Solidarity as slow conversion

Abstract

How can insights from the international Slow movement deepen our understanding of moral conversion in the face of injustice? This article proposes an understanding of solidarity with the marginalized as slow conversion, that is, as ongoing conversion to the neighbor that is relational, costly, and enduring. After distinguishing “slow conversion” from what some have termed “epiphanic conversion,” I illustrate the distinction by contrasting two efforts to construct parish-based interracial solidarity in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston during the 1960s: the Roxbury Apostolate, a clergy mission to the inner-city developed from outcomes of a summer urban immersion trip for seminarians, and the St. Mary of the Angels Parish Pastoral Council, a participatory lay advisory board established after Vatican II. While the former initiative articulated a grander vision and more sweeping goals, it was the latter, more mundane structure that ultimately proved to be a source of relational, costly, and enduring solidarity between church and neighborhood. Slow conversion can thus be understood as the work not of a single moment of insight or encounter but the project of a lifetime, sustained over generations through community practices and structures.