New books about racial justice. Also, Bob the Tomato.
It's been nice to take a month-long breather from the newsletter but I've missed it and it's good to be back! There are a lot of good books related to race...
White Evangelical Reflexes
Our family is taking some time away this week so the newsletter is a bit spares, though I’ve linked to a few things below that I hope you’ll find helpful....
Justice and Joy
In the days after Rep. John Lewis passed away, among the many tributes and remembrances, I stumbled onto this short video of the congressman dancing. He’s...
White fragility is spiritual immaturity
Here's a confession: I haven't read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. Over the past couple of years, conversation partners have sometimes assumed that I've...
Why this time might be different.
I spent this week with my family in Wisconsin, mostly unplugged. One afternoon we visited a small bookshop in downtown Woodstock, IL, just across the border....
What do we celebrate today?
For this July 4th weekend I’m linking to four timely articles and one video. Given the events of the past couple of months, it’s appropriate to reflect on...
Can white Jesus be saved?
This week, in my little corner of the Internet, some people were wringing their hands about white Jesus. As statues and monuments to the Confederacy are...
The (un)importance of cross-racial friendships.
Before getting to this week's essay, I've got a request. This coming week is my birthday and I'm using it as an excuse to raise money for the non-profit I...
On living counter to this racist culture assisted by the saints, including one or two white ones.
What do you imagine when you hear racial segregation? I think many of us imagine the Civil Rights Movement. Maybe we think about a time when housing...
How brave will we be?
It’s Saturday evening. It’s been a hell of a week. A hellish week. From within a pandemic, the country has exploded, sparked by the murders of Ahmaud Arbery,...
Covering Our Nakedness With Lament
In his little book about race, The Hidden Wound, Wendell Berry grapples with his history as a member of a southern land-owning family and how his racial...
Reframing Race
A few months ago I began planning the book launch for Rediscipling the White Church. With help from some amazing church members, we'd planned on a...
In Defense of the Multiracial Church. Sort of.
It was so good talking with Jemar Tisby, author of the essential The Color of Compromise, last week. We covered a lot of ground in an hour but I was...
Our racist impact matters more than our good intentions.
One of the perennial challenges leveled against those who point out racist acts goes something like this: "But, how can you know that person's motivations?...
Counterintuitive Solidarity
Drew G. I. Hart: White American Christians in our society must do something seemingly absurd and unnatural, yet very Christian in orientation: they must move...
How I came to write about white Christians and our dysfunctional discipleship.
We're less than a month away from the May 19th release of my book and I'd like to tell you about the circumstances that led me to this project in the first...
Whose liberation?
This week saw a weird development in our collective stay-at-home reality. The president, encouraged I assume by conservative media, has begun calling for...
Acts of God and Schemes of Men
Our family moved to the South Side of Chicago in the fall of 2009. During the previous year I'd driven Maggie to a train station twenty minutes from our...
Accepting the Unacceptable
Earlier this week I joined a conference call for the purpose of holding vigil and praying for a man who was lying, near death, in an ICU in the Chicago...
No, the virus isn't Chinese. Yes, the president is still a racist.
Well friends, this has been the longest gap between newsletters since I began this haphazard endeavor a few months ago. Distracting times, eh? I trust the...
Letting (white people) go
Earlier this week, in a multi-ethnic social media group that I’m a part of, a pastor posted a question that will resonate with some of this newsletter’s...
"White Christians learned to separate their personal ethics from their social ethics."
In her important book, I Bring the Voices of My People, Dr. Chanequa Walker Barnes asks, "How could White people consider themselves Christian while engaging...
Getting practical about solidarity
InterVarsity Press rejected my first proposal of the book that would become Redisciling the White Church. But, graciously, they gave me a couple of...
Racializing Revelation's Vision of Reconciliation
Earlier this week my friend Skye Jethani tweeted the following thread. In his usual thoughtful way, Skye asks some important questions about how those of us...
"...the Bible was used to rationalize racial hierarchy and segregation."
In 2001 I was a graduate student at Wheaton College taking an undergraduate-level theology class which was a prerequisite for my program. Dr. Vincent Bacote...
Preaching grace and justice (at the same time) to whole people
This week a few video clips from some amazing preachers made their way across my social media feeds. The first was from Rev. William Barber of the Poor...
Preaching While White on MLK Sunday
A few years ago a friend invited me to preach at his mostly white suburban church the Sunday before MLK Day. I happened to have a couple of friends who...
Scapegoating the Racists
My family moved to southern California the summer before my freshmen year of high school. That was the summer the Lakers lost to the Bulls in the NBA Finals....
Five Favorite Books from 2019
For the previous few years it’s been my habit to compile an almost-entirely arbitrary list of five of the books I most enjoyed during that year. I posted the...
Remembering a [Christian] Woman We Should Have Never Forgotten
I recently reviewed a new book about Ida B. Wells for The Englewood Review of Books. The book, Passionate for Justice: Remembering a Woman We Should Have...
Will there be racists in heaven?
A few weeks ago a friend retweeted a well-known bishop who is vocal in his opposition to racism who had declared something along the lines of: I'd rather not...
Trying to Remember
Yesterday morning I walked three quarters of a mile from my in-law’s home in Brownsville, TN to this roadside marker beside a small family cemetery. James...
Just how much racism is in our DNA?
This week I learned that there's something called the World Socialist Website and that they published an interesting interview with James McPherson who's...
"All of these fanatics were white."
There was one place I wanted to visit during our recent 48 hours in Paris. Well, there were a bunch of places I hoped to visit, but there was one place in...
Experiencing racism is harder than, you know, talking about it.
A quick request: If you appreciate this newsletter would you please share it with a few friends? Thanks! A couple of days ago I spent an hour with about...
Separated by the Border
Between our recent anniversary travel in Greece and helping out with a Sankofa Journey last weekend, it's been a few weeks since I sent out a newsletter....
The Offense of Grace: Botham and Brandt Jean and White Christian America’s Refusal to be Forgiven
Maggie and I got home on Thursday after a couple of wonderful weeks traveling in Greece - and 48 hours in Paris on the way home - to celebrate our 20th...
The modest work of Scripture and prayer.
This Cooper's Hawk made our garden its hunting ground one morning this week. Eugene Person, more than any other author, has shaped my imagination of what it...
Ideology won't save us.
I read two longish articles earlier this week that I’ll be thinking about for a while. The first, “What’s Missing From “White Fragility”, explores the work...
Who gets to keep the Sabbath?
Spotted outside Farragut High School on Monday. Last week I mentioned an interview I participated in that covered some connections between worship and...
Living Justly Amidst Moral Complexity
We spent this week at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan. We'd heard about this place for years but had never ventured north beyond Grand...
Deporting Clergy
Our friend Esther Yoon-Ji Kang reported this sad story earlier this week of another deportation in our city. The latest request for the stay of removal — the...
"...we have never been the problem but the solution..."
“Virginity is completely identified with sex,” she said, “what a person has not experienced. It’s that closed-off, puritanical kind of thing.” But Sister...
Cracked, Concealed, and Called
Earlier this summer I spent a few days at the Whitworth Ministry Summit where I spoke about the imago Dei and race. Those talks have been posted and you can...