Curated content for the church
All of the curated books on Sunday to Saturday. Visit our Good Reads page for more book reviews.
White men have had a monopoly on Biblical interpretation in the west and the United States for hundreds of years. The voices of women and minorities have not been allowed to bring their valuable insight into Biblical analysis. Dr. Esau McCaulley's Reading While Black is his attempt to add to the cannon of Black Biblical interpretation in the steps of James Cone, Dr. Martin Luther King, W.E.B Duboise and countless others.
There seems to be a common assumption that if we just pick up the Bible and read it then it will make sense. And while we want to acknowledge that God can choose to reveal insights to individuals we also want to highlight that God also provides us with resources, such as historical documents and books, to enhance our understanding of the Bible. With honesty and humility How (Not) to Read the Bible provides indispensable reading tips while tackling some of the seemingly anti-women, pro-violence, and pro-slavery texts.
To this day church services across the nation are some of the most segregated times of the week. Is this by random chance or was this intentional? Author Jemar Tisby details the sordid history of the American church and its complicity with racism in the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller The Color of Compromise.
From rising homelessness that the police are tasked to deal with to shootings of both minorities and police officers to endless mental health issues involving both police officers and the population American police are simply expected to do too much. Author Alex Vitale argues that the structure of American policing, and the U.S. legal system, protects the interests of those in power and/or with money and needs to be dismantled. Simply put, Americans need to rethink the mission of the police and how we police those within the borders of the United States.
In honest, down to earth writing Phil Vischer tells the story of his dream of becoming the "Christian Disney" -- and almost achieving that -- before God had other plans.
Hope in Jesus. Trust in Jesus. Most Christians would unequivocally agree that those two statements are an important part of being a Christ follower. Therefore it is sobering that a large part of Scandalous Witness takes aim at patriotism being conflated as a Christian orthodox principle.
Former gang member Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California so he knows the realities of Black and Latino males in the ghetto, but this is not his story. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys is based off of Rios Ph.D. thesis at Berkeley that he penned after spending three years following 40 Black and Latino males in Oakland.
Over hundreds of years and the entanglement of church and state American Christians have lost their prophetic and Biblical voice when it comes to justice and punishment. Pastor Dominque DuBoise Gilliard tells the history of incarceration and the churches role and theological posture - both good and bad - with incarceration in the United States before tracing the history of Christian's views on criminals and crime to retributive justice that is at odds with the Bible.
The church, specifically the American church in the context of Postcards from Babylon, has been seduced by the allure of power and influence. This is not a new phenomenon, but has been going on for hundreds of years. The intertwining of faith and empire has blinded our eyes to the teachings of the Bible that calls the church to be a counter-cultural, prophetic voice against violence.
A history of another brutal part of America's past that is glossed over Worse Than Slavery tells the story of convict leasing, a thinly veiled system of slavery, through the songs of convicts, court documents, and local newspapers.
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