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Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity
"Many white Christians across America are waking up to the fact that something is seriously wrong―but often this is where we get stuck." Confronted by the deep-rooted racial injustice in our society, many white Christians instinctively scramble to add diversity to their churches and ministries. But is diversity really the answer to the widespread racial dysfunction we see in the church? In this simple but powerful book, Pastor David Swanson contends that discipleship, not diversity, lies at the heart of our white churches' racial brokenness. Before white churches can pursue diversity, he argues, we must first take steps to address the faulty discipleship that has led to our segregation in the first place. Drawing on the work of philosopher James K. A. Smith and others, Swanson proposes that we rethink our churches' habits, or liturgies, and imagine together holistic, communal discipleship practices that can reform us as members of Christ's diverse body.
208 pages, Paperback
Published May 19, 2020
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About the author
David W. Swanson
5 books14 followersDavid is the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church, a multiracial congregation on the South Side of Chicago. He also serves as the CEO of New Community Outreach, a non-profit organization working to reduce causes of trauma and raise opportunities for equity in Chicago. He previously served as a Director of Church Planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church. David and Maggie have been married for 21 years and have two amazing sons.
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June 10, 2020This book makes a bold claim, that is that "the segregation within white Christianity is not fundamentally a diversity problem: it's a discipleship problem" (8). Lest outrage immediately arise from diversity advocates, he knows the data: most multicultural churches end up reinforcing majority white power structures, creating assimilationist cultures. Even diversity, when it is pursued in such environments, ends up serving white power. So, this book answers the question, when we've all been formed in racist structures, how shall we respond? Swanson argues that segregated white churches churches have a central role in racial justice even when their congregations or communities don't reflect the inclusion and justice of the kingdom of God. But, to get there, the white church needs to be reformed, rediscipled in Christ's gospel--toward solidarity with the body of Christ.
Swanson writes this book having been away from the white church for some time, working in a multicultural church in Bronzeville, co-leading with and submitting to other church leaders of color. His work is rich with community experience in place, but also bolstered by some of the best work on theology and race to come out in recent years (e.g. Willie Jennings, David Leong, Randy Woodley, Brenda Salter McNeil) and in conversation with writer/thinkers that will be familiar and authoritative to many within evangelical circles (e.g. Dallas Willard, James K.A. Smith). The work also relies on some of the most recent work in race studies, race history, history of housing practices, etc (e.g. Ta-Nehisi Coates (many of whose most unflinching passages are quoted), Richard Rothstein, etc.).
Swanson writes: "Discipleship is rarely discussed at the intersection of race and Christianity, even though it is central to the identity of every church seeking to be faithful to Jesus' Great Commission in Matthew 28. Could this neglect explain why white Christians are better known for partisanship than reconciled communities across cultural lines of division? These days we seem more committed to culture wars than to proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God. The racial isolation that marks white Americans in general is just as pronounced among Christians. And, as has become sadly evident in recent years, our ears are often attuned more to our preferred partisan media sources than to the church of color down the street. . . . My claim, then, is that in order to address our segregation, white churches and ministries must begin with discipleship, not diversity" (8).
He rightly recognizes that white Christian leaders want racial injustice to be addressed, but that they wonder how to do so in majority white settings--and says, then, in response. "What matters initially is what has always been most important to the church: a commitment to Jesus' command to make disciples, now reimagined to form white Christians away from segregation and into solidarity with the body of Christ. In the spiritual battle for a more reconciled church, every single majority-white congregation has a significant role to play, and it begins with discipleship" (10).
The book is arranged around first of all the idea that we have been discipled and formed by race, and we need to acknowledge how that has happened, and then reimagine the practices of the church to RE-form, RE-disciple us toward the gospel's vision for the world (here, he relies on James K.A. Smith--fans of Smith will see immediately how this works). So, the second part of the book carefully re-imagines Holy Communion, Preaching, Liturgy, Children's Ministry, Presence/Place in order to advise church-members and churches, answering those persistent questions that arise in times when race comes front page like it does--"What can I do?" Well, here ya go.
Here's what I love about David Swanson's book. First, this book is absolutely unapologetically forthrightly committed to the truth that the gospel of Jesus Christ is itself is for racial justice and solidarity--that it is stamped from the beginning of God's way--as much as, no MORE than racist ideas were stamped from the beginning in America. Nobody's going to turn Swanson around from that. Thank God. Hear him speak, talk to him one on one (which I have been honored to do when our church was going through the sort of thing that churches go through), and you'll feel the way he relies on the Spirit's presence and power.
Second, the book meets a really, really specific need among evangelical communities (like my own) that come to race questions with an evangelical toolkit containing mostly a mix of personal responsibility, personal action, and relationship as the main tools for pursuing racial reconciliation. For a community that would describe its position on race and justice as "focused on the gospel,"Swanson says, NO PROBLEM: the gospel is ALL ABOUT THIS. For one that worries that maybe all this race and justice stuff is just politics, and that maybe we need to focus on discipleship and devotion, he says, you want discipleship and devotion? LET'S DO THAT--but it will take you in directions you might not have expected. For Christian communities in deep division over racial politics, here you go.
Third, the book believes in what one might call sanctification in discipleship, something that's not just based on being (or feeling, or appearing) "okay" or "good on race" but that moves toward the actual kingdom of God, even though it might be painful. Acknowledging the idol of comfort for many congregations, he writes, "The journey against the racially unjust flow of our society is inherently painful. Learning about our nation's history of land theft, the genocide of Native Americans, the kidnapping, enslavement, rape, and torture of Africans, the exploitation of immigrant labor, and so many other terrible examples will leave a throbbing ache in our souls. If our goal is to avoid pain, we will never move beyond spiritual platitudes about racial diversity and reconciliation. And neither will our children" (127).
I challenge all readers to whom this book is addressed to read the chapters slowly, and write, in response, visions and actions that come in their own congregations. For surely, when we read about ways that liturgies can help congregations resist a culture of individualism and consumerism, re-shaping our orientation to God, time, community and mission, that it can "serve as a counter-formation to our racialized society," we start to have ideas (101). For to Swanson, in pursuing solidarity, "Every expression of white Christianity can pursue gospel reconciliation immediately. Rather than outsourcing this essential Christian vocation to multiracial churches or to congregations in urban or racially diverse regions, every white congregation can contribute to the unity of the body of Christ across lines of cultural division. In fact, given what we have observed about the particular injustices associated with racial whiteness, it's not a stretch to say that white churches have a front-lines role in the spiritual battle for reconciliation (61).
Not that white church re-discipleship ought to downplay the Revelation 7 vision in the here and now--the "slow and costly journey to becoming multiracial in order to bear witness to the kingdom of God" (a journey whose cost Swanson's church is paying day by day, community member by community member). But "white Christianity must play its unique and indispensable role of discipling white Christians away from injustice and segregation" through lament and practice, though education, re-education (61).
It would have been easy for Swanson just leave the white churches behind. He's "good on race." (He represents, regularly saying pointed things on social media platforms, things that lose him white friends, and which have lost his church congregants and donations. And, rather unusually, his actions and his words are consistent.) When the personal action/responsibility tools from my evangelical toolkit fail to justify me against the ineluctable guilt of complicity in racist systems, I think he has every right to leave white churches behind, and think maybe he just should--leave white churches in that selfish hell of whiteness that seeks to earn its salvation through self-justification.
