Their focus is women and children who came to New York City from Mexico and found their way to the Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service in East Harlem. There, they received holistic support that not only met their immediate needs but also empowered them to improve their circumstances, help others, and be leaders.

The agency “has been doing really effective work with diverse communities in a very complicated city and … developing power in a community that is typically disempowered,” said Fordham theology professor Brenna Moore, Ph.D. She and Carey Kasten, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish at Fordham, are co-authors of Mutuality in El Barrio: Stories of the Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service, out this month from Fordham University Press. A book launch takes place May 20.

Creating Pathways Out of Poverty

The Little Sisters of the Assumption, a Catholic order, founded its East Harlem agency in 1958 to create opportunities for families to escape poverty. The first executive director was Sister Margaret Leonard, GSS ’67, who codified the agency’s idea of mutuality.

It called for forming mutually enriching relationships with clients, “eschewing a binary framework of helper and helped in an effort to cocreate new realities in East Harlem that benefit all parties,” the book says.

That meant listening to migrants’ stories, offering mental and spiritual support, and unlocking their strengths over the long term. Sometimes it meant bringing them together so they could address common problems, like mold in their public housing. Former clients often return as volunteers and staffers or serve other New York City organizations in leadership roles.

What mutuality is not, Kasten said, is “looking for immediate effects.”

“It’s willing to be in conversation with someone for years and understanding that sometimes it does take that long,” she said. “The things that people are asked to do when they come to this country don’t take just a week.”

Success Stories of Migrants

Eight Fordham students worked on the book project, gaining research experience by helping Moore and Kasten with interviewing migrants the agency served over the past few decades. The students included theology, Spanish, and communications majors, as well as students in the Graduate School of Social Service. Most migrants quoted in the book used pseudonyms.

The interviewees included Sonia, a onetime teenage mother whom the agency helped navigate prenatal care, develop parenting skills, and enroll in a pre-nursing degree program. The nuns also called upon her to provide nursing care to another Little Sisters client in her building.

And they stuck with her through crises—like being jailed on a false accusation from her child’s father, who had beaten her. The sisters prayed and sang hymns outside the jail overnight, giving her hope until charges were dropped the next day. She later moved to Florida, married, raised three children, and became head nurse in a hospital’s radiology department—at one point, overseeing the care of an ailing relative of Sister Margaret, who Sonia said is “like family.”

Another young mother, Yolanda, gained parenting skills through the agency and later joined its staff after earning her bachelor’s degree. “They began supporting me, motivating me,” she says in the book. In the words of another client: “They make you see what you don’t see in yourself.”

“People traditionally view Catholic art as enchanting, with statues, stained glass windows, and beautiful cathedrals. But there are other ways for Catholics to imagine their faith through art,” said Sullivan, a senior urban studies and theology double major at Fordham College at Rose Hill who has been working on the documentary since last summer and is planning to complete it by the end of the year. 

An Interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan 

Sullivan’s 20-minute documentary, “Questions on the Catholic Imagination(s),” offers unique perspectives from religious figures like Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York. In the film, Cardinal Dolan says that God communicates with people through whispers. And through those whispers—or hints—from the divine, Catholics create art. Some examples are the 2018 Met Gala, themed “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” and the exhibit “Revelation” by artist Andy Warhol, whose Catholic upbringing is infused in some of his work, said Sullivan. 

Catholics Who Break the Mold

Sullivan, an aspiring filmmaker, was inspired to create his documentary after reading New York Times and Vox articles that offered new takes on Catholicism, targeted toward younger Catholics. (In his documentary, he also interviews the articles’ authors.) Sullivan started working on his film last summer, thanks to funding from Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture and his 2022-2023 Duffy Fellowship. On May 22, he screened his work in progress at the Howard Gilman Theater. 

Coincidentally, his film premiere took place shortly before Pope Francis attended a conference on the Catholic imagination in Rome, which was attended by artist Andres Serrano and Fordham’s Angela Alaimo O’Donnell—two key people who were interviewed in Sullivan’s film.

Sullivan said he hopes his documentary, which includes some controversial perspectives, will expand the minds of his audience. 

“I want to show that there is a rainbow of Catholics out there who don’t quite fit into the perfect mold that the church might make us feel like we need to fit into,” he said, citing an example that Fordham’s Bryan Massingale, S.T.D., mentions in the film. “Father Massingale talks about how the church often tries to make mathematical equations about human morality. What it doesn’t take into account are the complexities of humanity.”

