Over the last thirty days I’ve read many recently published books worth recommending.
Published in 2019
- (5+) Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination by Lenny Duncan (Fortress Press, 2019)
- (5.0) Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America by Chris Arnade (Sentinel, 2019)
- (5.0) We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America by D. Watkins (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
- (4.5) How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World by Alice Connor (Fortress Press, 2019) O
- (4.5) Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi (Penguin, 2019)
- (4.0) The Absent Hand: Reimagining Our American Landscape by Suzannah Lessard (Counterpoint, 2019)
- (3.5) Confident Humility: Becoming Your Full Self without Becoming Full of Yourself by Dan Kent (Fortress Press, 2019)
- (3.0) The Church Down the Street: As Told By a Reporter by Gail Marvel (Soaring Beyond, 2019)
Published in 2018
- (4.0) Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing– and How We Can Revive Them by Jonathan Merritt (Convergent Books, 2018)
- (3.5) Fit for Joy: The Healing Power of Being You by Valeria Teles (Rowe Publishing, 2018)
So What?
This month’s list offers a record setting number of books rated 5 or 5+. These three volumes join 10 that appeared on the 8 lists I’ve published earlier this year.
Since Robert P. Jones book The End of White Christian America was published in 2016, I’ve been part of more conversations about race within the Mainline Protestant world than in all of my many prior years of ministry. The pace of such interactions and the urgency of these interactions has increased since President Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.
I’m grateful that my current congregation – First Presbyterian Church – recognizes the importance of the topic. (This is especially important since more than 95% of the congregation’s 2,000+ members are white according to the latest data reported to the denomination.) A few months ago FPC entered into a collaboration with the City of Fort Worth Human Relations Commission and Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church (Fort Worth, TX).
While these conversations and learning opportunities are essential, Lenny Duncan’s new book – Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination – helped me understand that alone they are inadequate. Rev. Duncan is an African American pastor ordained by and serving in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). With candor he addresses the continued whiteness of his denomination as a theological problem not a sociological problem. Ultimately, Duncan serves as a prophetic voice calling the church to radical action that moves from repentance to reconciliation before reaching reparations.
America has a race problem. D. Watkins addresses this head on in his new book: We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America. Watkins does not write as a detached academic. Watkins was raised in the
inner city world Down Bottom in East Baltimore, and has chosen to remain in that community. He writes as someone who is uniquely able to navigate that world and to see how different the experience of African Americans are there compared to those in the elite circles he increasingly is invited into as a professor and New York Times bestselling author. Watkins’ words are carefully chosen, intentionally challenging, and refreshingly real. He urges his readers to make a difference, and provides a checklist to help people assess if their actions are appropriate.
America also has an inequality problem. Chris Arnade grew up middle class, but moved into the front row of society after earning a PhD in particle physics from Johns Hopkins University and working for 20 years on Wall Street. Frustrated by the front row experience, Arnade spent five years traveling the country to document the very different experiences of back row Americans. Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America tells the stories of many of the back row people he met during his travels, and includes a large number of color photographs that bring these stories to life.