The world is experiencing the Blues, and pulpiteers are dispensing excessive doses of non-prescribed prosaic sermons with severe ecclesiastical and theological side effects.� from chapter 1Uniquely gifted preacher Otis Moss III helps preachers effectively communicate hope in a desperate and difficult world in this new work based on his 2014 Yale Lyman Beecher Lectures. Moss challenges preachers to preach with a Blue Note sensibility, which speaks directly to the tragedies faced by their congregants without falling into despair. He then offers four powerful sermons that illustrate his Blue Note preaching style. In them, Moss beautifully and passionately brings to life biblical characters that speak to today's pressing issues, including race discrimination and police brutality, while maintaining a strong message of hope. Moss shows how preachers can teach their congregations to resist letting the darkness find its way into them and, instead, learn to dance in the dark.

    The real story of Knox surpasses the best fiction novels. Five hundred years after his death, Steven Lawson seeks to ignite our faith in Jesus through Knox's story. If you think of Knox as the dull Presbyterian, prepare to think again. Let this seminal figure in the history of the Scottish Reformation inspire you to stand firm in your faith and let God impact your spiritual life.

    In a country aflame with the fallout from the racial divide–in which Ferguson, Charleston, and the Confederate flag dominate the national news, daily seeming to rip the wounds open ever wider–is there hope for honest and healing conversation? For finally coming to understand each other on issues that are ultimately about so much more than black and white? An NFL tight end for the New Orleans Saints and a widely read and followed commentator on social media, Watson has taken the Internet by storm with his remarkable insights about some of the most sensitive and charged topics of our day. Now, in "Under Our Skin, " Watson draws from his own life, his family legacy, and his role as a husband and father to sensitively examine both sides of the race debate and appeal to the power and possibility of faith as a step toward healing.

    We are ready to rise up. But how, exactly, do we do this? How does one reconcile? What we need is a clear sense of direction. Based on her extensive consulting experience with churches, colleges and organizations, Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil has created a roadmap to show us the way. She guides us through the common topics of discussion and past the bumpy social terrain and political boundaries that will arise. In these pages she voices her call to all believers: It's time for the followers of Jesus to embark on the prophetic journey that leads to reconciliation and transformation around the world. Many of us may already be aware of the need for reconciliation in our own backyards. . . . We cannot ignore the plight of the people around us and as globalization continues its relentless march onward, we cannot turn a blind eye to the world at large either. We have to face the realities here at home and we must also embrace the stories of people all around the world. Each chapter lays out the next step in the journey. With reflection questions and exercises at the end of each chapter, it's ideal to read together with your church or organization. If you are ready to take the next step into unity, wholeness and justice, then this is the book for you.

    This accessible overview walks readers through centuries of creeds, councils, catechisms, and confessions---not with a dry focus on dates and places, but with an emphasis on the living tradition of Christian belief and why it matters for our lives today. As a part of the KNOW series, Know the Creeds and Councils is designed for personal study or classroom use, but also for small groups and Sunday schools wanting to more deeply understand the foundations of the faith. Each chapter covers a key statement of faith and includes a discussion of its historical context, a simple explanation of the statement's content and key points, reflections on contemporary and ongoing relevance, and discussion questions.

    With their mouths they claim that Jesus is their Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate their allegiance to money, sex, and personal self-fulfillment."In this candid and challenging book, Sider addresses an embarrassing reality: most Christians' lives are no different from the lives of their secular neighbors. Hedonism, materialism, racism, egotism, and many other undesirable traits are commonplace among Christians. Rather than simply a book bemoaning the state of American Christianity today, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience offers readers solutions to repair the disconnect between belief and practice. While it's not easy medicine to take, this book is a much-needed prophetic call to transformed living.