‘New York Is My Campus’

Sullivan has been familiar with the Jesuits since birth. He was born in Georgetown University’s hospital to an Irish-Catholic family, and graduated from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. 

“Attending a Jesuit high school, which emphasized social justice, was infectious for me,” Sullivan said. “I wanted more of it. That’s what propelled me to another Jesuit school—Fordham.” 

During his first year at Fordham, he often rolled his eyes at the phrase “Fordham is my school, New York is my campus” because it felt cheesy, said Sullivan. But this year, he realized the phrase was right: 

“From seeing Andy Warhol’s exhibit sign in the Fordham subway station, to conducting all my interviews in New York City and then showing my film at Lincoln Center—that was ‘New York is my campus’ on full display.”

Karina Hogan, Ph.D., associate professor of theology, said her goal for the course was to help students to understand and “actually experience” the diversity of religions across New York City. This is the second time the community engaged learning course was offered, but it was the first time that it had a theme of gender and sexuality, Hogan said.

Hogan said the course, offered at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, explored that theme through class discussions, community activities, and texts such as Father Patrick Cheng’s book From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ.

Speaking Openly about Religion

Francesca Rizzo, a rising senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who is majoring in humanitarian studies and theology and minoring in peace and justice studies, liked that she could speak freely in the class.

“Both my peers and my professor were intent on building what we called ‘beloved community’—a space for us to talk about our experiences in an honest way,” she said.

Rebecca Hurson, FCRH ’23, who majored in sociology and minored in theology, said the course gave her insight into the complicated history between queer individuals and religious institutions, such as how some Catholic hospitals and nurses cared for patients during the AIDS epidemic.

“Queer religious people have always existed—there is a long history of queer religious people working with institutions,” she said.

Partnering with Mosques, Churches, and Synagogues

The students were also matched with a community partner and required to participate in at least seven events or programs with them; Hogan said many did more. The community partnerships and events were arranged by Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning, which helped develop the course.

Hurson worked most Mondays at St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church’s resource fair for migrants and immigrants. They’ve recently been helping migrants who are getting bused to New York.

“People were lost and they started showing up to SPSA,” Hurson said. “People can take any clothes they need, emergency backpacks. They have a whole team of legal help to help with forms, and they have translators to help.”

Rizzo worked with Congregation Beit Simchat Torah and the Islamic Center at NYU.

“There were a lot of college-aged people there that are taking time out of their day to honor their own spirituality and honor their religious traditions,” Rizzo said about the Islamic Center, adding that it was powerful to see “multi generations learning about their faith side by side.”

Many students participated in the LGBTQ Community Iftar, a religious event that’s a part of Ramadan, held by the Center, an LGBTQ community center in NYC. It’s co-sponsored by many organizations, including Fordham and its Center for Community Engaged Learning.

“It was a very beautiful experience,” Hurson said. “It was very obvious how much it meant and for them to be in a room of Black, brown, queer Muslims—there’s not too many spaces where they can come together..”

New Yorkers Praying ‘Close Together’

Benedict Reilly, FCRH ’23, attended two Iftars—one at the Center and one at the Muhammad Ali Islamic Center, where he prayed salah, ”the traditional Muslim ritual prayers. The Iftar also inspired his final paper on how a prayer practice could be used to examine the relationship between topics like social justice and religious, gender, and sexual diversity.

“The practice of ‘closing the gaps’—coming physically close together to pray—stood out to me as a beautiful representation of community and inclusion,” said Reilly, a theology major with minors in Middle Eastern and humanitarian studies. “A Columbia Business School graduate prayed inches from an African refugee who, in turn, was inches from a local high schooler who was inches from me.”

“I was looking for a degree in Christian spirituality. I started with the certificate program in spiritual direction, and then I ran out of classes and I was still interested,” he said with a smile.

He pursued a master’s degree at GRE, still not planning on going for a doctorate. But the opportunity to dive deeper into areas such as practical theology and spiritual direction was appealing to him.

“I was able to explore interests I had without feeling too constrained,” he said. “The great surprise for me was all the work we did around the field of practical theology.”

A ‘Transformative’ Practical Theology Class

Suriano said that the practical theology class he took, taught by religion professor Thomas Beaudoin, Ph.D., was transformational.

“He, in his own gentle and persistent way, got all of us to think differently about our ministry,” he said. “I can’t really say enough about how that semester changed my ministry here at the church and my ideas around it.”

