Isabel Wilkerson Random House, 496 pages Isabel Wilkerson explains “systemic.” “Systemic” racism isn’t a blanket accusation against non-Black people. Rather, it encompasses presumptions, attitudes and practices developed to serve the interests of slaveholders before we were born and, subtly updated, continue to distort the way we interpret the world. Unless drawn to our attention, we neither see it nor recognize the role it plays in our lives. Few of us think of ourselves as racist. We would never treat another person rudely, whatever their race; we try not to use or even think offensive language; and insist that all people are equal. But racism exists, nevertheless, and affects us all, even those who mean well. One way to awaken to systemwide blind spots is to identify similarities in a different culture. Wilkerson has found a parallel of sorts in the caste system. In Hinduism, one is born into a particular caste that absolutely determines one’s status and role forever. … [Read more...]

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Crown, 272 pages When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, it must have seemed to many abolitionists that their work was done. When the post-Civil War constitutional amendments became law, those with hopes for political and social rights for former slaves may have thought that theirs was done. But soon came lynchings, the KKK, Jim Crow, voter suppression and the virtual replacement of slavery with something remarkably like it. Retrospectively, it can seem as though every movement toward racial justice is followed by a complacency that leaves the status quo undisturbed. Eddie Glaude, who teaches at Princeton University, reflects on the ways that new beginnings have typically fizzled out, borrowing Walt Whitman’s use of the label “after times.” When discussions of race come up in churches, there’s often a participant confident that race is a non-issue in the 21st century. After all, we have civil rights acts from the 1960s — and people of all … [Read more...]

David Bartlett (foreword by Leonora Tubbs Tisdale) Westminster John Knox, 256 pages At a commencement ceremony in Richmond, Virginia, I introduced myself to Jonah, David Bartlett’s son, adding, “I’ll bet I’m the only one here who heard your grandfather [Gene Bartlett] give the Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School.” Of course, David Bartlett also delivered the Beecher Lectures some four decades after his father, but he and I never met. However, I had used some of his writing in my own teaching, and knew that his voice was one to be trusted. The most recent of these published sermons were preached either at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, where David served as theologian in residence for several years while teaching at Columbia Seminary, or at The Congregational Church of New Canaan, Connecticut. Together these account for more than half of the 52 sermons. The last is one he preached at Yale Divinity School a few months before his death in 2017. Since Bartlett’s … [Read more...]