    Yet many evangelicals behave "tribally" valuing the perspective of only those like themselves while also denying any evidence of racial attitudes in the church. Anthony Bradley has gathered scholars and leaders from diverse "tribes" black, Hispanic, and Asian to share advice on building relationships with minority denominations and valuing the perspectives and leadership of minority Christians (not just their token presence.) They seek to help evangelicalism more faithfully show the world that the gospel brings together in Christ people from all tribes, languages, and cultures

    Austin Channing Brown's first encounter with a racialized America came at age 7, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, Austin writes, "I had to learn what it means to love blackness," a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America's racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert who helps organizations practice genuine inclusion.In a time when nearly all institutions (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claim to value "diversity" in their mission statements, I'm Still Here is a powerful account of how and why our actions so often fall short of our words. Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice, in stories that bear witness to the complexity of America's social fabric--from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations.For readers who have engaged with America's legacy on race through the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Eric Dyson, I'm Still Here is an illuminating look at how white, middle-class, Evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognize God's ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness--if we let it--can save us all.

    Despite this painful history, a number of Native Americans have found "The Jesus Way" and are proving to be a powerful voice for the Lord around the world. A full- blooded Lakota/Sioux whose bitterness toward whites was washed away by the blood of Christ, Richard Twiss shows that Native American Christians have much to offer the Church and can become a major force for reaching the lost. Full of wisdom, humor and passion, this book examines how the white Church can begin to break down the walls of anger, distrust and bitterness and move toward reconciliation and revival in our land.

    Driven by the radical ideologies of Critical Race Theory and intersectionality, it has destabilized public and private life—including the Church. Many evangelicals have joined the crusade. Gripped by a desire for justice and rightly grieved by past evils like slavery, many pastors are preaching the woke gospel—identifying “whiteness” (an imaginary concept) with “white supremacy,” calling bewildered Christians to repent of their supposed guilt for the sins of past generations. But as theologian Owen Strachan makes clear, this is not true justice, nor is it true Christianity. While wokeness employs biblical vocabulary and concepts, it is an alternative religion, far from Christianity in both its methods and its fruit. A potent blend of racism, paganism, and grievance, wokeness encourages “partiality” and undermines the unifying work of the Holy Spirit. It is not simply not the Gospel; it is anti-Gospel. As Strachan traces the origins of wokeness, lays out its premises, and follows them to their logical conclusions, the contrast of that false faith with the Word of God stands out unmistakably. This succinct but groundbreaking work reveals that wokeness, like other heresies, is not really new. Nor is the antidote: Christ crucified for us.

    Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to be defined as in and of itself evil. Miroslav Volf contends that if the healing word of the gospel is to be heard today, Christian theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other. Reaching back to the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation, Volf proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion.Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle. In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we "learn to live with one another," but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.Is there any hope of embracing our enemies? Of opening the door to reconciliation? Miroslav Volf, a Yale University theologian, has won the 2002 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his book, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Abingdon, 1996). Volf argues that exclusion of people who are alien or different is among the most intractable problems in the world today. He writes, It may not be too much to claim that the future of our world will depend on how we deal with identity and difference. The issue is urgent. The ghettos and battlefields throughout the world in the living rooms, in inner cities, or on the mountain ranges testify indisputably to its importance. A Croatian by birth, Volf takes as a starting point for his analysis the recent civil war and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, but he readily finds other examples of cultural, ethnic, and racial conflict to illustrate his points. And, since September 11, one can scarcely help but plug the new world players into his incisive descriptions of the dynamics of interethnic and international strife.Exclusion happens, Volf argues, wherever impenetrable barriers are set up that prevent a creative encounter with the other. It is easy to assume that exclusion is the problem or practice of barbarians who live over there, but Volf persuades us that exclusion is all too often our practice here as well. Modern western societies, including American society, typically recite their histories as narratives of inclusion, and Volf celebrates the truth in these narratives. But he points out that these narratives conveniently omit certain groups who disturb the integrity of their happy ending plots. Therefore such narratives of inclusion invite long and gruesome counter-narratives of exclusion the brutal histories of slavery and of the decimation of Native American populations come readily to mind, but more current examples could also be found.Most proposed solutions to the problem of exclusion have focused on social arrangements what kind of society ought we to create in order to accommodate individual or communal difference? Volf focuses, rather, on what kind of selves we need to be in order to live in harmony with others. In addressing the topic, Volf stresses the social implications of divine self-giving. The Christian scriptures attest that God does not abandon the godless to their evil, but gives of Godself to bring them into communion. We are called to do likewise whoever our enemies and whoever we may be. The divine mandate to embrace as God has embraced is summarized in Paul’s injunction to the Romans: Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you (Romans 15:7).Susan R. Garrett, Coordinator of the Religion Award, said that the Grawemeyer selection committee praised Volf s book on many counts. These included its profound interpretation of certain pivotal passages of Scripture and its brilliant engagement with contemporary theology, philosophy, critical theory, and feminist theory. Volf s focus is not on social strategies or programs but, rather, on showing us new ways to understand ourselves and our relation to our enemies. He helps us to imagine new possibilities for living against violence, injustice, and deception. Garrett added that, although addressed primarily to Christians, Volf's theological statement opens itself to religious pluralism by upholding the importance of different religious and cultural traditions for the formation of personal and group identity. The call to embrace the other is never a call to remake the other into one s own image. Volf who had just delivered a lecture on the topic of Exclusion and Embrace at a prayer breakfast for the United Nations when the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center will present a lecture and receive his award in Louisville during the first week of April, 2002.The annual Religion Award, which includes a cash prize of $200,000, is given jointly by Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville to the authors or originators of creative works that contribute significantly to an understanding of the relationship between human beings and the divine, and ways in which this relationship may inspire or empower human beings to attain wholeness, integrity, or meaning, either individually or in community. The Grawemeyer awards given also by the University of Louisville in the fields of musical composition, education, psychology, and world order honor the virtue of accessibility: works chosen for the awards must be comprehensible to thinking persons who are not specialists in the various fields."