Beaudoin said he teaches students to use practical theology to examine and understand their own lives and spiritualities.

“The ultimate curriculum is the student’s life, and so theology matters in part because we need to learn how to reckon with our lives—our lives individually and our lives together,” he said.

Beaudoin said that as a part of the program, Suriano was able to reckon with his unique spiritual background. He came to Fordham after decades in church ministry, which started when he was ordained a Catholic priest before he joined the United Church of Christ in 1993.

“He was interested from the beginning in using the language of Christian spirituality, to hold together his Protestant and his Catholic heritage and commitments,” Beaudoin said.

A Queer Vocation

Beaudoin said that one way Suriano did this was through his study of queer theology and his eventual thesis, “A Queer Vocation: Growing into Power.”

Suriano said that studying queer theology helped him develop a sense of “how I as a queer person have a voice in the church, that I may speak to the church in a way that is powerful and meaningful,” he said.

He called his thesis a “great intersection between some personal work and also some work about the church itself, including the congregation I serve.”

“I began to explore, just briefly, in my thesis about how for queer people in the church there is this connection with Christian spirituality and how to find our place in the church that isn’t centered around the debate over whether or if we should be there,” he said, but instead centered around some of the unique gifts that queer people can bring.

Past, Present, and Future

Beaudoin said when Suriano was able to “engage wholeheartedly in queer theories and queer spirituality,” it “really opened him up to a new horizon.”

“There was something noble and challenging and nourishing about this idea of queer vocation, and he really claimed that in three ways: as a way to make sense of his heritage; and then queer vocation as a way to understand what he’s about intellectually and spiritually now; but then also as a hopeful path to and through retirement in ministry.”

Beaudoin said that it was rewarding to see Suriano, who had already accomplished so much before coming to the program, “say an even deeper yes” to his life, vocation, and intellectual project.

“He’s so thoughtful, and he’s so reflective,” he said. “Also it’s humbling—it puts me in the role of perpetual student to be in the presence of students like that. I get to learn from his example as he goes deeper.”

The group—a professor, a psychologist, and three students—gathered in a classroom in Duane Library on Feb. 14, where they spoke to members of the Fordham community about how love appears in their professional work.  

Literature on Love

Some of them shared their favorite literature on love. Thomas O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate professor of English and medieval studies, printed out three poems and passed out copies to the audience: a joyful poem written by Comtessa de Dia, a 12th-century French noblewoman; a mournful poem by Umm Khalid, an Arabic poet from the 8th or 9th century; and a funny poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th-century English poet. 

“[Chaucer] says he is so in love that he feels like a piece of roasted fish in jam sauce,” O’Donnell said, to laughter from the audience. 

Asher Harris, a Ph.D. student in theology, talked about American jazz musician John Coltrane, who expressed love and gratitude to God for saving him from his heroin addiction. The most open expression of this love appeared in his album A Love Supreme, particularly in the song “Psalm,” said Harris, who played a recording for the audience. 

Another scholar, Christopher Supplee, FCRH ’25, a creative writing major, shared a poem he wrote and recited in honor of the event: “A World Without Love.” 

“There are matters that cannot be mended by mortal hands alone,” he said to the audience, reading from his poem. “That only miracles may fix, assuming they still exist.” 

Supplee said that when he was writing his poem, he was inspired by the question “What is love?” 

“It made me want to sit down and think about what love means to me—what are my experiences, what I’ve read, what I’ve been taught from scholars, writers, and entertainment,” Supplee said. “Love can be expressed in many different ways, whether it be through justice, romance, or friendship.” 

Queer Love at Fordham

Other scholars shared their own research on love. Benedict Reilly, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who studies theology, discussed the theme of love from his book Queer Prayer at Fordham. He started the book project two years ago, interviewing LGBTQ+ members of the Fordham community about how they pray. During those conversations, he learned about the connection between prayer and love. One interviewee said that she learned to love herself through prayer. Another interviewee—an asexual and aromantic woman who longed to have a child of her own—spoke about how she found love and comfort through a Hail Mary. 

“I’m sharing all of these with you because I want you to think about different prayers or songs that might be helpful to you all as you fall in love,” Reilly said. 

The final invited speaker, Sarika Persaud, Ph.D., a supervising psychologist in Counseling and Psychological Services who specializes in love and relationships, spoke about what her work has taught her about love. 

