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The Lutheran tradition stresses the value of education.


To that end, you will find below a variety of religious and secular literature to help you learn more about race and racism in general and Black Lutherans in particular.


In the genres: 'Religious: Non-Lutheran', 'Secular: Non-Fiction', and 'Religious: Pan-Lutheran', each book is numbered from 1-7. '1' is the easiest to read. '7' is the hardest.


If you are new to these conversations, we suggest you begin with '1' and work up to '7'. For those who are: 1. Familiar with this literature, 2. Willing to listen with a heart that seeks to understand, or 3. Ready for the law to do its work, you can try a harder text.



THE GENRES



Religious



Non-Lutheran



Religious



LCMS-Lutheran (CPH)



secular



non-fiction



Secular



literature



Religious



pan-Lutheran (NON-CPH)



DIVIDED BY FAITH:
EVANGELICAL RELIGION AND THE PROBLEM OF RACE IN AMERICA
- michael emerson
& Christian smith



RELIGIOUS: NON-LUTHERAN





Through a nationwide telephone survey of 2,000 people and an additional 200 face-to-face interviews, Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith probed the grassroots of white evangelical America. They found that despite recent efforts by the movement's leaders to address the problem of racial discrimination, evangelicals themselves seem to be preserving America's racial chasm. In fact, most white evangelicals see no systematic discrimination against blacks. But the authors contend that it is not active racism that prevents evangelicals from recognizing ongoing problems in American society.



I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
- Austin Channing Brown



RELIGIOUS: NON-LUTHERAN





From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white America’s love affair with “diversity” so often falls short of its ideals.


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.



America's Original Sin: Racism, white privilege, and the bridge to a new america
- Jim Wallis



RELIGIOUS: NON-LUTHERAN





In America's Original Sin, Wallis offers a prophetic and deeply personal call to action in overcoming the racism so ingrained in American society. He speaks candidly to Christians--particularly white Christians--urging them to cross a new bridge toward racial justice and healing.


Whenever divided cultures and gridlocked power structures fail to end systemic sin, faith communities can help lead the way to grassroots change. Probing yet positive, biblically rooted yet highly practical, this book shows people of faith how they can work together to overcome the embedded racism in America, galvanizing a movement to cross the bridge to a multiracial church and a new America.



The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism
- Jemar tisby



RELIGIOUS: NON-LUTHERAN





An acclaimed, timely narrative of how people of faith have historically--up to the present day--worked against racial justice. And a call for urgent action by all Christians today in response.


The Color of Compromise is both enlightening and compelling, telling a history we either ignore or just don't know. Equal parts painful and inspirational, it details how the American church has helped create and maintain racist ideas and practices. You will be guided in thinking through concrete solutions for improved race relations and a racially inclusive church.



the cross & the lynching tree
- james cone



RELIGIOUS: NON-LUTHERAN





The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and black death, the cross symbolizes divine power and black life God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era.



The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race
- Willie james jennings



RELIGIOUS: NON-LUTHERAN





Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity’s highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies. A probing study of the cultural fragmentation—social, spatial, and racial—that took root in the Western mind, this book shows how Christianity has consistently forged Christian nations rather than encouraging genuine communion between disparate groups and individuals.



Race: A Theological account
- J. Kameron Carter



RELIGIOUS: NON-LUTHERAN





In Race: A Theological Account, J. Kameron Carter meditates on the multiple legacies implicated in the production of a racialized world and that still mark how we function in it and think about ourselves. These are the legacies of colonialism and empire, political theories of the state, anthropological theories of the human, and philosophy itself, from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the present.


Not content only to describe this problem, Carter constructs a way forward for Christian theology. Through engagement with figures as disparate in outlook and as varied across the historical landscape as Immanuel Kant, Frederick Douglass, Jarena Lee, Michel Foucault, Cornel West, Albert Raboteau, Charles Long, James Cone, Irenaeus of Lyons, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor, Carter reorients the whole of Christian theology, bringing it into the twenty-first century.



Religious: CPH (LCMS)



light in the dark belt >



one nation under god: Healing racial divides in america>



black christians: The Untold Lutheran Story>



roses and thorns >



the truth will set you free >



voices from the city>



african americans and the local church >



8 models of ethnic ministry >



between the world and me
- ta-nehisi coates



SECULAR: NON-FICTION





NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST


Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone)


In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?



Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America
- Kumea Shorter-Gooden & Charisse Jones



SECULAR: NON-FICTION





Based on the African American Women's Voices Project, Shifting reveals that a large number of African American women feel pressure to compromise their true selves as they navigate America's racial and gender bigotry. Black women "shift" by altering the expectations they have for themselves or their outer appearance. They modify their speech. They shift "White" as they head to work in the morning and "Black" as they come back home each night. They shift inward, internalizing the searing pain of the negative stereotypes that they encounter daily. And sometimes they shift by fighting back.


With deeply moving interviews, poignantly revealed on each page, Shifting is a much-needed, clear, and comprehensive portrait of the reality of African American women's lives today.



Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
- Beverly Daniel Tatum



SECULAR: NON-FICTION





The classic, bestselling book on the psychology of racism -- now fully revised and updated


Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.



For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education
- Christopher Emdin



SECULAR: NON-FICTION





Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, a prominent scholar offers a new approach to teaching and learning for every stakeholder in urban education.


Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color and merging his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America, award-winning educator Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on an approach to teaching and learning in urban schools. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y’all Too is the much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better.


He begins by taking to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning.



The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
- Michelle alexander



SECULAR: NON-FICTION





Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora


A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—“one of the most influential books of the past 20 years,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education


Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads.


Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander’s unforgettable argument that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is “undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S.”



White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
- Robin DiAngelo



SECULAR: NON-FICTION





The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.


In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.



Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America
- Eduardo bonilla-silva



SECULAR: NON-FICTION





Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s acclaimed Racism without Racists documents how, beneath our contemporary conversation about race, there lies a full-blown arsenal of arguments, phrases, and stories that whites use to account for—and ultimately justify—racial inequalities. The fifth edition of this provocative book makes clear that color blind racism is as insidious now as ever. It features a new chapter addressing what readers can do to confront racism—both personally and on a larger structural level.



Literature



Frederick douglass>



ralph ellison >



toni morrison >



harriet jacobs >



Poetry & Prose recommendations>



booker t. washington >



octavia butler >



w.e.b. dubois >



maya angelou >



This Far By Faith: An African American Resource for Worship





The interplay between worship and culture is often a messy enterprise. Practices that seem right and salutary in one era or within one culture may be judged odd or quaint in another. Fortunately, the Lutheran heritage welcomes this dialog, calling for the unity in the common, evangelical core of worship and at the same time allowing for flexibility and freedom in the ways this essential core is communicated and celebrated.


As the first African American worship supplement prepared for use among Lutherans, This Far by Faith joyfully joins this conversation in progress. It is a proposal for addressing issues for worship from a perspective of particular culture and at the same time being faithful to the worship patterns of the church through the ages. To that end, this volume provides an important contribution to the global discussion on worship and culture by making available to African American Lutherans and to the wider church some of the riches of African American liturgy and song.



Wittenberg Meets the World: Reimagining the Reformation at the Margins
- Alberto Garcia & John nunes



RELIGIOUS: PAN-LUTHERAN





As the global church assesses the legacy of the Lutheran Reformation, Alberto García and John Nunes in this book reimagine central Reformational themes from black, Hispanic, and other perspectives traditionally at the margins of catholic-evangelical communities.


Focusing on the central theme of justification, García and Nunes delve into three interlinked aspects of the church's life in the world—martyria (witness), diakonia (service), and koinōnia (fellowship). They argue that it is critically important and vitally enriching for the whole church, especially Eurocentric Protestant churches, to learn from the grassroots theological emphases of Christian communities in the emerging world.



Concordia college selma: The miracle on green street
- Richard Dickinson



RELIGIOUS: PAN-LUTHERAN





History of Concordia College Selma,

in honor of its 75th anniversary.



Bonhoeffer and King: Speaking Truth to Power
- J. Deotis roberts



RELIGIOUS: PAN-LUTHERAN





A study of two of the most significant prophetic leaders in the twentieth century, J. Deotis Roberts's Bonhoeffer and King is an instructive work in theological ethics. This book considers and compares the theological reflections that guided Bonhoeffer's courageous stand against Nazism and King's quest for civil rights in America.



Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought
- Willis jenkins (Editor)



RELIGIOUS: PAN-LUTHERAN





Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. - these giants of recent Christian social thought are here reassessed for a new context and a new generation. Both combined activism, ministry, and theology. Both took on public roles in opposition to prevailing powers of their time. Both professed a kind of Christian realism and ended as martyrs to their respective causes. Here many of the leaders in Christian social thought revisit the insights, causes, and strategies that Bonhoeffer and King employed for a new generation and its concerns: race, reconciliation, nonviolence, political violence, Christian theological identity, and ministry.



Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance
- Reggie Williams



RELIGIOUS: PAN-LUTHERAN





Dietrich Bonhoeffer publicly confronted Nazism and anti-Semitic racism in Hitler's Germany. The Reich's political ideology, when mixed with theology of the German Christian movement, turned Jesus into a divine representation of the ideal, racially pure Aryan and allowed race-hate to become part of Germany's religious life. Bonhoeffer provided a Christian response to Nazi atrocities.


Reggie L. Williams follows Bonhoeffer as he defies Germany with Harlem's black Jesus. The Christology Bonhoeffer learned in Harlem's churches featured a black Christ who suffered with African Americans in their struggle against systemic injustice and racial violence―and then resisted. In the pews of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, under the leadership of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., Bonhoeffer absorbed the Christianity of the Harlem Renaissance. This Christianity included a Jesus who stands with the oppressed rather than joins the oppressors and a theology that challenges the way God can be used to underwrite a union of race and religion.


Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus argues that the black American narrative led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the truth that obedience to Jesus requires concrete historical action. This ethic of resistance not only indicted the church of the German Volk, but also continues to shape the nature of Christian discipleship today.



Theology and the Black Experience: The Lutheran Heritage Interpreted by African and African-American Theologians
- Albert Pero (Editor)



RELIGIOUS: PAN-LUTHERAN





This historic book presents key essays from an international conference of Black Lutheran theologians held in Zimbabwe in September 1986. It is the first volume to include viewpoints both from Black Lutheran theologians from North America and form several African countries.



Black Clergy Caucus
of the Lutheran Church, Inc.



"Let us not love with words or speech,
but with actions and in truth."
- 1 John 3:18


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