Many years ago, my mother gave me a sepia-toned lithograph of an 1896 William Strutt painting. It depicts a child leading a menagerie of animals, both predators and prey, with one hand clutching a palm branch and the other resting … Continue reading Deep Peace | Book Review
What is God’s will for my life? The question is an important, if not all-important one. If God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives, as that old evangelistic tract puts it, then we need to know … Continue reading What Is God’s Will for My Life? | Influence Magazine
“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
In late 2014, Slate magazine published a series of articles under the title, “The Year of Outrage.” If anything, the outrage in America has only worsened since then. Even Christians have jumped onto the outrage train. The results haven’t been … Continue reading Outrage Culture vs. Gentle Jesus | Influence Podcast
The Bible begins with a family and ends with a multitude. Its narrative arc thus includes unity and diversity. Because of creation, all who bear the image of God are also children of Adam and Eve. Because of the new … Continue reading Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0 | Book Review
Compassion and the Mission of God has two purposes, which Rupen Das articulates in the book’s Introduction, the first as a statement and the second as a question. First, the statement: “This book will revision some of the biblical narratives … Continue reading Compassion and the Mission of God | Book Review
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
Reflecting on race relations in the early days of the Azusa Street Revival (1906–1909), Frank Bartleman famously wrote, “The ‘color line’ was washed away in the blood.”That unity was short lived, however. Deep-seated feelings of white supremacy and Jim Crow segregation quickly redrew the line, resulting in decades of division and disparity between black and white Pentecostals that persist to this day, though to a lesser degree. The same thing might be said about American Christians and American citizens more broadly. Though progress undeniably has been made, racial divisions and disparities stubbornly persist. This fact should be an affront to … Continue reading In Search of the Beloved Community | Influence Magazine
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
The most heated conversations I’ve witnessed on Facebook had to do with race. Whether the topic was Confederate statues or Black Lives Matter, the conversations typically began politely enough but almost inevitably degenerated into the online equivalent of a shouting match. Many words appeared in ALL CAPS. These conversations both surprised and disappointed me. Unfortunately, most of these conversations were between Christians. American society is divided, and American churches all too often reflect rather than correct those divisions. That saddens me immensely. We can do better. For the sake of the gospel, we must. One Blood, according to its subtitle, … Continue reading One Blood | Book Review
GeorgePWood.com 