“When I’m sitting with a person and helping them heal, I’m not only opening them up to love as a feeling, to feel love again, but to love as who you are—to exist in the world as love,” said Persaud, who added that her Hinduism philosophy informs her work. “All of your desires, whatever relationships you enter into, whatever relationships come your way, whatever challenges come your way, they’re all opportunities … to love more.”

What Love Means to a Jesuit

After each guest spoke, event host and theology professor Brenna Moore invited the audience to reflect on what love means to them. 

Among them was Timothy Perron, S.J., a Jesuit in formation and doctoral student in theology. 

“As somebody who has taken a vow of celibacy, a lot of times, people think, ‘What could that person know about love, especially romantic love?’” Perron said. “But actually, I’ve thought about it a lot.” 

Before he decided to become a priest, he wondered if he could commit to that vow. After much thought, he said he realized that every human has the same needs and desires, but they appear in different ways. 

“I still have a need for close friendship, intimacy, love, and care for others … [but there are]all of these different ways that love could be understood,” Perron said. “If I see somebody who is looking for money or something, I’ll often stop and talk to them or take them to the nearest deli … Just stuff like that, where you feel that love and that connection … intentionally developing close relationships with people, keeping in close touch, calling them—all of those sorts of things, I think, are part of what love means.” 

“Going through this adventure with my daughter has taught me what it means to be truly human,” said Martone, who spoke at the Rose Hill campus on Nov. 9. “The time I sat by her … when she was comatose was the most meaningful time of my life. It made me realize that persons with disability are discriminated against—not because of who they are, but because of who we are and what we wrongly value.”

Martone is an associate professor emerita of moral theology at St. John’s University in Jamaica, New York. She is the recipient of several awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities grant on “Justice, Equality, and the Challenge of Disability” and a fellowship on disability ethics from Weill-Cornell Medical College and the Hospital for Special Surgery. She wrote and published Over the Waterfall, a memoir of her daughter’s accident, in 2011. Since retirement, she has worked with Ladies of Charity USA to establish a national homecare agency. In 1995, Martone earned her Ph.D. in moral theology from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

In her lecture “From Trauma to Disability: Examining Our Cultural Values,” Martone offered an emotional account of her daughter’s journey from her perspective as a mother and caregiver. In addition, she spoke about the shortcomings of America’s health care system and how our societal values marginalize those with disabilities.   

A Health Care System That Neglects People Living with a Chronic Condition

On February 22, 1998, an elderly woman lost control of her car and hit several students from the University of Chicago, including Michelle. For nearly eight months, Michelle was unconscious. She had 10 brain surgeries, a respirator, and a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, said her mother—and she nearly died a few times. 

Today, Michelle continues to live at home. She is able to use a walker to move around, answer her email, play games on her computer, and even go horseback riding, with the help of her family members and professionals. In 2016, she celebrated her 40th birthday with family and friends. 

But during the two years following the accident, her family experienced a difficult journey through the health care system. When Michelle’s doctors determined that she would not be restored to independence in a short period of time, her care became less important to the system, said Martone. Everyone in the intensive care unit received the same level of care based on their needs, but those who left the facility without the possibility of a full recovery experienced disparities in care, she said. For example, she was able to get all the MRI scans she needed for her daughter, but after she left the hospital, it was difficult to find home care workers and therapists. 

Michelle was discharged from one facility to another, including large research hospitals that underwent frequent changes in residents and staff, said Martone. In the process, Martone discovered that on her daughter’s medical records, someone had falsely written that she had undergone a lobotomy procedure. 

When Michelle finally awoke, she began to make progress, but it wasn’t fast enough for her insurance companies, said Martone. “If a patient doesn’t respond quickly, she’s documented as having plateaued and services are cut back and soon eliminated,” said Martone. 

Eventually, Michelle needed to move back home or into a nursing home. Thanks to money earned from a major lawsuit, they were able to afford the former, along with personalized care. Her condition improved with time and the help of professionals and close family members. But insurance only covered a few hours of daily nursing care, and Michelle needed round-the-clock care. 

Too Much Emphasis on Independence

Throughout this experience, Martone said she has learned that people with chronic conditions, especially those who can no longer live independently, are neglected by the health care system. 

This speaks to a deeper problem embedded in the U.S., she said. Our society overwhelmingly favors independence and often rejects dependency. Many of us live in a world where we think we are independent because we can buy whatever products or services we need. But that isn’t true, she said. Even the able-bodied all rely on people and services. 