But he really believes the gospel and doesn't abandon white churches. In the foreword, Brenda Salter MacNeill quotes one of his sermons--a statement that for McNeill opened up a space of hope. It does for me, too : "Holy Spirit-empowered rebels will defy this nation's racial oppression with the gospel of reconciliation. Racism will die. Oppression will die. White supremacy will die. But you, child of God, will live!"
Amen.
Swanson writes this book having been away from the white church for some time, working in a multicultural church in Bronzeville, co-leading with and submitting to other church leaders of color. His work is rich with community experience in place, but also bolstered by some of the best work on theology and race to come out in recent years (e.g. Willie Jennings, David Leong, Randy Woodley, Brenda Salter McNeil) and in conversation with writer/thinkers that will be familiar and authoritative to many within evangelical circles (e.g. Dallas Willard, James K.A. Smith). The work also relies on some of the most recent work in race studies, race history, history of housing practices, etc (e.g. Ta-Nehisi Coates (many of whose most unflinching passages are quoted), Richard Rothstein, etc.).
Swanson writes: "Discipleship is rarely discussed at the intersection of race and Christianity, even though it is central to the identity of every church seeking to be faithful to Jesus' Great Commission in Matthew 28. Could this neglect explain why white Christians are better known for partisanship than reconciled communities across cultural lines of division? These days we seem more committed to culture wars than to proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God. The racial isolation that marks white Americans in general is just as pronounced among Christians. And, as has become sadly evident in recent years, our ears are often attuned more to our preferred partisan media sources than to the church of color down the street. . . . My claim, then, is that in order to address our segregation, white churches and ministries must begin with discipleship, not diversity" (8).
He rightly recognizes that white Christian leaders want racial injustice to be addressed, but that they wonder how to do so in majority white settings--and says, then, in response. "What matters initially is what has always been most important to the church: a commitment to Jesus' command to make disciples, now reimagined to form white Christians away from segregation and into solidarity with the body of Christ. In the spiritual battle for a more reconciled church, every single majority-white congregation has a significant role to play, and it begins with discipleship" (10).
The book is arranged around first of all the idea that we have been discipled and formed by race, and we need to acknowledge how that has happened, and then reimagine the practices of the church to RE-form, RE-disciple us toward the gospel's vision for the world (here, he relies on James K.A. Smith--fans of Smith will see immediately how this works). So, the second part of the book carefully re-imagines Holy Communion, Preaching, Liturgy, Children's Ministry, Presence/Place in order to advise church-members and churches, answering those persistent questions that arise in times when race comes front page like it does--"What can I do?" Well, here ya go.
Here's what I love about David Swanson's book. First, this book is absolutely unapologetically forthrightly committed to the truth that the gospel of Jesus Christ is itself is for racial justice and solidarity--that it is stamped from the beginning of God's way--as much as, no MORE than racist ideas were stamped from the beginning in America. Nobody's going to turn Swanson around from that. Thank God. Hear him speak, talk to him one on one (which I have been honored to do when our church was going through the sort of thing that churches go through), and you'll feel the way he relies on the Spirit's presence and power.
Second, the book meets a really, really specific need among evangelical communities (like my own) that come to race questions with an evangelical toolkit containing mostly a mix of personal responsibility, personal action, and relationship as the main tools for pursuing racial reconciliation. For a community that would describe its position on race and justice as "focused on the gospel,"Swanson says, NO PROBLEM: the gospel is ALL ABOUT THIS. For one that worries that maybe all this race and justice stuff is just politics, and that maybe we need to focus on discipleship and devotion, he says, you want discipleship and devotion? LET'S DO THAT--but it will take you in directions you might not have expected. For Christian communities in deep division over racial politics, here you go.
Third, the book believes in what one might call sanctification in discipleship, something that's not just based on being (or feeling, or appearing) "okay" or "good on race" but that moves toward the actual kingdom of God, even though it might be painful. Acknowledging the idol of comfort for many congregations, he writes, "The journey against the racially unjust flow of our society is inherently painful. Learning about our nation's history of land theft, the genocide of Native Americans, the kidnapping, enslavement, rape, and torture of Africans, the exploitation of immigrant labor, and so many other terrible examples will leave a throbbing ache in our souls. If our goal is to avoid pain, we will never move beyond spiritual platitudes about racial diversity and reconciliation. And neither will our children" (127).
I challenge all readers to whom this book is addressed to read the chapters slowly, and write, in response, visions and actions that come in their own congregations. For surely, when we read about ways that liturgies can help congregations resist a culture of individualism and consumerism, re-shaping our orientation to God, time, community and mission, that it can "serve as a counter-formation to our racialized society," we start to have ideas (101). For to Swanson, in pursuing solidarity, "Every expression of white Christianity can pursue gospel reconciliation immediately. Rather than outsourcing this essential Christian vocation to multiracial churches or to congregations in urban or racially diverse regions, every white congregation can contribute to the unity of the body of Christ across lines of cultural division. In fact, given what we have observed about the particular injustices associated with racial whiteness, it's not a stretch to say that white churches have a front-lines role in the spiritual battle for reconciliation (61).
Not that white church re-discipleship ought to downplay the Revelation 7 vision in the here and now--the "slow and costly journey to becoming multiracial in order to bear witness to the kingdom of God" (a journey whose cost Swanson's church is paying day by day, community member by community member). But "white Christianity must play its unique and indispensable role of discipling white Christians away from injustice and segregation" through lament and practice, though education, re-education (61).
It would have been easy for Swanson just leave the white churches behind. He's "good on race." (He represents, regularly saying pointed things on social media platforms, things that lose him white friends, and which have lost his church congregants and donations. And, rather unusually, his actions and his words are consistent.) When the personal action/responsibility tools from my evangelical toolkit fail to justify me against the ineluctable guilt of complicity in racist systems, I think he has every right to leave white churches behind, and think maybe he just should--leave white churches in that selfish hell of whiteness that seeks to earn its salvation through self-justification.
But he really believes the gospel and doesn't abandon white churches. In the foreword, Brenda Salter MacNeill quotes one of his sermons--a statement that for McNeill opened up a space of hope. It does for me, too : "Holy Spirit-empowered rebels will defy this nation's racial oppression with the gospel of reconciliation. Racism will die. Oppression will die. White supremacy will die. But you, child of God, will live!"
Amen.
July 21, 2020
A firm-but-gentle book that pushes this conversation in the direction it desperately needs to go, at least as it concerns the white-evangelical-American church. Swanson wisely pushes back on the drive towards "diversity" and instead focuses on how white Christians have been "discipled" by racial thinking in our culture. He argues (and I completely agree) that we need to be discipled out of that way of thinking/imagining our world, and re-discipled into true solidarity with the whole body of Christ. Since reading James K.A. Smith myself, I've long thought that these hot-button, so-called "social" issues are really "discipleship" issues for white Christians who don't want to deal with them, and Swanson has put clear and elucidating language to that impulse.
He also provides extremely practical steps and considerations for church leaders. This is a must-read for leaders of predominantly white churches in America.
He also provides extremely practical steps and considerations for church leaders. This is a must-read for leaders of predominantly white churches in America.
July 7, 2020
To be quite frank, I probably never would have picked up this book if not for the climate of the country in mid-2020 with the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests. I have a lot to learn and digest in this respect, and I am thankful for the fact books like this exist.
As an Asian-American, I don't fit neatly into the two primary groups being spoken of. There are elements of what is described as "white" in this book that I resonate with - in particular, the privilege of having social mobility and opportunities in America that blacks and people of color in general have long been denied. On the other hand, I am far removed from the idea of the white cultureless blob described in the book, where whites have sacrificed their ethnic cultures to form a new ill-defined cultural majority.
