Where to Start: Reading List
The Third Option:
Hope for a Racially Divided Nation
Miles McPherson
Publisher description: "Miles McPherson, founder of The Rock Church in San Diego, presents “a discussion about race that we desperately need...a must read” (Bishop T.D. Jakes, Senior Pastor, The Potter’s House) and argues that we must learn to see people not by the color of their skin, but as God sees them—humans created in the image of God."
God and Race: A Guide for Moving Beyond Black Fists and White Knuckles
John Siebeling and Wayne Francis
Publisher description: "A White pastor and a Black pastor, close friends who have each built racially diverse congregations, offer a model Christians can follow to open necessary conversations about race, encourage unity, and foster mutual respect to heal a wounded nation riven by racial tension and political tribalism."
Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation
Latasha Morrison
Publisher description: "In this perspective-shifting book, founder Latasha Morrison shows how you can participate in this incredible work and replicate it in your own community. With conviction and grace, she examines the historical complexities of racism. She expertly applies biblical principles, such as lamentation, confession, and forgiveness, to lay the framework for restoration."
One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love
John Perkins
Publisher description: "Dr. John M. Perkins is a leading civil rights activist today. He grew up in a Mississippi sharecropping family, was an early pioneer of the civil rights movement, and has dedicated his life to the cause of racial equality. In this, his crowning work, Dr. Perkins speaks honestly to the church about reconciliation, discipleship, and justice... and what it really takes to live out biblical reconciliation."
The Dream King: How the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. Is Being Fulfilled to Heal Racism in America
Will Ford and Matt Lockett
Publisher description: "The Dream King is the astonishing true story of two men whose lives are woven together by history and the hidden hand of God. It reveals an inspiring narrative that exposes systemic injustice and delivers new keys for understanding the nation's past, present, and future."
Kingdom Race Theology: God's Answer to Our Racial Crisis
Tony Evans
Publisher description: "Drawing on forty years of ministry experience, Tony Evans writes with a fearless and prophetic voice, probing to the heart of the issue and pointing to God's Word as the solution. Kingdom Race Theology helps people and churches commit to restitution, reconciliation, and responsibility. His penetrating and practical ideas will help pastors and church leaders sort through the conflicting theories, finding sensible solutions in the form of individual and collective action plans."
Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask about Social Justice
Thaddeus J. Williams
Publisher description: "Drawing from a diverse range of theologians, sociologists, artists, and activists [...] makes the case that we must be discerning if we are to truly execute justice as Scripture commands. Not everything called social justice today is compatible with a biblical vision of a better world. The Bible offers hopeful and distinctive answers to deep questions of worship, community, salvation, and knowledge that ought to mark a uniquely Christian pursuit of justice."
Subversive Witness: Scripture's Call to Leverage Privilege
Dominique DuBois Gilliard
Publisher description: "Privilege is a social consequence of our unwillingness to reckon with and turn from sin. But properly stewarded, it can help us see and participate in God's inbreaking kingdom. Scripture repeatedly affirms that privilege is real and declares that, rather than exploiting it for selfish gain or feeling immobilized by it, Christians have a responsibility to leverage it. Subversive Witness asks us to grapple with privilege, indifference, and systemic sin in new ways by using biblical examples to reveal the complex nature of privilege and Christians' responsibility in stewarding it well." Dominique DuBois Gilliard highlights several people in the Bible who understood this kingdom call."
Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk about Racism--And How to Do It
Celeste Headlee
Publisher description: "In Speaking of Race, Headlee draws from her experiences as a journalist, and the latest research on bias, communication, and neuroscience to provide practical advice and insight for talking about race that will facilitate better conversations that can actually bring us closer together.
This is the book for people who have tried to debate and educate and argue and got nowhere; it is the book for those who have stopped talking to a neighbor or dread Thanksgiving dinner. It is an essential and timely book for all of us."
Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
Esau McCaulley
Publisher description: "
Growing up in the American South, Esau McCaulley knew firsthand the ongoing struggle between despair and hope that marks the lives of some in the African American context. A key element in the fight for hope, he discovered, has long been the practice of Bible reading and interpretation that comes out of traditional Black churches. This ecclesial tradition is often disregarded or viewed with suspicion by much of the wider church and academy, but it has something vital to say.
Reading While Black is a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation."
Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery
Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah
Publisher Description: "In this prophetic blend of history, theology, and cultural commentary, Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah reveal the far-reaching, damaging effects of the "Doctrine of Discovery." In the fifteenth century, official church edicts gave Christian explorers the right to claim territories they "discovered." This was institutionalized as an implicit national framework that justifies American triumphalism, white supremacy, and ongoing injustices. [...] Healing begins when deeply entrenched beliefs are unsettled. Charles and Rah aim to recover a common memory and shared understanding of where we have been and where we are going. As other nations have instituted truth and reconciliation commissions, so do the authors call our nation and churches to a truth-telling that will expose past injustices and open the door to conciliation and true community."
Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times
Soong-Chan Rah
Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. It critiques our success-centered triumphalism and calls us to repent of our hubris. And it opens up new ways to encounter the other. Hear the prophet's lament as the necessary corrective for Christianity's future.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson
Publisher description: "In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize-winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
"Profound, necessary and an absolute delight to read." --Toni Morrison"
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
Publisher description: "Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume "community" history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics."
The Complete Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Publisher description: "Frederick Douglass was born a slave, he escaped a brutal system and through sheer force of will educated himself and became an abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman, and reformer. This is one of the most unlikely and powerful success stories ever written."
Up From Slavery
Booker T. Washington
Publisher description: "Born in a Virginia slave hut, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) rose to become the most influential spokesman for African-Americans of his day. In this eloquently written book, he describes events in a remarkable life that began in bondage and culminated in worldwide recognition for his many accomplishments. In simply written yet stirring passages, he tells of his impoverished childhood and youth, the unrelenting struggle for an education, early teaching assignments, his selection in 1881 to head Tuskegee Institute, and more."
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois
Publisher description: "W. E. B. Du Bois's seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, not only captures the experience of African Americans in the years following the Civil War but also speaks to contemporary conditions. At a time when American public schools are increasingly re-segregating, are increasingly underfunded, and are perhaps nearly as separate and unequal as they were in earlier decades, this classic can help readers grasp links between a slavery past and a dismal present for too many young people of color."
Letter From Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther King Jr.
Publisher Description: "'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'This landmark missive from one of the greatest activists in history calls for direct, non-violent resistance in the fight against racism, and reflects on the healing power of love."
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin
Publisher description: A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
James Weldon Johnson
Publisher description: "Originally published in 1912, this novel was one of the first to present a frank picture of being black in America. Masked in the tradition of the literary confession practiced by such writers as St. Augustine and Rousseau, this "autobiography" purports to be a candid account of its narrator's private views and feelings as well as an acknowledgment of the central secret of his life: that though he lives as a white man, he is, by heritage and experience, an African-American."
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Publisher Description: "The poems in this volume were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death in 1967 and encompass work from his entire career. His poetry launched a revolution among black writers in America."
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison
Publisher description: "Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for 16 weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood, " and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be."
More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered about the White Mother He Never Knew
John Black
Publisher description:
"An award-winning journalist tells the story of his quest to reconcile with his white mother and the family he'd never met--and how faith brought them all together."