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Resources for Cross-Cultural Understanding
Last updated: February 2020
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
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
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent
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
Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging
Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
William A. Darity, From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century
Watch, Listen, & Think
Destin Daniel Cretton, Just Mercy
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
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
Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson, Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair (Forthcoming)
Kristen Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Richard Boles, Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Churches In the Early American North
Vince L. Bantu, A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity
Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
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
Organizations
Practices for Living Cross-Culturally
To accompany the above list, we’ve compiled a list of suggestions for living cross-culturally and doing justice in your life. One of our goals in Christian formation is to integrate “what we know” into “what we practice” so that we may truly learn to love as Jesus loves. We have been talking about these things since the beginning of Mosaic; they are not offered as a reaction to what has transpired over the last month but, instead, to create opportunities to deepen our life in Christ as it relates to the pressing issues of our moment. The current circumstances do not create the need for us to live cross-culturally and justly, for that need has always been there! Rather, they expose our need to repent, mature, and grow up into God’s vision for his people.
Everyday in daily prayer, we begin our day by praying The Lord’s Prayer together. Everyday we say this: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Think about that. What a bold, enchanted prayer! A prayer for the veil between heaven and earth to become thinner and thinner, for this world to mirror the divine: perfect love, shalom, justice, and righteousness under the reign of The King of the ages (1 Tim. 1:17). It is a prayer that is anything but complacent with the death-dealing orders of the world we find ourselves in; it is a prayer of protest and humble reliance.
We have been living through extra-ordinary times: a global pandemic, uprisings, and whatever else 2020 has in store for us. But the call upon our lives is always this: live like God’s extraordinary Kingdom has and is coming into our ordinary world and pray like you believe that. We hope that this list will aid you in this journey.
Take a Liturgical Audit Of Your Life. An audit is an inspection of an account. We typically use that word to describe the process of looking into individual or corporate financial records to see where and how money has been spent or received. A liturgical audit is the inspection of one’s own account of time. How do you spend your time? What are the “receipts” of your life? What are the “investments” of your life? And how are these “transactions” forming your life and loves? The Audit has many questions to help you asses the patterns of your life, see if those patterns are facilitating cross-cultural love and justice, and where there is room for growth. See our Members section of the website to access this tool.
Take Responsibility to learn, read, watch, and listen or ask your friends of a different cultural background to recommend resources for learning and enjoying.
Create a Parental Plan for Discipling Your Children Holistically (if applicable). Formulate a plan to teach the children of our community about race, culture, injustice, economics, history, and the church (see age-appropriate resources on our Resource List).
Practice Seeing. Who lives on your block, in your neighborhood, etc.? What are the gifts of your place? What are the needs of your place? Practice seeing and meeting needs, yes, but also practice recognizing the gifts of other people and giving thanks to God. Go on a neighborhood walk by yourself or with your household. Practice seeing the gifts and the needs of your place. This commitment to neighboring is simple, but it is transformative and is at the heart of following Jesus. We live in a society—in in a city—that has both outlandish abundance and cruel poverty. We are called to “repairers of the breach,”(Is. 58:12) so look for that “breach” and fill it. Challenge yourself and your household to live more radical lives of hospitality.
Connect With Local, Community-Based Organizations that are helping promote justice, mercy, and human flourishing in our city. We have partner organizations that we work with as a congregation, but there are many doing this work in our city. Some of this will depend on your own commitments and philosophy. One important principle is to work in regular rhythms (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly) of serving with these organizations.
Do Justice With Your Budget. If budgets are “moral documents” (a phrase attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), then what does your personal or household budget say about what you value? Allocate your budget and watch your heart follow, for Jesus taught us “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). Challenge yourself to give more and more away as the years go on. What can we live without so that others may simply live?
Vote With Intentionality. Think about how you utilize your civic responsibility of voting. As you examine the local and national candidates that you vote for, what do these candidates and their policies say about what you value and want to see in our city?
Support The Work Of Cultural Intelligence. If you are looking to help fight racism, promote cultural intelligence, and develop future leaders in the Church, we strongly suggest supporting the work of: (1) Our Network’s Institute for Cross-Cultural Mission. This work is not done in the span of weeks but of years. That’s why the ICCM leads congregations through a 3-year long Cohort Program; (2) RUF Howard.
Assess Your Unique Resources and Gifts. Take stock of who you are and the gifts that could be especially useful to your neighbors. The diagnostic questions of the Liturgical Audit can be a good place to start.
Pray Without Ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). Again, the call upon our lives is always this: live like God’s extraordinary Kingdom has and is coming into our ordinary world and pray like you believe that. What would our neighborhoods look like if all your prayers were granted? How would your life be different? At Mosaic, we developed The Daily Prayer Project to facilitate rhythms of prayer that facilitate cross-cultural life and love. Access that resource and tune into our daily prayer videos every Monday-Friday.
Let Us Know What You See. What do you see as opportunities for neighbor love for our congregation to engage in? Share those opportunities with us and with the rest of the church.
The work of spiritual formation is “low and slow.” The formation of our cross-cultural intelligence and love is no different. Changing the mundane, regular patterns of our lives now is what produces great change later. All of this happens by God’s gracious work and his mission to restore all things in Christ.