Swanson makes many meaningful and good points throughout the book. His critique of the fact that white people don't think of themselves as a "distinctive culture" is apt. Standing in solidarity with brothers and sisters in Christ is indeed a fundamental Christian mandate. I appreciated his suggestions for reforming Communion practices, and pursuing cross-cultural missions and ministry from a position of mutuality rather than provider.
However, I felt that many points and suggestions were made with weak motivation and/or substantiation. For example, in the very beginning of the book frames the problems of white Christianity as individualism, relationalism, and antistructuralism. While it's true that there are downsides to these perspectives on their own and constant reformation is necessary, they also offer benefits to the Church that I have found lacking in churches of other cultures (e.g. hyper-authoritarian corporate cultures). The author himself admits this, because after soundly denouncing "relationalism" (the idea that peoples' broken relationships with one another is the primary problem and can be addressed by fixing those relationships with one another), he walks this back in the end by stating, "I am convinced that any Christian attempt to address racial injustice and segregation must also prioritize relationships across lines of division." The book, in these ways, felt poorly organized throughout, making it difficult to read and digest the author's main points.
Some other points are good food for thought, but perhaps more complex than Swanson lets on. One example is how Swanson describes "white theological boundaries" that keep a white church planter from partnering with black churches in a neighborhood. While I personally think that this church planter should consider expanding those boundaries and their worldview, I think this is one example where race and other factors are being unnecessarily conflated. There are many types of churches with white leadership, and many types of churches with black leadership, etc., all of whom may have different theological views that may be legitimate reasons to avoid partnering with other churches particularly in the endeavor of sharing the gospel (as in Galatians 1). Swanson may be right in the particular scenario, but the anecdote does not extrapolate to the broader points he's attempting to make.
Another example is in the point that "our discipleship to Jesus requires us to be rooted in a particular place." The effort is admirable, and God may indeed call individuals to being rooted, as he did with the Israelite exiles in Babylon in the book of Jeremiah, or long-term cross-cultural missionaries. At the same time, this thought makes me ponder the scattering of the early church from persecution, immigrants fleeing war-torn countries for better opportunities, or even the constant travels of the Apostle Paul despite the pleas of many for him to stay longer at certain churches. Swanson concedes this by saying that "the practice of presence does not preclude the possibility of moving. Scripture makes it clear that Christians are sometimes called elsewhere as ambassadors of reconciliation. The difference is between being sent and leaving." Unfortunately, this concession makes his initial statement that being rooted is a requirement moot. This is the type of confusion I felt throughout the book, and I wish that nuance was provided up front rather than hidden somewhere in the 16th paragraph of the chapter.
All in all, I appreciate and respect Swanson for his ministry as well as for putting his thoughts on paper and conveying some of his frustrations with the "white church." I would recommend this book to others with a strong caveat. It makes good fodder as a discussion-starter, but the book also feels very raw and unprocessed and I would dissuade anyone from reading it as a manual or handbook.
As an Asian-American, I don't fit neatly into the two primary groups being spoken of. There are elements of what is described as "white" in this book that I resonate with - in particular, the privilege of having social mobility and opportunities in America that blacks and people of color in general have long been denied. On the other hand, I am far removed from the idea of the white cultureless blob described in the book, where whites have sacrificed their ethnic cultures to form a new ill-defined cultural majority.
Swanson makes many meaningful and good points throughout the book. His critique of the fact that white people don't think of themselves as a "distinctive culture" is apt. Standing in solidarity with brothers and sisters in Christ is indeed a fundamental Christian mandate. I appreciated his suggestions for reforming Communion practices, and pursuing cross-cultural missions and ministry from a position of mutuality rather than provider.
However, I felt that many points and suggestions were made with weak motivation and/or substantiation. For example, in the very beginning of the book frames the problems of white Christianity as individualism, relationalism, and antistructuralism. While it's true that there are downsides to these perspectives on their own and constant reformation is necessary, they also offer benefits to the Church that I have found lacking in churches of other cultures (e.g. hyper-authoritarian corporate cultures). The author himself admits this, because after soundly denouncing "relationalism" (the idea that peoples' broken relationships with one another is the primary problem and can be addressed by fixing those relationships with one another), he walks this back in the end by stating, "I am convinced that any Christian attempt to address racial injustice and segregation must also prioritize relationships across lines of division." The book, in these ways, felt poorly organized throughout, making it difficult to read and digest the author's main points.
Some other points are good food for thought, but perhaps more complex than Swanson lets on. One example is how Swanson describes "white theological boundaries" that keep a white church planter from partnering with black churches in a neighborhood. While I personally think that this church planter should consider expanding those boundaries and their worldview, I think this is one example where race and other factors are being unnecessarily conflated. There are many types of churches with white leadership, and many types of churches with black leadership, etc., all of whom may have different theological views that may be legitimate reasons to avoid partnering with other churches particularly in the endeavor of sharing the gospel (as in Galatians 1). Swanson may be right in the particular scenario, but the anecdote does not extrapolate to the broader points he's attempting to make.
Another example is in the point that "our discipleship to Jesus requires us to be rooted in a particular place." The effort is admirable, and God may indeed call individuals to being rooted, as he did with the Israelite exiles in Babylon in the book of Jeremiah, or long-term cross-cultural missionaries. At the same time, this thought makes me ponder the scattering of the early church from persecution, immigrants fleeing war-torn countries for better opportunities, or even the constant travels of the Apostle Paul despite the pleas of many for him to stay longer at certain churches. Swanson concedes this by saying that "the practice of presence does not preclude the possibility of moving. Scripture makes it clear that Christians are sometimes called elsewhere as ambassadors of reconciliation. The difference is between being sent and leaving." Unfortunately, this concession makes his initial statement that being rooted is a requirement moot. This is the type of confusion I felt throughout the book, and I wish that nuance was provided up front rather than hidden somewhere in the 16th paragraph of the chapter.
All in all, I appreciate and respect Swanson for his ministry as well as for putting his thoughts on paper and conveying some of his frustrations with the "white church." I would recommend this book to others with a strong caveat. It makes good fodder as a discussion-starter, but the book also feels very raw and unprocessed and I would dissuade anyone from reading it as a manual or handbook.
May 11, 2021
When you've read a dozen or two books on "racial reconciliation" from one angle or another, you need to be persuaded to read yet another book on the subject. I'll be honest, I wasn't sure there would be anything "new" for me in this one, but after yet another recommendation (from somewhere, I can't remember), I decided to give it a go, and I'm glad I did.
There were a couple of "new" insights for me in the book (but that really wasn't the point). In terms of a fundamentally healthy approach to developing "true solidarity," this book packs so much into a pretty brief span(184 pages in the body of the text). The practical suggestions spelled out throughout are on point. I can recommend this unequivocally to anyone interested in really digging into this, and there are number of great endnotes to check out for various studies, article, and books to go deeper.
I think what I needed most from this book, though, was just the encouragement that I'm not alone, that others have trod this path before me. This book reinforced instincts and practices I've been developing, and gave me hope to keep pressing on. There were sections and whole chapters that I passed along to my wife, because it provided such a clear framework for getting on the same page in these sometimes complex issues.
There were a couple of "new" insights for me in the book (but that really wasn't the point). In terms of a fundamentally healthy approach to developing "true solidarity," this book packs so much into a pretty brief span(184 pages in the body of the text). The practical suggestions spelled out throughout are on point. I can recommend this unequivocally to anyone interested in really digging into this, and there are number of great endnotes to check out for various studies, article, and books to go deeper.
