Christian Antifascism in Charlottesville
22nd Annual Prophetic Voices Lecture
Eric Martin
Loyola Marymount University
Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025
Time: 5 - 6:30pm
Location: Fulton Hall 235
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Co-sponsored with the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning
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.
Delehanty, Jack, Penny Edgell, and Evan Stewart. “Christian American? Secularized Evangelical Discourse and the Boundaries of National Belonging.” Social Forces 97, no. 3 (March2019): 1283-1306. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soy080.
Hurst, Carol Grace. “Reckoning with Hate: Faithful Routes Away from the Charlottesville Rally.” Journal of the North American Association of Christians in Social Work 47, no. 1 (2020): 15-30. https://emu.edu/academics/academic-and-creative-excellence/docs/Carol%20Hurst%20Reckoning%20with%20Hate.pdf.
“ICYMI: Civil and Human Rights Groups Speak Out on White Supremacist Violence in Charlottesville.” The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, August 14, 2017. https://civilrights.org/2017/08/14/icymi-civil-human-rights-groups-speak-white-supremacist-violence-charlottesville/.
Katz, Andrew. “Charlottesville: ‘Unite the Right Rally, State of Emergency.’” Time Magazine, 2017. https://time.com/charlottesville-white-nationalist-rally-clashes/.
Martin, Eric. The Writing on the Wall: Signs of Faith Against Fascism. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2023.
Oster, Roberta. “Statements from people of faith on Charlottesville.” Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. August 15, 2017. https://virginiainterfaithcenter.org/statements-people-faith-charlottesville/.
In 2023, Eric Martin, a lecturer of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount and alumnus of the Boston College Clough School of Theology Ministry, published his first book, The Writing on the Wall: Signs of Faith Against Fascism. Last year, Mary Kate Holman of the Political Theology Network interviewed Martin about the book and the experiences that influenced it. Martin lived in Charlottesville during the “Unite the Right” rallies in 2017, and his proximity to the region led him to write his book. Informed by his Catholic theological background, he examined the theology of the different groups involved in the rallies and the ways they used scripture. In the conversation, Martin also discusses his ideas on nonviolence, which are grounded in the biblical call to actively love one’s enemy. He embraces peaceful, non-violent protest as a means of confronting violence and modeling biblical love. Martin uses theological grounds to critique the “love” displayed in Charlottesville by some Christian nationalists, noting that they rejected a God of love and that their ethno-nationalist understanding of God is not genuine to scripture. In the Boisi Center’s 22nd Annual Prophetic Voices Lecture, Martin will explore many of these themes and some guideposts for a way forward.
Photo credits: Christopher Soldt, MTS