Anthea Butler on intellectual Catholicism, evangelicalism and why the ‘prosperity gospel’ persists

The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.

America Media

Christianity, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Spiritualizing” something usually makes it less concrete, less “real.” Not for Anthea Butler, the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. In this episode of “The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.,” Anthea shares her journey from Catholicism to Pentecostalism and back to Catholicism, crediting the Catholic Church’s rich intellectual tradition and dedication to working with the poor and marginalized. They discuss: - Anthea’s Black Catholic heritage in Louisiana and Texas - The great, yet relatively unknown, Catholic intellectual tradition - How evangelical theology seeps into the Catholic Church in the United States - Spirituality lived through action on behalf of the poor Link to Father Jim’s spiritual advice article on this episode: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/07/15/anthea-butler-james-martin-spiritual-life-251125 Do you have a spiritual question for Father Jim? You can write to us at: [email protected] Become a subscriber today at Americamagazine.org/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the spiritual life. I'm Feathered Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people
0:09.1	experience God in their prayer and their daily lives. And I am joined by my wonderful producer, Maggie Van Dorn.
0:15.5	Maggie, good to be with you again. Good to be with you, Jim. Who are we speaking with this week?
0:24.1	We are very excited to speak with Anthea Butler, who I met first online. I really was taken by actually her tweets, which were very
0:30.0	thoughtful and grounded and challenging. And then when I found out she was teaching at the University
0:34.5	of Pennsylvania, my alma mater, I was even more interested and then met her in person.
0:38.3	And she's just fantastic. But tell us a little bit more about Anthea, Maggie.
0:42.3	Dr. Anthea Butler is a professor of American social thought and the chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
0:49.3	Go Quakers.
0:50.3	She specializes in African American religious history, evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and the intersections of religion, race, and politics.
1:00.0	Her books include white evangelical racism and women in the Church of God in Christ.
1:06.0	Anthea has contributed to the 1619 Project from the New York Times, which is also an incredible
1:12.5	podcast, definitely worth checking out.
1:15.7	And she is a regular columnist for MSNBC.
1:19.4	Anthea was awarded the 2022 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion
1:24.8	and is president-elect of the American Society for Church History.
1:29.3	So we have a great conversation with Anthea that we're going to share in just a minute.
1:34.3	But first, Jim, I would like to get to our audience question.
1:38.3	So this question comes from Mary, and Mary asks, how can one align their faith and practice as Jesus so clearly did in the Gospels?
1:48.0	Well, Mary, thanks for that question. The first thing is we can't do it as clearly and as well and as perfectly as Jesus did.
1:54.3	So that's the first thing. So we need to kind of cut ourselves some slack a little bit. But not too much slack.
2:00.4	Because I think what's interesting
	...

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