I think what I needed most from this book, though, was just the encouragement that I'm not alone, that others have trod this path before me. This book reinforced instincts and practices I've been developing, and gave me hope to keep pressing on. There were sections and whole chapters that I passed along to my wife, because it provided such a clear framework for getting on the same page in these sometimes complex issues.
June 3, 2020
I wish this book were not so sorely needed in the American church today, but I am so grateful that we have a guide in these words from David Swanson to further lead us towards the solidarity that we are called to embody in the kingdom of God. I found this book to be equally thought-provoking and incredibly practical, both in understanding the theological structure for a reimagined discipleship and the ways this can be integrated into both the praxis of our churches and our individual lives as disciples of Jesus. I highly recommend this book for denominational leaders, pastors, and lay leaders across the American church. I'm going to be returning to it on an ongoing basis as I seek to lead faithfully in my church and for my own growth as a follower of Jesus.
November 13, 2020
This book has the potential to be extremely impactful. Impactful specifically to white Christians. It’s a book that many black Christian have written, discussed and are familiar with. To read this from a white author was so refreshing. It’s a call to biblical discipleship absent of the common racial injustice blind spots. Written by a white man I think that this book can be that much more far reaching. It is a book that challenges and inspires at the same time. It comes from a thoughtful, lived and foundational position challenging the common arguments of racial reconciliation for a focus on proper discipleship and sensitivity to justice. Well written.
July 16, 2020
I really appreciated this book. I bought it because Swanson is outside of my stream (I wasn't familiar with him or most of his endorsers), but he still is coming from a Christian perspective. Though I don't line up 100% with what Swanson says, his insight and experience are extremely helpful.
Everything flows from Chapter 1 where he takes James K.A. Smith's view of man/formation (which is Augustin's view of man/formation) and applies it to Christians, specifically white Christians. I'd never heard this conversation framed in this way, that chapter alone is worth the price of the book. If our habits form who we are what we love (see Desiring The Kingdom), then avoiding other cultural expressions, particularly in the ways we do church, will have implications for who we become.
Everything flows from Chapter 1 where he takes James K.A. Smith's view of man/formation (which is Augustin's view of man/formation) and applies it to Christians, specifically white Christians. I'd never heard this conversation framed in this way, that chapter alone is worth the price of the book. If our habits form who we are what we love (see Desiring The Kingdom), then avoiding other cultural expressions, particularly in the ways we do church, will have implications for who we become.
December 20, 2020
David Swanson speaks to the pervasive reality of racialized Christianity in a manner that is both convicting and incredibly needed. For anyone, but especially white Christians, interested in a holistic approach toward racial justice, ecclesial unity, and discipleship to Jesus, this book is a great place to start.
February 10, 2021
This might be my favorite book about race relations within the church that I have read in this season. I have read many books over the past year on this topic both with and without a focus on the church. I really liked this one. It resonated well. It is firm but also so gentle in the way he writes. I would like to read this one again, slowly, a chapter a week and really digest what it has to say.
September 4, 2020
Summary: Stop emphasizing visual diversity and focus on solidarity.
Among those interested in racial justice, there is significant interest in how to help people become interested in racial justice. I frequently have used the metaphor of evangelism both because there is a sense of a message being that is necessary, and there is some sense of the Holy Spirit awakening the person to be open to that message.
David Swanson's main focus in Rediscipling the White Church is discipleship, not evangelism. Somewhat similar to my own interested in racial justice and spiritual direction (a method of discipleship) evolving in parallel, Swanson is emphasizing that the way to correct a distorted church is an emphasis on correct discipleship.
Swanson is building on the work of Dallas Williard, James KA Smith, and others that remind us that discipleship is not about intellectual knowledge acquisition, but building habits.
The central point of the book is that Swanson wants to transform the goal of discipleship around racial justice is solidarity (regardless of how visually diverse a congregation is) and not some abstracted racial reconciliation or unity.
The majority of the book is working through how the suggested discipleship practices take solidarity seriously. These discipleship practices include table fellowship, preaching, worship (liturgy), children's ministry and discipleship, presence, rejection of superiority, and friendship. There are many good suggestions for churches that are already racially diverse, for churches that are not racially diverse, and for churches in communities that are diverse and churches that are in communities that are not diverse. Overall this is a beneficial book, although I think it is mostly introductory and designed to be.
After I was about 20-30 percent in, I stopped and flipped to the notes and started reading his list of citations (and then his suggested further reading list in the back). I have not read every book he cites, but I have read most of them, and many of those that I haven't read are on my to-read list and/or I am familiar with them. I have been reluctant to pick up Rediscipling the White church. There are several reasons for this, including some mistrust of White people that write and lead on racial issues, desire to primarily read Black and other racial minorities on racial matters, and likely some self-righteousness about thinking I wouldn't get much from Swanson.
Most White people that are writing about race are consciously doing so because they know that the reality of White superiority is that White people will be more likely to listen to White voices, and they often directly acknowledge this. Pragmatically, I know this, as does almost everyone that is trying to move White people, especially White Christians. There is always a tension between magnatifing minority voices (which White people are less likely to read) and encouraging White voices (which implies feeding into White superiority).
Two biographical details, I think, help explain some of Swanson's openness to racial issues. One, he is a White adoptive parent of Black children. Every group that I am in that has a significant presence of white people talking about race has a disproportionally high percent of White people who are adoptive parents of minority children or who are in interracial relationships. Racial issues become more salient because of their relational proximity. The second biographical detail that matters is that he was a missionary kid. Missionary kids, who can broadly be counted as third culture kids (children who are not entirely in the culture of their parents or their community and so are a 'third' culture), have a greater ability as adults to move between cultures because of the early exposure to a variety of cultures.
As I read, I confronted my skepticism of Swanson's work. He is recommended and vouched for by people I trust. I used to live in the community where he lives and ministers now, and so I have some relationship and identification there. My skepticism is, in part, skepticism of my work in racial issues. We have read much of the same stuff. We are similar ages. Our paths diverged in details (he started as suburban and moved to the city, I started in the city and moved to the suburbs in my 30s). So my skepticism is likely as much about being skeptical about myself as it is about him. I am going to continue to be unsure both about Swanson and myself because there is no end here. Part of the reality of discipleship is that the goal is becoming like Christ, which means it is a project that will not have a final endpoint.
Rediscipling the White church helped make some of my thoughts more concrete. The practical steps at the end about reimagining the practice of evangelism, I think, were constructive, and I agree with them. These include making a long term commitment to place, to seek out areas where we experience mutuality with neighbors, be together with people, and imitate the Black church's resistance to splitting evangelism and justice. Swanson designed the book as an introduction and a starting point to point readers in a long term direction. The annotated reading list at the end is a start to help move people toward racial justice.
Among those interested in racial justice, there is significant interest in how to help people become interested in racial justice. I frequently have used the metaphor of evangelism both because there is a sense of a message being that is necessary, and there is some sense of the Holy Spirit awakening the person to be open to that message.
David Swanson's main focus in Rediscipling the White Church is discipleship, not evangelism. Somewhat similar to my own interested in racial justice and spiritual direction (a method of discipleship) evolving in parallel, Swanson is emphasizing that the way to correct a distorted church is an emphasis on correct discipleship.
