This is a fascinating and timely new book…
The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
Howard Bryant
Hardback: Beacon Press, 2018
Buy Now:
[ Amazon ] [ Kindle ] [ Audiobook ]
Archives For Race
The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
A good book is a conversation, engaging other books and ideas in conversation, and setting the stage for future conversations…
This is the first in a series of posts that explore the conversation into which a particular recent book emerges.
(Use the comments below to let us know what you think. Is this approach to a book helpful to you?
ALSO, feel free to suggest other books that are vital to this conversation…)
Reconstructing the Gospel:
Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Hardback: IVP Books, 2018.
Buy Now: [Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Watch for our review of this book in our May 2018 magazine issue!
Wading into the Conversation
Continue Reading…
In honor of Women’s History Month, here are 10 important social critics of the last 100 years. The work of social critics is vital for the health and flourishing of the church, because they remind us of the brokenness of the world and challenge us to imagine new and more healthy ways of sharing life together.
Here are ten women social critics whose work has been particularly helpful for me in trying to discern how to live faithfully in the twenty-first century. With each critic, I’ve included an excerpt that will serve as an introduction to that writer’s work.
Dorothy Day
The co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, lived among the poor and was staunch anti-war activist.
Rewriting the Racial Script of Our Time
A Feature Review of:
Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America
Jennifer Harvey
Paperback: Abingdon, 2018
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Reviewed by Cindy Wang Brandt
I have a mission: to do justice alongside my kids and all the children of our generation. But my firm conviction is that in order to do justice with them, we must first act justly towards them. For example, the best way to end vicious cycles of violence in the world is to begin by treating our children with gentleness in the home. And yet white kids, existing at the intersection of racial justice and justice for children, has been such a conundrum for the conversation—a paradox I’ve struggled to resolve—because it feels anything but gentle to raise white children into the awareness of their complicity in a racist society. Jennifer Harvey, in her latest book, Raising White Kids, demonstrates that power can and and does indeed arise out of softness, as she treats this highly contentious societal toxicity with the utmost empathy for parents—providing a “race and justice-conscious schema,” the term she uses to help parents raise white kids into a healthy self identity.
Tomorrow (Feb. 23) marks the 150th anniversary of WEB DuBois’s birth.
DuBois was a prominent sociologist and the co-founder of the NAACP.
Here are a few books and audio resources that serve as an excellent intro to his life and work:
Autobiography
(As told to Moses Asch)
This is the extraordinary life of W.E.B. DuBois in his own words, and recorded in his own voice. The autobiographical account begins at age seventeen as DuBois left Massachusetts to attend Fisk University in 1885, and ends in the 1940s as DuBois describes his struggles with the NAACP. Each experience that DuBois shares is marked by his perception of the racial environment that encompassed it and he portrays how his identity and reactions were affected.
In addition to being Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, today is the date attributed to the 200th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’s birth…
Here is Douglass’s scathing indictment of (white) American Christianity, which was published as an appendix to later editions of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
READ Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Poem
Frederick Douglass
I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief explanation. What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the _slaveholding religion_ of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
Read this superb book before it even releases!!!
We’re giving away FIVE Advance copies
of this new book from Intervarsity Press:
Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Paperback: IVP Books.
Releases March 13, 2018
Enter to win a copy of this book!
Enter now to win (It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!) :
Continue Reading…
Today is the first day of Black History Month…
Although we should be reading more books by black authors, and about black history, throughout the year, February is a good reminder of this, and an opportunity to be more intentional in our efforts to read diversely.
Looking for a book on black history to read this month?
Here are 15 important ones that might be of interest. Although not all of these would be categorized by libraries / bookstores as history books, they are all saturated with the history of the black experience in the United States. All of these (with one noted exception) were written by black authors. We’ve tried to focus on stories from black history that may not be as familiar as the MLK and Malcolm X ones from the civil rights era.
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Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008Henry Louis Gates |
Here are a few new book releases from this week that are worth checking out:
(Where possible, we have also tried to include a review/interview related to the book…)
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Love Undocumented: Risking Trust in a Fearful WorldSarah Quezada*** Read an interview with the author…
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NEXT BOOK >>>>> |
“Get Proximate to Suffering”
A Feature Review of
White Awake:
An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White
Daniel Hill
Paperback: IVP Books, 2017
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Reviewed by Justin Cober-Lake
CNN showed the terror happening in the park where I used to eat my lunch. It showed a man being beaten in the garage where I used to park for church. It showed a car attack on the street where I used to go for Chinese food and used books. My town Charlottesville turned into a danger zone before my eyes, and – while I was safely away on vacation – I tried to account for my friends who were downtown.
The events that happened last summer connect to public arguments over Confederate statues, similar to the debates taking place across the US South. The conversations after the tragedy of August 12 (and before that, during the previous election cycle) became more urgent, whether in home groups, bars, or Girl Scout meetings, or on social media. The urgency hasn’t helped the clarity; the same miscommunication continues, and the weight of the same conversations and same experience of talking past each other still lies heavy.
