Deeper Waters: Sermons for a New Vision

by Nibs Stroupe, Collin Cornell (Editor)

Deeper Waters is a sermon collection--but also a manifesto. Its sermons sound forth a call for Christian preaching that is evangelical and unashamed of the good news about Christ's death and resurrection and resolute in resistance to white supremacy, male domination, and redemptive violence. The author, pastor Nibs Stroupe, is a white son of the segregated South, nurtured in its twin traditions of anti-black white racism and Christian faith. But through the courageous witness of black Americans engaged in the Civil Rights movement, Stroupe experienced conversion to a new theological vision. God's loving claim on humanity in Jesus Christ abolishes oppressive idols and breaks down dividing barriers. This conviction propelled Nibs into a lifelong ministry of gospel proclamation and antiracist struggle. For thirty-four years, Stroupe pastored at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, a multiracial congregation in metropolitan Atlanta. The sermons of this collection present the mature fruit of that ministry, and they offer a gift and example to the next generation of preachers and workers summoned as witnesses of Jesus Christ to the American context. "Jesus-centered, biblically learned, and dead-set against white supremacy--even as he retains awareness of his complicity with it--Nibs Stroupe is one of the most important models for preaching in our time."  --Ted A. Smith, Candler School of Theology, Emory University Nibs Stroupe grew up in the Mississippi River Delta in Arkansas. He retired in 2017 after thirty-four years as pastor of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, a church nationally known for its leadership in multicultural ministry. He is the author of three books, including the award-winning While We Run This Race. In 2007 he was inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Collin Cornell is a PhD candidate in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Emory University. In addition to racial justice and preaching, his interests include theological interpretation of Scripture and the doctrine of God. "For fifty years, Nibs Stroupe has been that rarest of voices in America—an idealist relentlessly confronting not just those with whom he disagrees, but challenging himself and all believers in good to examine the parts we play in society’s systems of inequality and injustice. His sermons are clarion calls for all who seek a path toward a better America.” —Douglas A. Blackmon, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Author of Slavery by Another The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II

156 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 21, 2017

Reviews

[J. Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gibson "Nibs" Stroupe has no need for speculative demonologies: The beloved Atlanta Presbyterian pastor has met the demonic face-to-face, both in his own life and in the spiritual, social, and racial tumult that continues to roil the United States. He has seen the devil not so much in encountering little girls levitating above their beds, quoting Latin in screechy, ethereal voices, but rather in the fallen principalities and powers of racism, sexism, militarism, and homophobia -- those social, political, economic, and psychological forces that incarnate the power of death and with whom each of us is complicit. More importantly, though, the Arkansas native, raised in the 1950s as an avid segregationist, met not only personal and structural evil, he also was enveloped and transformed by the redeeming and liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ, and from this conversion emerged a prophetic ministry of reconciliation and healing. Stroupe has wrestled with the deep existential irony that the family and friends who introduced him to Gospel of free grace were the same folk who formed him in the idolatries of white domination, patriarchy, and retributive violence.

Read the rest of my review at http://derevth.blogspot.com/2018/02/b....