    All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s—forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all.Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story.Reworking the traditional “Alamo” framework, she powerfully demonstrates, among other things, that the slave- and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but precipitated the Mexican-American War and, indeed, the Civil War itself.In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. Especially now that the U.S. recognizes Juneteenth (June 19) as a national holiday, On Juneteenth is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing.

      Race is one of the hardest topics to discuss in America. Many white Christians avoid talking about it altogether. But a commitment to peacemaking requires white people to step out of their comfort and privilege and into the work of anti-racism. Dear White Peacemakers is an invitation to white Christians to come to the table and join this hard work and holy calling. Rooted in the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus, this book is a challenging call to transform white shame, fragility, saviorism, and privilege, in order to work together to build the Beloved Community as anti-racism peacemakers.   Written in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Dear White Peacemakers draws on the Sermon on the Mount, Spirituals, and personal stories from author Osheta Moore’s work as a pastor in St. Paul, Minnesota. Enter into this story of shalom and join in the urgent work of anti-racism peacemaking.

    They would say red, brown, yellow, black, and white, they are precious in his sight. But do they have any friends of another race? Is there anyone at their church who does not look like them? Does this matter to God? The majority of American Christians do not have significant relationships with anyone who does not look like them, which makes them susceptible to cultural blind spots and less effective as ambassadors for biblical justice. The thirty church leaders who contributed to Heal Us, Emmanuel desire racial reconciliation, representation, and supernatural unity in all the churches of Christ.

    Gushee, “For us, it’s the LGBT issue.” In Changing Our Mind, Gushee takes the reader along his personal and theological journey as he changes his mind about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender inclusion in the Church. With 19 books to his name, Gushee is no stranger to the public arena. He is the author of the “Evangelical Declaration Against Torture” and drafted the “Evangelical Climate Initiative. “For decades now, David Gushee has earned the reputation as America's leading evangelical ethicist. In this book, he admits that he has been wrong on the LGBT issue.” writes Brian D. McLaren, author and theologian. With the support of activists, authors and theologians like Matthew Vines, Phyllis Tickle, James V. Brownson and Mark Achtemeier, Gushee writes clearly and carefully about people dear to him and his study of Scripture. Brian D. McLaren says it best: “Not only is David Gushee's work deep, thoughtful and brilliant; and not only is David philosophically and theologically careful and astute; he is also refreshingly clear and understandable by ‘common people’ who know neither philosophical nor theological mumbo jumbo.”