Resources For Cross-Cultural Understanding
Compiled by Rev. Russ Whitfield
A note: In this list you will find a range of sources that I have, personally, found to be helpful in my own growth in cross-cultural love, even when I come into disagreement with certain ideas, arguments, and proposals in some of these works. If you approach these resources in the right way, it can be an act of devotion to the Lord. As you wrestle with the material, I encourage you to do so with an awareness of the Spirit's presence and his desire to lead us all in faith and repentance with an eye toward personal and corporate formation.
Articles & Reports
Dr. Kenny Gibbs, ICCM Blog Series Advancing Gopsel Reconciliation
Frederick Douglass, The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro , July 5th, 1852
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Letter From Birmingham Jail
Charles Marsh, The Civil Rights Movement As Theological Drama, Modern Theology 18:2 April 2002
Esau McCaulley, What the Bible Has to Say About Black Anger
Ekemini Uwan, There’s No Going Back to ‘Normal’
Mychal Denzel Smith, White Millennials are products of a failed lesson in colorblindness
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations”, Atlantic Monthly , June 2014
Church History & Theology
Mark A. Noll, From Every Tribe and Nation (Turning South: Christian Scholars in an Age of World Christianity): A Historian’s Discovery of the Global Christian Story
Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity
Justo L. Gonzalez, Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective
Justo L. Gonzalez, The Mestizo Augustine: A Theologian Between Two Cultures
Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights
Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America
Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews, Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism Between the Wars
Rita Roberts, Evangelicalism and the Politics of Reform in Northern Black Thought
Brian Bantum, The Death of Race: Building a New Christianity in a Racial World
Doug Serven, Russ Whitfield, Irwyn Ince, Duke Kwon, et al, Heal Us, Emmanuel (written by PCA pastors and elders in reflection on our denomination)
Leon Brown, Irwyn Ince, Russ Whitfield, et al, All Are Welcome: Toward A Multi-Everything Church
David Swanson, Rediscipling the White Church
Jemar Tisby, Color of Compromise
Irwyn L. Ince Jr., The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church At Its Best (Forthcoming)
Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson, Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair (Forthcoming)
Books
David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
James Forman Jr, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Douglas A Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
Erika Lee, America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States
Ed. John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats, “Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria
Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look At What It Means to Be White
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media
Edward Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Anti-Semitism
Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-year Untold History of Class in America
Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Kamal Al-Solaylee, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to everyone)
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind
For Children & Families
The Gospel in Color For Parents: A Theology of Racial Reconciliation for Parents by Curtis A. Woods and Jarvis J. Williams
The Gospel in Color For Kids: A Theology of Racial Reconciliation for Kids by Curtis A. Woods and Jarvis J. Williams
God’s Very Good Idea by Trillia Newbell
God Made Me AND You: Celebrating God’s Design for Ethnic Diversity by Shai Linne
The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson
Viola Desmond Won’t Be Budged! by Jody Nyasha Warner and Richard Rudnicki
Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis by Jabari Asi
Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History by Vashti Harrison
Black, White and Tan by Nicole C. Mullen
Websites/Blogs
Watch, Listen, & Think
Film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, Just Mercy
Documentary Film Directed by Raoul Peck, “I Am Not Your Negro”
Grace, Justice, & Mercy: An evening with Bryan Stevenson & Tim Keller
Documentary film, Latino Americans
Documentary film, Asian Americans
Documentary film by Ken Burns, The West.
Documentary film by Blackside, Eyes On the Prize
Organizations