“We delude ourselves into thinking we are independent. Our health care system also favors this approach. … It puts vast resources into keeping people alive and returning them to independence and few resources into teaching people how to die or live with a chronic condition,” she said, including the 1.7 million Americans who have a traumatic brain injury. “We have to give chronic care more serious thought … [and]do something about the fragmentation of our health care system,” Martone said. 

‘I Am So Much More Than What You See’

Dealing with the health care system was difficult, but the hardest thing for her to experience as a mother was discrimination against her daughter, she said. 

“There were so many places where we were made to feel unwanted. Her friends drifted away, and her world was reduced mostly to her immediate family and her paid caregivers and therapists,” said Martone. 

Martone showed the audience a scene in the documentary “Your Health: A Sacred Matter,” aired on PBS, where her daughter sings about her desires in a song that she composed herself: “I am so much more than what you see. There is so much more inside of me. A sense of humor and gratitude for life. … You may think I’m less of a person, only because you see I can’t walk. But if you took the time, you would know I could talk. Could you stop a moment and say hi?” 

Martone said we need to do more to accommodate persons with disabilities: “We need to stop viewing our work with them as acts of charity on our part and recognize our interdependence. They are not here to make us feel good about ourselves. They are us.”

This year, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development—an office that promotes human development, particularly for migrants and refugees—launched a new project under Pope Francis. The goal of the project, Doing Theology from the Existential Peripheries, was to interview those who are often excluded from conversations in the church and to use their feedback to improve the church and its practices. 

The dicastery recruited nearly 100 theologians, including Hinze, to speak with people across each continent. (Hinze is the sole representative from Fordham.) More than 500 people, including migrants, refugees, prisoners, and victims of abuse—people who live at “the existential peripheries,” in the words of Pope Francis—shared testimonials.

Testimonials on Some of the Most Pressing Issues

Last semester, Hinze conducted in-person interviews in New York with about 50 people, predominantly Catholics. He met members of three groups—Black Catholics in the Parish of St. Charles Borromeo in Harlem, LGBTQ Catholics in St. Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan, and Latina Catholic migrants at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the Bronx—as well as other individuals. 

“I tried to find people who could contribute to a discussion about some of the most pressing issues, especially in the United States. Since I teach theology and in the area of the church, I know that there’s a lot of tension in the U.S. on race issues,” said Hinze. 

In videotaped interviews, he asked them to reflect on their experiences in life and with the church. What were their biggest sources of joy, pain, and sorrow? Where did they see God at work—or not? How had their faith helped or hindered them? How could the church have better helped them? 

Some questions were targeted toward specific groups. They were asked to consider their struggles as immigrants in the Bronx or in the church. Others were asked about how racism and discrimination against their sexual orientation had caused them to think differently about God and Catholicism. 

A Surprising Message of Gratitude 

Trena Yonkers-Talz, GRE ’23, who was recruited by Hinze to interview the Latina women in Spanish, said that her group spoke transparently about their painful memories in the U.S. and in their native countries, where they felt rejected by the church for different reasons, including having a family member in the LGBTQ community. In recounting their stories, many of the women wept, she said. But with the help of God, they were able to heal from their past wounds and imagine a brighter future. 

What surprised her the most, said Yonkers-Talz, was the message they would give Pope Francis if he were sitting beside them. 

“I expected them to want to tell him everything that needed to be fixed, but instead, they wanted to tell him how grateful they are—how much they’re trying to live out their faith and that their faith matters to them,” Yonkers-Talz recalled. “Their posture of gratitude really struck me because our whole conversation wasn’t one of gratitude. Yet at the end, there was still this profound sense of faith and gratitude for the church and its leadership.” 

‘That’s a Message That the Universal Church Needs to Hear’ 

Hinze, who interviewed Black and LGBTQ Catholics, said that the testimonials from both groups were moving and “brutally” honest. 

“The Black Catholics were incredibly honest about their experience of racism in the church by priests and bishops, including priests who won’t talk about violence against Black people in New York, Harlem, and elsewhere,” Hinze said. “They spoke from their heart about it—so much that I was quite moved. I choked up, just listening to them. But at the same time—and this was equally moving—they spoke about how deeply connected they are to their Catholic community and how filled and encouraged they are to be in this group. The LGBTQ group did the same thing. … I think that’s a message that the universal church needs to hear.” 