Dallas Willard claims that a disciple is, most basically, an apprentice “who has decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to become capable of doing what that person does or to become what that person is.” While there is more that could be said about what a disciple is, for our purposes a Christian disciple follows Jesus to become like him and to do what he does.
Swanson is building on the work of Dallas Williard, James KA Smith, and others that remind us that discipleship is not about intellectual knowledge acquisition, but building habits.
Building on Augustine’s understanding of people as desiring creatures, philosopher James K. A. Smith writes that it’s our habits that “incline us to act in certain ways without having to kick into a mode of reflection.”7 Remember my implicit bias at the beginning of the chapter? Because we are not first and foremost thinking beings who rationally engage with every encounter, it is our habits which shape our imaginations or, in Augustine’s vocabulary, our loves. My unconscious assumption about who wrecked my cement was inculcated in me through a set of racially oriented habits. We aren’t usually aware of our habits.
The central point of the book is that Swanson wants to transform the goal of discipleship around racial justice is solidarity (regardless of how visually diverse a congregation is) and not some abstracted racial reconciliation or unity.
Of all the ways we have been damaged by whiteness, I believe the most significant is the chasm we have opened between ourselves and people of color, other image-bearers of the living God. Rather than listening to our neighbors’ stories of the harm inflicted on their communities by race, we often explain away their experiences. We appeal to our own racial enlightenment as proof that we are not racists and thus bear no responsibility for the harm done to our neighbors by a racialized society. Worse, sometimes we don’t even believe our neighbors and friends of color when they explain what it’s like to live beyond the boundaries of whiteness. “There is a long history,” writes Drew G. I. Hart, “going all the way back to slavery, of white Americans not trusting black perspectives as truthful.” The regularity with which white conversation partners dismiss what I share about the experiences of my friends of color is one indication of the distrust sown by whiteness.
The majority of the book is working through how the suggested discipleship practices take solidarity seriously. These discipleship practices include table fellowship, preaching, worship (liturgy), children's ministry and discipleship, presence, rejection of superiority, and friendship. There are many good suggestions for churches that are already racially diverse, for churches that are not racially diverse, and for churches in communities that are diverse and churches that are in communities that are not diverse. Overall this is a beneficial book, although I think it is mostly introductory and designed to be.
After I was about 20-30 percent in, I stopped and flipped to the notes and started reading his list of citations (and then his suggested further reading list in the back). I have not read every book he cites, but I have read most of them, and many of those that I haven't read are on my to-read list and/or I am familiar with them. I have been reluctant to pick up Rediscipling the White church. There are several reasons for this, including some mistrust of White people that write and lead on racial issues, desire to primarily read Black and other racial minorities on racial matters, and likely some self-righteousness about thinking I wouldn't get much from Swanson.
Most White people that are writing about race are consciously doing so because they know that the reality of White superiority is that White people will be more likely to listen to White voices, and they often directly acknowledge this. Pragmatically, I know this, as does almost everyone that is trying to move White people, especially White Christians. There is always a tension between magnatifing minority voices (which White people are less likely to read) and encouraging White voices (which implies feeding into White superiority).
Two biographical details, I think, help explain some of Swanson's openness to racial issues. One, he is a White adoptive parent of Black children. Every group that I am in that has a significant presence of white people talking about race has a disproportionally high percent of White people who are adoptive parents of minority children or who are in interracial relationships. Racial issues become more salient because of their relational proximity. The second biographical detail that matters is that he was a missionary kid. Missionary kids, who can broadly be counted as third culture kids (children who are not entirely in the culture of their parents or their community and so are a 'third' culture), have a greater ability as adults to move between cultures because of the early exposure to a variety of cultures.
As I read, I confronted my skepticism of Swanson's work. He is recommended and vouched for by people I trust. I used to live in the community where he lives and ministers now, and so I have some relationship and identification there. My skepticism is, in part, skepticism of my work in racial issues. We have read much of the same stuff. We are similar ages. Our paths diverged in details (he started as suburban and moved to the city, I started in the city and moved to the suburbs in my 30s). So my skepticism is likely as much about being skeptical about myself as it is about him. I am going to continue to be unsure both about Swanson and myself because there is no end here. Part of the reality of discipleship is that the goal is becoming like Christ, which means it is a project that will not have a final endpoint.
Rediscipling the White church helped make some of my thoughts more concrete. The practical steps at the end about reimagining the practice of evangelism, I think, were constructive, and I agree with them. These include making a long term commitment to place, to seek out areas where we experience mutuality with neighbors, be together with people, and imitate the Black church's resistance to splitting evangelism and justice. Swanson designed the book as an introduction and a starting point to point readers in a long term direction. The annotated reading list at the end is a start to help move people toward racial justice.
January 18, 2021
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.
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.
June 15, 2020
Imagine
This book contains so much good information on rediscipling our churches and helps us to imagine a world where the churches share the unity and diversity of the body to Christ. The author has done a great service to us by helping us imagine what for many seems to be unthinkable.
“Imagine, then, a white church that purposefully, humbly, and courageously pursues a new course—a nonconforming course. Imagine a white church making disciples of white Christians who are finding their way to embodied solidarity with Christians of color. Imagine ecclesial unity that is not simply proclaimed as a theological truth or experienced at an occasional event but that becomes the lived, enfleshed realities for white Christians. Imagine a community of white Christians that cannot be categorized or understood without accounting for their friends of color. Imagine if race was a less accurate predictor of political perspective than the testimonies of the racially diverse beloved body of Christ. Imagine if pollsters could no longer categorize white Christians by their race because it was no longer an adequate predictor of who we vote for, or whose partisan policies we support.”
This book contains so much good information on rediscipling our churches and helps us to imagine a world where the churches share the unity and diversity of the body to Christ. The author has done a great service to us by helping us imagine what for many seems to be unthinkable.
“Imagine, then, a white church that purposefully, humbly, and courageously pursues a new course—a nonconforming course. Imagine a white church making disciples of white Christians who are finding their way to embodied solidarity with Christians of color. Imagine ecclesial unity that is not simply proclaimed as a theological truth or experienced at an occasional event but that becomes the lived, enfleshed realities for white Christians. Imagine a community of white Christians that cannot be categorized or understood without accounting for their friends of color. Imagine if race was a less accurate predictor of political perspective than the testimonies of the racially diverse beloved body of Christ. Imagine if pollsters could no longer categorize white Christians by their race because it was no longer an adequate predictor of who we vote for, or whose partisan policies we support.”
June 15, 2023
This book is a must read for all white evangelical Christians like myself. The idea of a personal salvation experience being the “end all be all” in the building of God’s Kingdom was not the original plan of God.
Reconciliation to our Creator and our brothers and sisters of color is the full gospel and the Avenue for which the Kingdom of God is offered here and now rather than “when we get to heaven”. Praying for the Holy Spirit to unblind us and continually reveal truth in the areas of our hearts that still need transformed.
Let’s continue to work towards racial justice through relationship and continue to have the hard conversations with our white brothers and sisters as we continue to learn and grow. Let’s continue to lament, repent, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ together.
Reconciliation to our Creator and our brothers and sisters of color is the full gospel and the Avenue for which the Kingdom of God is offered here and now rather than “when we get to heaven”. Praying for the Holy Spirit to unblind us and continually reveal truth in the areas of our hearts that still need transformed.
Let’s continue to work towards racial justice through relationship and continue to have the hard conversations with our white brothers and sisters as we continue to learn and grow. Let’s continue to lament, repent, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ together.
