Everyone acknowledges that there are gaps between white and Black Americans with regard to a number of metrics, such as wealth, education, employment, and incarceration. The question is why these gaps persist. Answers range along a spectrum from structures at … Continue reading False Black Power | Book Review
Racism is America’s deepest and longest lasting wound. Sometimes, the wound seems to heal; other times, to deteriorate. According to a 2022 Gallup poll, only 28% of Americans currently are satisfied with the state of race relations in our nation. … Continue reading Life-Changing Cross-Cultural Friendships | Book Review
February is Black History Month, and in this episode of the Influence Podcast, we’re celebrating the National Black Fellowship of the Assemblies of God, which just completed 40 years of service. I’ll be talking with Bishop Walter Harvey about the … Continue reading Celebrating he National Black Fellowship of the Assemblies of God | Influence Podcast
“Something is different this time.” Jemar Tisby tweeted those words in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while in police custody. The videotape of a white police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for … Continue reading How to Fight Racism | Book Review
The death of George Floyd has sparked a nationwide conversation about racism. As our fellow citizens talk about how to reform public policy, it’s also important for the Church to look inward and see how we can better embody the … Continue reading The Multiethnic Church as a Solution to Racism | Influence Podcast
The events of the past week have set America on fire. It began on Monday, March 25th, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the death of George Floyd, a black man. Video of the event showed the white arresting officer, Derek Chauvin, … Continue reading What Racial Reconciliation Requires | Influence Podcast
Racism has been described as America’s original sin. While great strides have been made in the journey toward equality between blacks and whites, there still is much work to do. In Episode 168 of the Influence Podcast, I’m talking to Jemar Tisby about the history of racism in American Christianity, as well as what steps need to be taken for authentic racial reconciliation to occur. Tisby is author of The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American’s Church’s Complicit in Racism (Zondervan, 2019). He is president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, where he writes about race, religion, politics, and culture. … Continue reading The Color of Compromise | Influence Podcast
Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise is a difficult book to read. The difficulty does not result from a complex argument or dense prose, for the book’s argument is simply and straightforwardly made. Rather, the book is difficult to read because of its subject matter, namely, white Christian complicity with racism throughout American history. “Historically speaking,” Tisby writes, “when faced with the choice between racism and equality, the American church has tended to practice a complicit Christianity rather than a courageous Christianity. They chose comfort over constructive conflict and in so doing created and maintained a status quo of injustice.” Tisby … Continue reading The Color of Compromise | Book Review
On December 3, 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. opened the first annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change in Montgomery, Alabama, with a message titled, “Facing the New Age.” The institute was sponsored by the Montgomery Improvement Association, which King led. Almost a year to the day earlier, Montgomery police had arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on a crowded bus to a white man. Her arrest began a yearlong bus boycott that ended with a Supreme Court decision ordering the desegregation of public transportation throughout Alabama. King began his address by noting that both around … Continue reading Welcoming Justice, 2nd ed. | Book Review
The word woke is slang for being “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” Dr. Eric Mason appropriates this term to describe a church that has been “awakened to the reality of implicit and explicit racism and injustice in [American] society.” Such a church is characterized by four attributes: Awareness of the “overarching truths” that unite the Body of Christ, including the relationship of justice to the gospel (chapter 2) and the Church as the holy family of God (chapter 3); Acknowledgement of the history of racism among American Christians (chapter 4), … Continue reading Woke Church | Book Review
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