After analyzing the interview transcriptions, Hinze contributed his summary to a 120-page collective report from the North American theologians that will be made available to bishops worldwide. On Oct. 12, scholars and Vatican officials met at a conference in Rome, one of their first opportunities to discuss the project reports. They will further discuss the theologians’ findings with Pope Francis two years from now in Rome, at the conclusion of the Synod on Synodality—a three-year process of listening and dialogue initiated by the Pope.

A project of this scale has never been conducted before by the Vatican, said Hinze. He said he hopes that bishops around the world will sincerely listen to the lay people’s stories and their thoughts on how the church can address where it’s fallen short—to “see what life is really like for those who live on the margins and to learn from them.” 

“It all goes back to this: The bishops need to invite and listen to people to talk about their struggles and joys in the church,” he said. These conversations should be going on, not just through the Vatican, but in dioceses and in parishes as well. You need to sit with people in your parish and ask, ‘Who’s on the margins? Who has left the church?’ And talk to them.”

In a qualitative research project with two other scholars, Rachelle Green, Ph.D., assistant professor of practical theology and education at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, searched for the answer to that question by educating and interviewing inmates at a Georgia prison. Green directed the teaching program from 2017 to 2019 and taught inmates for seven years. Her research team interviewed about 60 women from different faiths, including Christians, Muslims, Jews, and atheists. Through this experience, they learned how these students embraced and engaged in education in prison and how they understand God and their relationship to the world, said Green. 

“Our goal was to focus and be intricately and intimately paying attention to human life so that we can present these stories as true for these women, in hopes that we might learn something about truth beyond them,” Green said.

“Barbara has quietly been a groundbreaking figure in the field of Catholic feminist ethics. In a non-flashy way, she has been ahead of the curve on so many issues since the 1980s,” said Christine Firer Hinze, Ph.D., chair and professor in the theology department. “This lectureship refracts much of the work that Barbara has done over the years and ensures that light will continue to shine on those issues, especially at Fordham.”

This past January, Andolsen made a bequest that will support an endowed fund for the Barbara Hilkert Andolsen Memorial Lectureship. Every year, Fordham’s theology department will host a prestigious scholar to speak on a topic related to economic, racial, or gender justice, with special attention given to marginalized racial and cultural groups. The endowed fund for the lectureship will soon be open to other contributions from the public. 

Andolsen is a feminist theologian and ethics scholar. From 2008 to 2019, she held several positions at Fordham, including the first James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics, associate director of the Center for Ethics Education, and professor of theology. Andolsen previously taught at Monmouth University, Rutgers University, and Harvard Divinity School. She earned her Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University, with a specialization in Christian ethics. 

Andolsen’s research was ahead of her time, said Hinze. In her book Daughters of Jefferson, Daughters of Bootblacks: Racism and American Feminism (Mercer University Press, 1986), Andolsen wrote about how the women’s rights movement in the U.S. could have been different if more attention had been given to Black feminist perspectives. Andolsen also wrote The New Job Contract: Economic Justice in an Age of Insecurity (Wipf and Stock, 2009), the “first feminist analysis to connect religious understandings of economic justice with the issues facing both workers and the wider community,” according to the book publisher. 

“Much of her work has brought together economics, business, feminism, Catholic ethics, and social thought in distinctive ways that were really pushing the field forward. She drew attention to many issues—including racism in the women’s movement, caring for the frail elderly, technology, and job insecurity—that were on the cusp of what was happening in society and in ethics,” Hinze said. 

In a phone interview, Andolsen said the annual lectures were inspired by the work of her successor, Bryan Massingale, S.T.D., the current James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics. 

“His work made me aware that in our discipline, attention to racism as an issue has been surprisingly rare, given its social urgency. Not only is it rare, but also serious social analysis of racism appears only episodically in the official documents of the American Catholic bishops. Something will happen in society that focuses our attention on racism, and we’ll hear an idealistic statement from the bishops that denounces racism. But there won’t be any sustained attention,“ Andolsen said. 

In response, she said she decided to support an annual event that would bring consistent attention to racism and theology—both at Fordham and beyond. 

“Racism has frequently been called America’s greatest sin. I hope this lectureship gives insights to everyday people that help inform their conscientious stance on racism. It would also be wonderful if material from this lecture series came to the attention of the American Catholic bishops,” Andolsen said. “And I hope that this stimulates research among Fordham graduate students, faculty in the theology department, and other departments in the University. The scholarship available on questions of justice for African Americans and Native Americans is less than it should be in North America. There needs to be much more of it.” 

