Christian Antifascism in Charlottesville
22nd Annual Prophetic Voices Lecture
Eric Martin
Loyola Marymount University
Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025
Time: 5 - 6:30pm
Location: Stokes Hall N428
While Christianity has been associated with the recent rise of white nationalism in the U.S., pockets of the church have also been combating racist and totalitarian ideologies. This talk offers up profiles of Christian resistance against Nazis and the KKK from Charlottesville, during the largest white supremacist event in modern American history, and the theologies that animated them. From Reverend Traci Blackmon's exegesis of David and Goliath and Grace Aheron's conception of destructive prayer that led her to create an antifascist house church, street theologians have been pointing a way forward by challenging mainstream notions of civility and nonviolence and pushing further than the USCCB teachings on racism.
Eric Martin is author of The Writing on the Wall: Signs of Faith Against Fascism (2023) and co-editor of The Berrigan Letters: Personal Correspondence Between Daniel and Philip Berrigan (2016). He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University and part of the Catholic Worker community.
Photo credits: Christopher Soldt, MTS