In 2018, our denomination’s General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a report on racial reconciliation. You can read the report here. One of the report’s recommendations was that we initiate congregational dialogue around this important topic. While this dialogue continues, one of the ways we addressed this recommendation was by having an adult Sunday school class in the spring of 2019 on “Learning from the Black Church in America.” The purpose of the class was:
We desire to learn from the history of our brothers and sisters in Christ, examine our own history, and consider implications for present-day faithfulness and love of neighbor in a polarized and secular society.
Since this class was taught, the issue of race in our country has continued to be at the forefront. As church members have been asking me (Jeff) to share some recommended resources from this class. There are many resources I can recommend, but here are some of the books that especially helped me as I thought through this issue.
You might not end up agreeing with everything written in all of these books, but they each provide a valuable perspective.
Note - as of June 4, this page is just a start. I’ll be adding to it.
Books to Start Out With
Start with this one. It was written in 2000 but it couldn’t be more relevant 20 years later. One of this book’s strengths is that it isn’t a story implicating those who are virulently racist (which most of us, hopefully, are not). Instead, “this book is a story of how well-intentioned people, their values, and their institutions actually recreate racial divisions and inequalities they ostensibly oppose.”
Emerson and Smith give historical and cultural data and show how white people tend to use a certain cultural tool-kit in order to evaluate issues like race relations:
The racially important cultural tools in the white evangelical tool kit are “accountable freewill individualism,” “relationalism” (attaching central importance to interpersonal relationships), and anti-structuralism (inability to perceive or unwillingness to accept social structural influences).
These tools help to form an impasse:
We stand at a divide. White evangelicals’ cultural tools and racial isolation direct them to see the world individualistically and as a series of discrete incidents. They also direct them to desire a color-blind society. Black evangelicals tend to see the racial world very differently.
I could go on. This is a really great book. You can buy it here.
Loritts has spent much of his life in ministry in white evangelical circles and he writes here with both conviction and hope.
The book is especially helpful when Loritts applies something called the “communication pyramid” to racial incidents in America. Loritts points out that there are five levels of communication - cliche, facts, opinions, feelings, and transparency. Then he says “Herein lies the problem. When racial incidents happen, people of color typically rush to feelings (level 4 on the communication pyramid), while many of our white siblings stay at level 2 - appealing to facts.” Loritts’ point is that if white Christians stay at level 2, they will not be able to show empathy and heed the Biblical call to weep with those who weep. He says -
In the Christian community, the commentary has likewise been combustible, as one side has appealed to the ‘facts’ of the case - Michael Brown had just stolen some cigars and could very well have been the aggressor - and the other side has spoken out of a deep well of hurt, dug for more than four hundred years with the shovels of racism and institutionalized segregation, where the value of a black life was on a par with that of a horse.
The book comes with an endorsement from Doug Logan, who spoke at Meadowcroft in 2016 on the topic of ethnicity in our denomination. Not everyone will love everything Loritts says (spoiler: one of his sections is called “Kaepernicked”), and he explains why the phrase “Make America Great Again” is so painful to many of our brothers and sisters in Christ - but that's exactly the reason churches like ours need to hear from him. Loritts lovingly, humbly, and hopefully points out some of our potential blind spots, and that’s something that we all need. You can buy it here.
This book is not about race per se, but shows what a large factor race was in the formation of our church’s denomination (which is why I am including it in this top section!)
One of the things I appreciate about this book is that it reminds us that history is not a neat, cut and dry picture of “heroes and villains” - our denomination’s founders were right to see the drift towards liberal theology in the church, but while embracing conservative theology, many also wholeheartedly embraced conservative politics, including ideas about race, inter-marriage and segregation.
As our denomination grapples with continuing to address our history and present state when it comes to race, Lucas sheds a lot of light on things we can both rejoice in and lament. Buy the book here.
More Detailed/Topical Books
This is one of the most riveting books I read throughout the process of preparing for the class. It tells the story of how the Confederacy, the Civil War, and Reconstruction were interpreted through the lens of “the Lost Cause.” From the introduction:
A Southern political nation was not to be, and the people of Dixie came to accept that; but the dream of a cohesive Southern people with a separate cultural identity replaced the original longing. The cultural dream replaced the political drea: the South’s kingdom was to be of culture, not of politics. Religion was at the heart of this dream, and the history of the attitude known as the Lost Cause was the story of the use of the past as the basis for a Southern religious-moral identity, an identity as a chosen people.
One of the helpful aspects of this book was that it challenged me to think how Christians like us can often mix religion with other things - nationalism, political identity, and more. Check it out here.
While this book specifically focuses on Virginia, it tells a larger story of how Christianity in America beame pro-slavery (specifically, pro-race-based slavery). The central thesis of this book is that “white evangelicals forged their policies on slavery in response to the spiritual initiatives of black evangelicals.”
The book shows how the Bible was used to justify this race-based slavery. At first, white Evangelicals turned to the slave code in Leviticus, which distniguished between enslaving Israelites and enslaving foreigners. This Biblical data led many white Christians to refrain from sharing the Gospel with slaves, since it seemed to them that it would be okay to enslave black people as long as they did not share their Christian faith.
Over time, Christian evangelists began to shift attitudes by pointing out that understanding the Bible, in theory, would actually make slaves better workers and “less insubordinate.” By insisting this, evangelists were able to gain access to slaves, and many of them, amazingly, heard the Gospel and received it.
The history goes on to describe how there was an uneasy coexistence between black and white Christians in the early 1800s, which ended when Nat Turner led a rebellion and white evangelicals generally lost any trust of black evangelicals. This led to tighter controls over the the faith of black Christians. The book goes on to describe what happened during and after the Civil War.
It’s really an incredible historical book. If you don’t trust me, check out the review over at The Gospel Coalition (it’s book #5 on the list). You can buy the book here.
Books about General History (not just from a church perspective)
One of the most important books written about the history of United States. It’s about the Great Migration, when so many black people moved out of the South and into the North. The book weaves together the individual stories of a few people who experienced this migration (and the suffering they endured) along with the large societal story. If you want to understand where we are at today, you need to read this book. Order it here.
In addition to books, I owe a huge debt to Rev. Greg Thompson’s Sunday School class on this topic from 2015. He taught this class at Trinity PCA in Charlottesville, VA, where he used to serve as Senior Pastor. I listened to this entire class while on a trip - it was eye-opening and led me into a years-long process of study and reflection. This class, sadly, is no longer online.
Also, given the continued interest in and relevance of this topic, I am planning to convert my class notes into a booklet for our congregation to read and think through.