“On the west coast of Africa, across the Middle Passage to the plantations of the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America, there were Africans trying to put together a cultural sensibility—a way of imagining themselves in the world, a way of critiquing their condition, and just a way of being a regular human and chronicling everyday reality, including humor, love, luck, and misfortune,” said Burnett, an assistant professor of systematic theology at Fordham. “They did a great deal of this through music.”

Burnett’s work explores how divinity emerges in Black life. He came to Fordham in 2018 after teaching in the University of Notre Dame’s Africana Studies department and Balfour-Hesburgh Scholars Program. He has shared his expertise at panels for the World Forum for Liberation Theology, the American Academy of Religion, and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologies. This past summer, he served as a guest speaker on the podcast “We The Scenario,” where he spoke about the profound impact of his childhood church in Mississippi. 

“The Black church was very instrumental in dealing with racial oppression, but it wasn’t always so good with recognizing and celebrating the differences among human beings. It had a one-size-fits-all approach of what a human is,” Burnett said. “What I’m doing now is challenging some of the limitations in how the human is imagined in the world.”

In a Q&A with Fordham News, Burnett explains how his research and two different subjects—music and religion—harmonize together in his mind.  

You’re a systematic theologian. What does that mean? 

I try to understand and convey the relationship between God and the world from the perspective of marginalized peoples. When we look at the marginalized, we usually don’t ask them questions about what they think. Instead, as theorist Sylvia Wynter suggests, we look at the marginalized with respect to what they lack. My work critiques that. I explore how they think about the world. 

I’m particularly interested in groups marginalized by race, especially African Americans living in the U.S. I analyze the ways that they have negotiated life, despite the transatlantic slave trade, racism, segregation, and all types of contemporary injustice. One way is through music, or the sonic. As scholar of Black religion James Noel argues, Black religion emerges in the moans and shouts—the sounds—of a people trying to affirm their relation to an unspeakable experience of being turned into property and the unspeakable connection to a God (or gods), which suggest that a meaningful life way is possible.

How does music connect to religion in this context? 

Sound was important for Africans forced into slavery because it was quintessential to communication with the divine, especially in many West African traditional religions. Sound is how you communicate with the deity. It’s not just about entertainment or virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake. It has a function in communicating meaning, worship, and information. Sound also became a unifying way for enslaved Africans who could not talk to each other because they spoke different languages. They used music to communicate with each other. They developed spirituals, work songs, and slave seculars. The blues became a genre out of a transitionary cultural moment between what has been referred to as the “invisible institution” or “slave religion” and the formal institutionalization of Black American faith traditions. When the blues are read with respect to space, sound, knowledge, faith, and sensuality, we can see so much more than the musical genre that greatly influenced jazz, rock, gospel, rock and roll, pop, hip-hop, and other American musical genres. I look at this “more,” or the excess meanings in the blues, to consider how they play with, push on, and challenge theological ideas. My most recent book, Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), touches on this. 

Is there a specific music genre—perhaps gospel—where people tend to feel more closely connected to God? 

Yes. As historian Charles Long has argued, we can look to the worship practices of Black Americans as examples of how they gave meaning to their involuntary presence in the Americas, the meaning of God in light of that experience, and their ever-changing relationship with the continent of Africa. What they experienced was so tremendously terrible. It made them question the meaning of divinity. If something like this can happen, is there really any notion of the divine? Long and other scholars help us see that the answer to this question is an emphatic yes.

I read gospel music as a way of evoking and worshipping a notion of divinity that is indeed commensurate with “the agony of oppression and the freedom of all persons.” This notion of divinity is articulated through the Black American reception of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospels. It’s an affirmation that divinity is real—that God cares about us and that we can feel comfortable celebrating this, despite our conditions. Why? Because if you think about the gospel narrative, in the Bible, Jesus speaks to those who found themselves on the outside of love, care, and justice. 

What research are you working on right now? 

