Richmond's Priests and Prophets: Race, Religion, and Social Change in the Civil Rights Era by Douglas E. Thompson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Richmond's Priests and Prophets: Race, Religion, and Social Change in the Civil Rights Eraby Douglas E. Thompson April C. Armstrong Richmond's Priests and Prophets: Race, Religion, and Social Change in the Civil Rights Era. By Douglas E. Thompson. Religion and American Culture. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2017. Pp. [x], 189. $49.95, ISBN 978-0-8173-1917-5.) In Richmond's Priests and Prophets: Race, Religion, and Social Change in the Civil Rights Era, Douglas E. Thompson examines how white Christian leaders in Richmond, Virginia, addressed segregation in the late 1940s and 1950s. Using a frame of their "prophetic and priestly" roles, Thompson argues that white Christianity offered these religious leaders a way both to preserve the status quo as priests and to agitate for reform as prophets (p. 2). Ultimately, despite slow change in the city, these white ministers helped Richmonders accept desegregation as the righteous path. Thompson shows how white lay Christians struggled with shifting understandings of segregation as a moral imperative under leadership that was often pushing for desegregation. He finds that ministers were laying the groundwork between the 1930s and 1960s that allowed for this changed theological framework for thinking about race. Thompson's focus on white Christians in a city where desegregation occurred less dramatically and with less national attention than in its counterparts like Little Rock, Arkansas, adds nuance to our understanding of religion's role in the civil rights movement. In five chapters Thompson provides an overview of the efforts of the Richmond Ministers' Association (RMA) to shame segregationists after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education(1954), the array of responses to the Browndecision that appeared in the editorial pages of Richmond's white Christian newspapers, the rift that divided white southern Christians as Virginia's political leaders attempted to resist desegregation after Brown, how the RMA argued that their engagement with secular affairs was a legitimate ministerial role as its members directly challenged elected officials, and how public calls for change often failed to achieve practical consequences. Along the way, Thompson also shows that white ministers' roles in the story were significant because churches held a place of power in American society at large and in Richmond in particular during the 1950s. Thompson's epilogue urges historians to continue to think about white Christian support for the goals of the civil rights movement, even when their efforts failed. Doing so, he suggests, will create a better understanding of the role of religion in American public life. In some places, Thompson's priests and prophets framing can be heavy-handed. The author's occasional gestures toward Christian history as a whole detract from the book's strength since these general statements are not grounded in the work of historians of other periods. These comments feel as though they are directed more toward a religious community than to a broader academic audience. Nonetheless, the argument that religious leaders' need to preserve tradition and to usher followers toward change helps explain Richmond's slow transformation is presented convincingly. Its attention to how Catholics and Protestants often operated within the same ideological milieu while accounting for Catholics' unique experiences (black churches with white priests) and Protestants' aversion to Catholic influences in spaces such as parochial schools [End Page 508]is a particular strength of the book. By using a range of archival sources, periodicals, and interviews and by interacting thoughtfully with recent historiography on the civil rights movement, Thompson makes the case that "asking big questions in small places" can be illuminating (p. 41). April C. Armstrong Princeton University Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association