Dowagiac pastor co-authors book on history of faith and race in America – Leader Publications

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Pastor Christopher Momany poses for a photo with David Ingraham’s journal. (Photo courtesy of Erin Morrow)

Pastor Christopher Momany with Dr. AG Miller, professor emeritus of religion and African studies at Oberlin College, before a screening of “Awakening To Justice” on June 17 at the Apollo Theater in Oberlin, Ohio. (Submitted)

DOWAGIAC – Christopher Momany was inspired to put pen to paper again, this time as part of a collaborative effort offering insight and hope for people working for racial justice.

The pastor of First United Methodist Church, 326 N. Lowe St., Dowagiac, he has been published in numerous scholarly and publications over the years, and most recently that passion took the form of the book, “Awakening to Justice: Faithful Voices from the Abolitionist Past.”

Published by InterVarsity Press in March and written by members of the Dialogue on Race and Faith project – a multi-ethnic team of fourteen scientists, including Momany – Awakening to Justice describes Momany’s discovery of a forgotten abolitionist manuscript from 1839, in which he and his colleagues discovered a text that sheds light on the history of faith and race in America as well as the reality of racism today.

Awakening to Justice is available on Amazon, Audible, Barnes & Noble, and more. It also includes a free Study Guide.

“It’s very satisfying, but it’s also hard,” Momany said. “We have to look at it not just as a project that’s cool because it’s old and you discover a diary, but as one of those things that challenges you. You have to do something with it that benefits other people.”

The book was a project nearly ten years in the making. In 2015, Momany and Noelle Keller, Adrian College’s head of library services, discovered a manuscript that had been forgotten in a storage room at the school. He identified it as the diary of a 19th-century Christian abolitionist and missionary, David Ingraham. According to Momany, an excerpt from Ingraham’s diary described a slave ship called the Ulysses that was seized by the British government in Jamaica in 1839 after Britain banned slavery in 1833. The British released the prisoners in Jamaica and, according to Christopher, the fate of Ulysses remains a mystery.

“I read the description and the measurements and it just broke my heart,” Momany said.

The Dialogue on Race and Faith project brought together a multicultural team of Christian scholars to discuss how questions of faith and race among abolitionists can provide a useful history for today’s struggle for racial justice. Project members and contributors include: Momany Jemar Tisby, Sègbégnon Mathieu Gnonhossou, David D. Daniels III, R. Matthew Sigler, Douglas M. Strong, Diane Leclerc, Esther Chung-Kim, Albert G. Miller, and Estrelda Y. Alexander.

Last year, Momany, his wife Liz and his team of researchers and scientists traced the story back to Benin and presented their results to the University of Abomey-Calavi.

“We didn’t want the book to be just a history book,” he said. “This is the kind of thing that historians get excited about when they’re trained and they find something. It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but this is more important than that. It’s not just a history project, it’s about people and how people were treated and how they shouldn’t be treated and what we can learn from that. We wanted to write the book in a way that speaks to today.”

Momany said he enjoyed seeing how the book inspired colleagues to use their creativity to advance the conversations sparked by the book. One of Momany’s colleagues, Dr. Stephen Newby, DMA, Lev H. Prichard III Endowed Chair in the Study of Black Worship and Professor of Music at Baylor University, wrote a formal piece of music inspired by passages from the diary. The book also inspired a 35-minute film Directed by Sean Dimond and John Harrison, the film challenges viewers to reflect on the history that led to the racial divide we experience today and inspires us with a path to healing.

“It was cool to see a lot of really brilliant people doing creative and good things,” he said.

He hopes the book will inspire new conversations among readers about the reality of racism today.

“The last few years have been such a violent, intense time in terms of racial justice,” Momany said. “We needed to make sure we were bringing facts to light because there are people today who are spreading horrific misinformation and disinformation about the history of slavery and trying to downplay it. They’re trying to say it wasn’t as bad as people say it was, and that’s just not true. It was horrible, and that’s why we wanted to get to the facts.”

“There is so much lying going on in public and on cable television today that we wanted to bring the facts to light. There’s no denying it, it’s true.”