Balancing Sacred and Secular: New Book on the Careys of Chicago

Received the following press release today from University Press of Mississippi regarding their latest release:

During most of the twentieth century, Archibald J. Carey, Sr. and Archibald J. Carey, Jr., father and son, exemplified the blend of ministry and politics that many African American religious leaders pursued. In African American Preachers and Politics: The Careys of Chicago, Dennic C. Dickerson describes the Careys as practitioners of public theology, in which sacred and secular concerns merged into efforts to improve the spiritual and temporal well-being of their congregations.

As ministers in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the senior Carey as a bishop and the junior Carey as a pastor who was also an attorney, they entered the public arena, fought for black civil rights, and offered concrete initiatives through politics to address the employment and housing needs of their church and community constituents.

Bishop Carey [Sr.] associated himself mainly with Chicago mayor William Hale Thompson, a Republican, whom he presented to black voters as an ally. In return for the bishop’s endorsement, Thompson appointed him to the city’s civil service commission, where he helped in the hiring and promotion of local blacks. Alleged impropriety for selling jobs, however, marred the bishop’s tenure with the agency.

The junior Carey, also a Republican and an alderman, sponsored an ill-fated non-discrimination public housing ordinance. As head of the panel on anti-discrimination in employment in the Eisenhower administration, he aided innumerable black federal employees.

Both Careys believed politics offered clergy the best opportunities to empower the black population. Their imperfect alliances, however, produced mixed results. African American Preachers and Politics: The Careys of Chicago features several photographs of the Careys, their families, and their colleagues.

Dennis C. Dickerson, Nashville, Tennessee, is James M. Lawson, Jr. Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. His previous books are Out of the Crucible: Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875-1980 and Militant Mediator: Whitney M. Young Jr.