January 3, 2021
This book helped me rethink the goal for my own church plant. The goal is not diversity. The goal is solidarity. We want to stand with our brothers and sisters of color in a fight for justice. What I love about that is it gives the white rural church something to attain. I would still love to have a diverse church plant. But it starts with solidarity.
September 14, 2021
I appreciated the emphasis on formation/discipleship. I still don't have a strong imagination for what this discipleship looks like, and what it leads to -- but books like this help me think better in this direction.
November 7, 2024
Lots of applicable discussion points for white churches, however, I have a really hard time with white authors who stray from their own complicity. When it comes to racial justice, it starts with admitting when we’ve gotten it wrong — and not just with using examples of other white folks who got it wrong, just to prove a point.
May 4, 2021
This book is definitely for white people but tons of nuggets in here.
November 8, 2021
This book is a must-read!
July 15, 2020
Really helpful & practical. If you have any organizational/cultural influence in a white church you should read this.
Swanson draws heavily on the work of James KA Smith, Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil, Sandra Maria Van Opstal, Emerson and Smith, and Willie Jennings, among others, and presents their ideas concisely, with practical guidance for reforming white liturgy.
One of the coolest things about this book is that most of the guidance Swanson gives for anti-racist white liturgy are things you could start today: very simple, first steps. But he doesn’t lose the bigger vision that he’s calling white churches into (which I also really like): Solidarity with Christians of all races (instead of diverse church attendance)
Swanson draws heavily on the work of James KA Smith, Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil, Sandra Maria Van Opstal, Emerson and Smith, and Willie Jennings, among others, and presents their ideas concisely, with practical guidance for reforming white liturgy.
One of the coolest things about this book is that most of the guidance Swanson gives for anti-racist white liturgy are things you could start today: very simple, first steps. But he doesn’t lose the bigger vision that he’s calling white churches into (which I also really like): Solidarity with Christians of all races (instead of diverse church attendance)
November 20, 2020
Winsome and clear. If your church is wrestling with understanding racial injustice or socioeconomic segregation, this would be a helpful place to begin.
April 5, 2024
Excellent book on thoughtful ways to overcome “white christianity”. I highly recommend it to all especially church leaders.
June 15, 2020
Important book from David Swanson, speaking truth to white Christians as we come to grips with how we’ve been racially discipled and strive to become people of solidarity and justice with our brothers and sisters of colour. Highly recommended.
From the last chapter:
“It is past time for white churches to make disciples of Jesus who do not conform to our racialized society. It’s not more diversity we need; it’s better discipleship that calls white Christians to follow Jesus into the kingdom of God. This is a kingdom of reconciliation, patterned on the righteous reconciliation won for the world by Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is a kingdom that prioritizes justice and that reckons seriously with how we have been deformed by the society’s narrative of racial difference.” (Page 183)
From the last chapter:
“It is past time for white churches to make disciples of Jesus who do not conform to our racialized society. It’s not more diversity we need; it’s better discipleship that calls white Christians to follow Jesus into the kingdom of God. This is a kingdom of reconciliation, patterned on the righteous reconciliation won for the world by Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is a kingdom that prioritizes justice and that reckons seriously with how we have been deformed by the society’s narrative of racial difference.” (Page 183)
November 22, 2020
Must read on discipleship
This book is not going to do what you might think it is going to do. This is not simply a call to unity (although that is needed), rather Swanson shows that we have a discipleship problem that is deforming the church. The solution is a radical redefinition of discipleship to Jesus as a fully embodied apprenticeship unto Jesus that shapes us into living as kingdom people in solidarity with one another.
Buy it, Read it, Marinate on it, Do it.
This book is not going to do what you might think it is going to do. This is not simply a call to unity (although that is needed), rather Swanson shows that we have a discipleship problem that is deforming the church. The solution is a radical redefinition of discipleship to Jesus as a fully embodied apprenticeship unto Jesus that shapes us into living as kingdom people in solidarity with one another.
Buy it, Read it, Marinate on it, Do it.
December 12, 2020
Deep, profound, revealing, and practical. All who attend predominantly white churches would benefit from reading this book. The author is winsome and thoughtful and the reader is not left with a confusion of what to do next, practical and proven steps to true reconciliation and spiritual growth are provided.
May 14, 2021
A breath of fresh air from a white minister who not only sees our pain but has felt it through community and fellowship with a diverse church body. He understands how powerful the gospel can be to help people see individual sins and also systemic sins of history former and history present. His wisdom spreads and informs a white church body of a history black people have been screaming and speaking about for centuries.
It is true that so many of our white brothers and sisters are completely unaware of their color, their whiteness, their white-washed history, and this is to their fault and disadvantage when it comes to showing compassion and drive in inner-city ventures, missionary trips, and cross-race relationships. The dismantling of white hegemony and White with a capital w starts inside the church and it starts with our white family discarding the weight and cumbersome burden of their inherited whiteness.
This isn't an attempt to denigrate anyone but more of an attempt to inform them of the invisible 'I' they have forsaken for decades, thinking that color only applies to 'them' and not 'us' within church communities.
Such a treasure trove of information, good and healthy information that can help lead our western world out and away from its horrific inception regarding racism, colonialism, devastation, chattel slavery, Jim Crow/Klansmen terrorism and more. It's about time.
It is true that so many of our white brothers and sisters are completely unaware of their color, their whiteness, their white-washed history, and this is to their fault and disadvantage when it comes to showing compassion and drive in inner-city ventures, missionary trips, and cross-race relationships. The dismantling of white hegemony and White with a capital w starts inside the church and it starts with our white family discarding the weight and cumbersome burden of their inherited whiteness.
This isn't an attempt to denigrate anyone but more of an attempt to inform them of the invisible 'I' they have forsaken for decades, thinking that color only applies to 'them' and not 'us' within church communities.
Such a treasure trove of information, good and healthy information that can help lead our western world out and away from its horrific inception regarding racism, colonialism, devastation, chattel slavery, Jim Crow/Klansmen terrorism and more. It's about time.
February 22, 2022
I loved that he uses and explains the importance of liturgy in our lives, because most Christians are not aware of it and we all should be. Also, I think this book has the right concept and practices to re-image discipleship but I did not like how he puts the focus on white Christianity as if this is only a racial sin coming from “whites”. It almost feels like this topic is always approached with white superiority. I think this is a universal sin and everyone ought to re-image their view of the kingdom of God. I'm latina, and I have been treated differently by blacks and whites because of my race and I have been just as racist towards blacks and whites. Therefore, racial reconcialiation should be something that not only whites need to work on but everyone. I guess he is focusing on the white church because he is white, but then that means, that he is not familiar with the racism already exisiting within the people of color.
July 20, 2020
From the title alone, I knew that Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity would be something I needed to read carefully and consider deeply. I grew up in a rural midwestern small town where the population was 96.47% white. And given the population hovered around 6,000, well, there wasn’t much opportunity for diversity. Every church I went to growing up was, to my recollection 100% white.
Then I graduated seminary and accepted a calling at a primarily Asian church. There were eight times as many Asian people in this congregation as in my entire hometown. For seven years, that was the context in which I ministered. Awkwardly enough, for a white person, this is where I first began seeing the need for diversity—while at the same time beginning to understand the motivations for and legitimate reasons for homogeneity.
It was through this experience that I realized what many white churches considered diversity was really just subsuming minorities into the white cultural experience. And I knew this because every white person who ever attended our church—save one—eventually left because their cultural was not the culture in control. White people are (and here I use generalizations) only interested in diversity that conforms to their norms. I didn’t know that in myself until I experienced it, wrestled with it, and got rid of it in my own life.