I’m exploring how the blues relate to suffering. I teach this in a course called Spirituals, the Blues, and African-American Christianity. What the blues is trying to do—and I’m thinking with scholars like Frank Wilderson, Saidiya Hartman, and Hortense Spillers—is to consider, in a more nuanced way, how the blues provides an alternative to the conditions that flow from anti-Black violence. While the blues are always more or less than what we might want them to be, it is clear to me that “blues people” are trying  to imagine another possible world. We see glimpses of that world in the momentary embrace of bodies swaying together on the dance floors of juke joints, in the moans and shouts of blues vocalists, in the spiritual imagination of hoodoo, and in confrontation and circumvention of the oppressive labor conditions of the Jim Crow South. As novelist James Baldwin once wrote, in the blues we find a “toughness” that makes the deep experience of pain in the U.S. articulate. However the blues, as Baldwin also wrote, does not stop with the reality of pain and anguish. It is also a representation of a deep sense of joy.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

“There’s a certain philosophical understanding of the human that doesn’t make enough room for Black and queer life. Black studies scholars and queer theorists want to dismantle this understanding in order to talk about Black and queer existence in terms that are non-negative or abject,” said Daniels. 

Daniels’ project, “Thurman’s Theory: The Mystical Life of Black Study,” examines the archives of Howard Thurman—one of the largest sets of archives of any African American scholar. Thurman was a Black spiritual activist who grew up in the Jim Crow South and later became a key mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. 

“My project attempts to show that some questions these scholars are attempting to demythologize have already been done in the mysticism of Howard Thurman—or [that]some of his mysticism allows us to approach new understandings of what it means to be human,” Daniels said.  

From ‘Tide-Shifting Cultural Moments’ to Today 

Over the next three years of fellowship funding, Daniels plans on analyzing Thurman’s recorded sermons, letters, meditations, and short essays and linking Thurman’s work to key themes in spiritual life today. Most of the works Daniels will be analyzing were written in the last decade of Thurman’s life from 1968 to 1971, after the assassination of King and during the emergence of Black studies, feminism, and gender studies in the U.S.

“I’m reading Thurman’s work at the end of his life at a particular time when many of the questions and theoretical methods that are popular now [in theology]were in their nascent stages. I’m asking, what was Thurman thinking about while these tide-shifting cultural moments were taking place and being born? And how might what he was thinking about then still be relevant to what scholars are thinking about now in its more developed stages?” Daniels said. 

Under the Ford Foundation fellowship funding, Daniels is also developing two peer-reviewed journal articles: an article that analyzes the relationship between eroticism and religion and an article that examines how Black queer Christians worldwide understand Black queer theology. 

“I am deeply interested in how my own project intersects with Black religion in general around the world. I want to think about what Black queer theology might look like because we are more connected now than ever [thanks to technology],” said Daniels, who serves as an Episcopal priest at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan. 

A Spiritual Vision That Allows People ‘To Be Their True Selves, as God Made Us’ 

On a deeper level, Daniels said his research investigates what it means to be human in relationship to God. 

“There is an attempt to nail down characteristics of what constitutes a properly human person. There are normative ideas of sexuality, gender, or what a body should look like. But they don’t allow people to be seen as dynamic—to be their true selves, as God made us,” Daniels said. “I want to develop a spiritual vision that can contend with normativity and promote dynamism.” 

His research also offers an important perspective on Black life, especially amid the Black Lives Matter movement, said Daniels’ mentor Rufus Burnett, Jr., Ph.D., assistant professor of systematic theology, who studies how divinity emerges in Black life. 

“Paul is saying there’s a different way for us to think about Black lives mattering. He’s offering the younger generation a way into the mystical through a Christian heritage that offers an alternative,” said Burnett. “He’s offering a very unique entryway to those who feel that Christianity has forgotten them.” 

The Main Takeaway

Daniels credits Fordham’s diverse theology department—a group of ethicists, theologians, and historians from the Protestant, Greek Orthodox, and Roman Catholic faiths—with helping him develop a deeper interreligious perspective. 

“Fordham’s diverse theology department allows me to cultivate the skill of listening across different disciplines and religious theological commitments and traditions,” said Daniels. 

Daniels said that the main takeaway from his fellowship research is that there’s something special—and unbreakable—within each of us. 

“There is light, imagination, vitality, and power within all of us that exceeds the limits of any political and social determination,” said Daniels, who plans on graduating from Fordham with his Ph.D. in theology in 2025. “With an abiding spiritual vision, practice, and faith, we can access that light and transform this world. Although it may not be perfect and we may not see precisely all of the things we hope to see, we need to keep the faith in our work because it comes out of a place that cannot be utterly violated by the world, that will live and move beyond us in ways that we can’t imagine.”