing their stories and the stories of their communities, the Mothers carved out an autonomous space within the church and “developed a distinct knowledge—with God and Christ at the center—of social and spiritual relatedness, its severing, and its potential restoration” (167–168). Carter, through her presence at these meetings and subsequent interviews, tells these stories in moving and powerful ways. Hearing from Miss Vivian and Odette and Mrs. Adams, the interpretive frame takes on distinctive female voices to great effect. In sum, Carter not only centers the Black Mothers in the analysis, but she lets them speak for themselves. And they create not only a process...