Adrian Dominican Sister Jamie T. (Martin Thomas) Phelps, 84, died Nov. 22 in Adrian, Michigan. She was a respected theologian, an advocate for social and racial justice and a pioneer in the field of Black Catholic studies.
Born in Alabama, she moved to Chicago with her family and attended Catholic elementary school before graduating from Josephinum Academy in 1959.
She entered the Adrian Dominican congregation in 1959 and made final vows in 1966, becoming the first Black sister in the congregation.
Sister Jamie earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Siena Heights College in Adrian in 1969, a master’s degree in social work from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1972, a master’s in theology from St. John’s University in Minnesota in 1974 and a doctorate in systematic theology from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1989.
In her first 10 years of ministry, Sister Jamie taught at four elementary schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago. On obtaining her degree in social work, she ministered as an Illinois state-certified psychiatric social worker, first at Mercy Hospital and then at Chicago Child Care Society in Chicago.
After earning her doctorate in theology, Sister Jamie taught at Catholic Theological Union from 1986 to 1998. During her tenure there, she founded and directed CTU’s Augustus Tolton Pastoral Ministry Program, which prepares lay people for ministry to Black Catholics. From 1998 to 2003, she held a visiting, then tenured, professorship in theology at Loyola University Chicago.
C. Vanessa White, associate professor of spirituality and ministry at CTU, had known Sister Jamie since 1987, when White was considering a graduate degree in theology. Sister Jamie encouraged her to ask the Claretians, for whom White was working at the time, for financial support for her studies, and then Sister Jamie was one of her teachers.
“She was my mentor, she was my academic advisor, she was many things to me,” said White, a former director of the Tolton program. “She was a dear friend. We considered her part of our family. She challenged me to be the best that I could be, and she believed in my potential as a theologian and a scholar.”
Over her years at CTU, Sister Jamie worked with nearly every Black parish in the Archdiocese of Chicago, White said, and developed close relationships with many Black Catholic leaders in Chicago, and she mentored countless students.
“She sacrificed her own writing and theological studies to mentor and advise others,” said White. “She pushed others to be great.”
While pursuing her doctoral degree, Sister Jamie participated in the first meeting of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium in 1978. A little over a decade later, in 1991, she played a decisive role in restructuring the BCTS as a national interdisciplinary professional society for Black Catholic scholars holding doctoral degrees in theology and related fields.
The BCTS encourages the teaching, discussion and analysis of Black Catholic religious and cultural experience in church and society and supports the development and publication of Black Catholic theology. Sister Jamie served as convener of the symposium from 1992 to 2001.
Sister Jamie was associated with the Institute for Black Catholic Studies since its inception in 1980, serving as a major consultant to the late Capuchin Franciscan Father Thaddeus Posey, the founding director of the institute. The Institute for Black Catholic Studies is a degree program in pastoral studies offered during summer sessions at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans.
Between 1989 and 2011, Sister Jamie served as a member of the master of theology degree faculty, associate director for the institute’s graduate degree program and then director of the institute and Katherine Drexel Professor of Systematic Theology at Xavier University.
According to her community, Sister Jamie’s passion for racial and social justice and love of the gifts of Black Catholics to the church led to years of engagement in advocacy for racial equality, theological studies and the formation of Black Catholic leaders.
She was a founding member of the National Black Sisters’ Conference in addition to being one of the founders of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies. She also served as a consultor to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as they wrote their pastoral letter on racism and was a longtime active member of the Catholic Theological Society of America.
“The significance of Sister Jamie Phelps’ pioneering scholarship and strategic administrative ability cannot be overstated,” said M. Shawn Copeland, professor emerita of theology at Boston College. “She has made a substantive, radical and creative difference in how we Black Catholics think of ourselves, think of God, think of church, and think of Black theology.”
Copeland collaborated with Sister Jamie at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies and in the Black Catholic Theological Symposium for more than 45 years.
“Sister Jamie is one of our giants — a mother, a teacher, a scholar and a faithful daughter of the Black Catholic Church,” Father Kareem R. Smith, president of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, wrote when offering prayers for Sister Jamie. “Through her witness, her voice, and her decades of service, she has helped shape our theological imagination and has strengthened our commitment to serve our people with courage and love. Many of us stand on her shoulders.”
Sister Jamie taught Smith when he was a seminarian at IBCS.
After leaving Xavier University in 2011, Sister Jamie continued her ministry as a theologian, writer and preacher. She was a visiting professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame during the 2012-2013 academic year, then retired in Chicago, where she continued her work in theological research, writing and consulting. She was the editor of “Black and Catholic: The Challenges and Gifts of Black Folk: Contributions of African American Experience and Thought to Catholic Theology” and co-editor with Benedictine Father Cyprian Davis of “Stamped with the Image of God: African Americans as God’s Image in Black.”
Sister Jamie continued her preaching and teaching roles when she moved into the Dominican Life Center at the Adrian Dominican Sisters Motherhouse Campus in 2019 and was active in the life of the motherhouse community.
In a December 2016 interview with National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Report, Sister Jamie offered her own perspective on her life’s work.
“As a Black Catholic Dominican and theologian, I have been gifted with a specific worldview that allows me to interpret the Gospel in a way that speaks to diverse cultures and racial-ethnic groups so that the meaning of the Gospel for their lives, their city and the world becomes evident,” she said. “My social identity as a doubly marginalized person in society gifts me with the perspective of oppressed and poor people.”
In 2022, the Adrian Dominican Sisters endowed a fund for student scholarships at the IBCS as an act of reparation for and acknowledgment of the congregation’s past complicity in the nation’s history of racial injustice. It is named the Sister Jamie T. Phelps, OP, PhD Scholarship Fund.