Review: Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity

Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity by David W. Swanson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The more I read about the white American church's complicity with racism, the more I recognize my own complicity with racism. The more I read about whiteness and white privilege, the more I recognize the many ways I benefit from my whiteness--and the more I recognize the cost of this privilege.

And it's hard to write these things. It's uncomfortable. And I need to make peace with discomfort and seek justice, whatever the cost.

Last February, I attended the Cultivate conference and participated in a breakout session focused on how to talk about race. Leroy Barber, the facilitator, asserted that the problem in the white church was a lack of discipleship, training, understanding what the Bible says, understanding history, understanding justice.

And that word discipleship resonated with me. How do we begin to see the world beyond our lens of whiteness, this normalization of our own culture, this sense that our culture is superior, when we don't even see that we have a culture? How do we recognize and value other cultures, other ways of seeing the world? How we do we move beyond wanting diversity that celebrate relationships when we can't see how we are perpetuating unjust structures? How do we stand in solidarity with BIPOC Christians?

And so Barber's concept rolled around in my mind as I continued to read and seek understanding. When I saw this book, I picked it up and started it right away.

Clearly it took me a long time to read it. The concepts are complex. In his opening section, Swanson, a white pastor in a diverse church, lays a foundation for the necessity of discipleship, how we are all, including white people, discipled by race, concealed by race, and wounded by race.

In the next section, he examines discipleship practices that we can reimagine in ways that erode segregation and move toward renewed ways of thinking.

The white church needs this book. At the same time, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see the patterns that necessitate the need for retraining the way we think.

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