The Justice & Reconciliation Ministry has enjoyed putting together an experience that’s designed to be creative and inspiring, challenging and collaborative, fun and engaging.
The goal has been to provide a conversational starting point for all of us, no matter our age—from 12 to 102—about racial justice and reconciliation. In order to inspire and entice as many Hope Church readers and discussants as possible, the book list includes nonfiction, fiction, graphic histories, and artistic explorations. We hope that all of us have found a book that inspires us, provokes us to mull over important ideas, and challenges us to think about our faith in new ways.
This Sunday, October 29, attend the October 29 adult education session for in-depth conversation with people who have read the same book. From October 29 through November 12, add your thoughts on sticky notes to the large post-its for each book in the Gathering Area. Take time to read the comments of others.
Whether you’ve been reading or not [quite yet], here is a reminder of the reading list:
- Jemar Tisby’s How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice, 2021. This is the anchor book that will serve as the center hub in our wheel of texts. You do not have to read this one, however, to appreciate his main points and to enter into our joint conversations.
- Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise, 2019. In another nonfiction text, Tisby’s central question is this: why should we become an anti-racist congregation?
- Dear Martin, by Nic Stone, 2017. Fiction. This slim, compelling novel invites Hope adults into a young adult world of discrimination and despair. Note that the characters at times have dialogue that includes cursing and explicit language, but the story connects beautifully with Tisby’s ideas and does not back away from the complicity that we as a church are trying to confront.
- March: Book One, John Lewis, 2013. This graphic novel, written by the recently deceased civil rights hero, allows you to feel and see the embodiment of Tisby’s ideas. This is the first in a trilogy, so feel free to feed your inner history buff and read all three to experience the time period from Birmingham Sunday to Obama’s inauguration.
- Ain’t Burned All the Bright, by Jason Reynolds, with art by Jason Griffin, 2022. This choice may be especially popular with the Hope Church artists and lovers of art.
All the book groups will be given a one-page handout of Tisby’s main points (from How to Fight Racism), so that we have common language as we enter into conversation with each other.
Our hope is that all of us are willing to explore what it means to live a Christian life in our fractured and racist world, and that, by the close of this Hope Church Reads project, will understand more fully what it means to love mercy and walk humbly with our God.