I read Rediscipling the White Church just a few weeks after formally resigning from my church position to move to a time of sabbatical and reentry to higher education. The book caught my eye because I realized that I really had never experienced white church from a position of authority or leadership—and that, likely, my next church position would be much, much whiter than my previous. I knew I’d want to develop a diverse culture where my children would feel comfortable in their skin (my adopted children are Black and Middle Eastern) and where there would be many languages spoken and cultural backgrounds celebrated. But I wasn’t sure how to effect that. Rediscipling the White Church has been added to the blueprint as a necessity for my next church calling.
David Swanson spends three chapters explaining what cheap diversity looks like. It’s a helpful foundation, because most primarily white churches never think of themselves as “white churches.” Perhaps you’ve even been cringing at the use of the term in the title. But it’s accurate. White churches—no matter their ecclesiology—assume their culture as the default with diversity about joining the default. Swanson walks readers through an undoing of that assumption with a call to focus on discipleship that leads to solidarity.
That solidarity is what the majority of the book is about and Swanson highlights seven different practices that he believes will build this solidarity.
Practicing Table Fellowship
Practicing Kingdom Preaching
Practicing Subversive Liturgies
Practicing Children’s Ministry of Reconciliation
Practicing Presence
Practicing Salvation from Superiority
Practicing Uncommon Friendship
I could easily write a half-dozen paragraphs about each of these points, but I’ll spare you. Read the book. It’s better coming from Swanson himself. The most poignant chapter, for myself, was on the reimaging of children’s ministry. Maybe this hit me hard because I’m the white father of two non-white children, I don’t know, but I had never really considered this sort of solidarity at that level.
Swanson provides reasonable, practical, actionable suggests for developing solidarity and partnership with minority communities and building a truly diverse congregation who all find unity in Christ. Rediscipling the White Church is going to be required reading wherever else I serve—assuming it’s a white church. It gives a firm bedrock foundation for the type of change this world so desperately needs.
Then I graduated seminary and accepted a calling at a primarily Asian church. There were eight times as many Asian people in this congregation as in my entire hometown. For seven years, that was the context in which I ministered. Awkwardly enough, for a white person, this is where I first began seeing the need for diversity—while at the same time beginning to understand the motivations for and legitimate reasons for homogeneity.
It was through this experience that I realized what many white churches considered diversity was really just subsuming minorities into the white cultural experience. And I knew this because every white person who ever attended our church—save one—eventually left because their cultural was not the culture in control. White people are (and here I use generalizations) only interested in diversity that conforms to their norms. I didn’t know that in myself until I experienced it, wrestled with it, and got rid of it in my own life.
I read Rediscipling the White Church just a few weeks after formally resigning from my church position to move to a time of sabbatical and reentry to higher education. The book caught my eye because I realized that I really had never experienced white church from a position of authority or leadership—and that, likely, my next church position would be much, much whiter than my previous. I knew I’d want to develop a diverse culture where my children would feel comfortable in their skin (my adopted children are Black and Middle Eastern) and where there would be many languages spoken and cultural backgrounds celebrated. But I wasn’t sure how to effect that. Rediscipling the White Church has been added to the blueprint as a necessity for my next church calling.
David Swanson spends three chapters explaining what cheap diversity looks like. It’s a helpful foundation, because most primarily white churches never think of themselves as “white churches.” Perhaps you’ve even been cringing at the use of the term in the title. But it’s accurate. White churches—no matter their ecclesiology—assume their culture as the default with diversity about joining the default. Swanson walks readers through an undoing of that assumption with a call to focus on discipleship that leads to solidarity.
That solidarity is what the majority of the book is about and Swanson highlights seven different practices that he believes will build this solidarity.
Practicing Table Fellowship
Practicing Kingdom Preaching
Practicing Subversive Liturgies
Practicing Children’s Ministry of Reconciliation
Practicing Presence
Practicing Salvation from Superiority
Practicing Uncommon Friendship
I could easily write a half-dozen paragraphs about each of these points, but I’ll spare you. Read the book. It’s better coming from Swanson himself. The most poignant chapter, for myself, was on the reimaging of children’s ministry. Maybe this hit me hard because I’m the white father of two non-white children, I don’t know, but I had never really considered this sort of solidarity at that level.
Swanson provides reasonable, practical, actionable suggests for developing solidarity and partnership with minority communities and building a truly diverse congregation who all find unity in Christ. Rediscipling the White Church is going to be required reading wherever else I serve—assuming it’s a white church. It gives a firm bedrock foundation for the type of change this world so desperately needs.
August 10, 2020
This book fits into the category of books that needed to be written right now. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it as much as I benefitted from it. That's the insanity of rating books. Not all books can be judged by the same criteria. Anyway, Swanson seems like the perfect person to write this book. He has been primarily in black Christian spaces for a long time, but he is white. He cast a different vision for those who desire diversity in religious spaces. Rather than aiming at diversity alone, we need to aim for discipleship towards true solidarity. This sounded amorphous to me but after finishing the book I think I'm starting to understand the point he is making.
If white Christians only aim at having diversity in their church, then they'll celebrate once black, hispanic or Asian Americans are attending their services. We'll stop short of actually addressing racial injustice. We won't acknowledge and push back against the narrative of racial difference which has existed in our country since its inception.
Swanson wants white Christians to understand whiteness and how it affects those without that label. He wants us to embrace the discomfort and pain of our history. He makes the fantastic point that most white people think of whiteness as neutral. We don't recognize the source of this category. We have forgotten our previous heritage before our ancestors came to this country. Our ancestors embraced whiteness as a way of creating a hierarchy where they could be at the top. Facing this reality will be extremely hard for white Christians, but if we never reckon with it, we'll be ill-prepared to fight for racial justice.
He also pointed out three ways in which white Christians are formed against racial justice: individualism, relationalism, and anti-structuralism. Individualism is our tendency to focus on sin as something only an individual can do. So I am not a racist unless I do racist things to another individual. It removes responsibility for actively addressing racist sins from the past that still affect current systems. This goes closely with anti-structuralism from what I can tell. If you are more focused on the individual, you won't view structures as having power to disadvantage others. Relationalism is focusing on relationships as the core part of racial reconciliation. What we need is to be in relationship with people from other races or cultures. While it is true that we need to be in friendships with people of other races and cultures, Swanson is making the point that we also need to recognize the real disadvantages that people of color regularly face in our culture. It's hard to be a good friend when you are ignoring what reality looks like for your neighbor.
I want diversity badly. I feel a strong impulse to fight for it in Christian spaces. Swanson gave me some pause. Not that I shouldn't desire it so strongly, but that I need to desire something even deeper. I need to be rediscipled myself. And I need to push other white Christians to be reformed as believers who are equipped for racial justice.
Swanson's practical steps were far different from what I expected. But that's because his application is different from what I thought white Christians needed to do. He pushed for changes in our habits as a church. He referenced Jamie Smith a lot talking about how our habits as a church can form us into the person of Christ. There are secular liturgies or worship practices that we don't even recognize at work around us all the time. In order to counter these, we have to have regular worship practices that move us toward racial justice and a narrative that counters racial difference. What we do on Sundays really matters. What we do together as a congregation can shape us in a new direction.
If white Christians only aim at having diversity in their church, then they'll celebrate once black, hispanic or Asian Americans are attending their services. We'll stop short of actually addressing racial injustice. We won't acknowledge and push back against the narrative of racial difference which has existed in our country since its inception.
