An Evaluation and Comparison of American Buddhist and Catholic Racial Projects through the Lens of Critical Race Theory

In this paper, I explore how American Buddhist and Catholic religious communities are dealing with racism both within and outside of their communities by analyzing two projects through the lens of critical race theory (CRT). The Buddhist project is Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities, which aims to promote racial diversity in American Buddhist sanghas. The Catholic project is Open Wide Our Hearts, The Enduring Call to Love: A Pastoral Letter Against Racism, which aims toward spiritual conversion and social activism. I analyze how each project defines racism, how they approach the problem, and how they envision the role of tradition and the community in perpetuating and ameliorating racism. By analyzing these two projects, I demonstrate how religious communities could benefit from CRT as a critical theoretical framework for their racial projects.