Swanson wants white Christians to understand whiteness and how it affects those without that label. He wants us to embrace the discomfort and pain of our history. He makes the fantastic point that most white people think of whiteness as neutral. We don't recognize the source of this category. We have forgotten our previous heritage before our ancestors came to this country. Our ancestors embraced whiteness as a way of creating a hierarchy where they could be at the top. Facing this reality will be extremely hard for white Christians, but if we never reckon with it, we'll be ill-prepared to fight for racial justice.
He also pointed out three ways in which white Christians are formed against racial justice: individualism, relationalism, and anti-structuralism. Individualism is our tendency to focus on sin as something only an individual can do. So I am not a racist unless I do racist things to another individual. It removes responsibility for actively addressing racist sins from the past that still affect current systems. This goes closely with anti-structuralism from what I can tell. If you are more focused on the individual, you won't view structures as having power to disadvantage others. Relationalism is focusing on relationships as the core part of racial reconciliation. What we need is to be in relationship with people from other races or cultures. While it is true that we need to be in friendships with people of other races and cultures, Swanson is making the point that we also need to recognize the real disadvantages that people of color regularly face in our culture. It's hard to be a good friend when you are ignoring what reality looks like for your neighbor.
I want diversity badly. I feel a strong impulse to fight for it in Christian spaces. Swanson gave me some pause. Not that I shouldn't desire it so strongly, but that I need to desire something even deeper. I need to be rediscipled myself. And I need to push other white Christians to be reformed as believers who are equipped for racial justice.
Swanson's practical steps were far different from what I expected. But that's because his application is different from what I thought white Christians needed to do. He pushed for changes in our habits as a church. He referenced Jamie Smith a lot talking about how our habits as a church can form us into the person of Christ. There are secular liturgies or worship practices that we don't even recognize at work around us all the time. In order to counter these, we have to have regular worship practices that move us toward racial justice and a narrative that counters racial difference. What we do on Sundays really matters. What we do together as a congregation can shape us in a new direction.
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June 20, 2020There is a general fallacy in many churches today that says simultaneously if a church is predominantly white, it has no reason to address race, and if it does, the way to do so is by rushing to fill seats with non-White parishioners (without doing any work among its White members).
Pastor David W. Swanson’s book shows how this assumption is simply not true. It also fills in a piece of the wider puzzle of how White Supremacy has infiltrated all aspects of life in the United States, including the Church. I’ve had so many questions along my own journey about how deeply the Christian faith has been affected by the long history of racism. Rediscipling the White Church points to the ways in which our very discipleship in the faith is strangled by the lies of White Supremacy.
Swanson starts the book by introducing the reader to what discipleship actually is, and how the over-intellectualization of the process has kept White Christians from seeing how we are discipled not just by our churches, but also by what is and isn’t present in our everyday lives. I was particularly struck by how Swanson included the imagination as an important part of our discipleship. His honesty about how his own imagination has been affected by Whiteness gives the reader courage to start looking at our own.
Throughout the rest of the book, Swanson breaks down how White churches can and should address the presence of White Supremacy in how we do church and the Christian life. From communion to preaching to liturgies to relationships, Swanson teaches the reader how to see these active parts of our faith with different eyes, and leads us in how we might disconnect them from the binds of Whiteness.
I would highly recommend this book to every White pastor, elder, deacon, parachurch leader, etc. in the United States. If White Church leaders do not begin to contend with the reality of racial injustice now of all times, I fear that they will contribute to driving more people away from Christ instead of welcoming them into His Kingdom.
Pastor David W. Swanson’s book shows how this assumption is simply not true. It also fills in a piece of the wider puzzle of how White Supremacy has infiltrated all aspects of life in the United States, including the Church. I’ve had so many questions along my own journey about how deeply the Christian faith has been affected by the long history of racism. Rediscipling the White Church points to the ways in which our very discipleship in the faith is strangled by the lies of White Supremacy.
Swanson starts the book by introducing the reader to what discipleship actually is, and how the over-intellectualization of the process has kept White Christians from seeing how we are discipled not just by our churches, but also by what is and isn’t present in our everyday lives. I was particularly struck by how Swanson included the imagination as an important part of our discipleship. His honesty about how his own imagination has been affected by Whiteness gives the reader courage to start looking at our own.
Throughout the rest of the book, Swanson breaks down how White churches can and should address the presence of White Supremacy in how we do church and the Christian life. From communion to preaching to liturgies to relationships, Swanson teaches the reader how to see these active parts of our faith with different eyes, and leads us in how we might disconnect them from the binds of Whiteness.
I would highly recommend this book to every White pastor, elder, deacon, parachurch leader, etc. in the United States. If White Church leaders do not begin to contend with the reality of racial injustice now of all times, I fear that they will contribute to driving more people away from Christ instead of welcoming them into His Kingdom.
January 29, 2021
A book everyone should read.
This book elicited a visceral response in my soul! So very thoughtful, open, honest, bold, challenging and hopeful. The nuisances, the relational dynamics and observations came from a white Christian Pastor who committed to and embedded himself within a black community to learn, grow and exact change. He’s sharing what he’s learned and gives people a starting point to learn about racism, oppression, injustice and what God thinks about it all anddddd he provides a roadmap to set us on a course to reconciliation.
There’s so much spiritual truth, combined with racial observations and injustices that are shared in a manner that is non-abrasive or harsh; yet is completely honest in ways that provides insight for white people to comprehend and hopefully inspires them to check their hearts and align themselves with the cause of racial reconciliation on a personal, spiritual and communal level. BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) have fought for years against racism and we’re still fighting. If you can’t hear us, maybe you will hear him.
I suggest BIOPOC also read this book. It is encouraging to know that there are white people and Christians who seek understanding, desire relationship and are willing to stand with us and advocate for us until we conquer the sin of racism. We cannot do this alone. We need all races joining forces to eradicate the sin and flip the tables of racism and injustice. Change can happen! It starts on an individual level and spreads outward. What if God’s Church positions itself to lead the way?
Just think about how timely this book is. It was written before the insurrection/terrorist attack in America. Who knew we would need such a voice at such a time as this? Only God. This is what it looks like to walk in your calling. Outstanding. God inspired.
.
This book elicited a visceral response in my soul! So very thoughtful, open, honest, bold, challenging and hopeful. The nuisances, the relational dynamics and observations came from a white Christian Pastor who committed to and embedded himself within a black community to learn, grow and exact change. He’s sharing what he’s learned and gives people a starting point to learn about racism, oppression, injustice and what God thinks about it all anddddd he provides a roadmap to set us on a course to reconciliation.
There’s so much spiritual truth, combined with racial observations and injustices that are shared in a manner that is non-abrasive or harsh; yet is completely honest in ways that provides insight for white people to comprehend and hopefully inspires them to check their hearts and align themselves with the cause of racial reconciliation on a personal, spiritual and communal level. BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) have fought for years against racism and we’re still fighting. If you can’t hear us, maybe you will hear him.
I suggest BIOPOC also read this book. It is encouraging to know that there are white people and Christians who seek understanding, desire relationship and are willing to stand with us and advocate for us until we conquer the sin of racism. We cannot do this alone. We need all races joining forces to eradicate the sin and flip the tables of racism and injustice. Change can happen! It starts on an individual level and spreads outward. What if God’s Church positions itself to lead the way?
Just think about how timely this book is. It was written before the insurrection/terrorist attack in America. Who knew we would need such a voice at such a time as this? Only God. This is what it looks like to walk in your calling. Outstanding. God inspired.
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