Category: Race and Baptism

Books can take you places

.Reading time 5 minutes.

As many of us gear up for summer vacations with flip flops, sunglasses and sunscreen, I want to remind us of the journey offered in books.  Words can take us places.  Within their pages are invitations to journey not just to distant and magical lands but to places closer to home, to undiscovered holy sites […]

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Useless

.Reading time 4 minutes.

“It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.” ~ John 6.63 These are the words of Jesus and they follow a “difficult teaching.”  The disciples feedback was not favorable.  The message was not entertaining; the classroom of discipleship was not a fun place to be.  This was a hard lesson to learn. […]

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Christ Saved My Life

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Christ saved my life from stereotypes. “In Him, “I am a new creature and all things become new” (Second Corinthians 5.17).  I am not more of the same old colored people, another addition to the racial group.  I am not another number, added into the racial majority or minority. Christ saved my life from prejudice. […]

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Three Ways Our Belief In Race Compromises Our Christian Witness

.Reading time 9 minutes.

“Racism has used the American church to battle against God’s will and purpose for his people. Racism has accomplished this goal by encouraging numerous rationalizations for the church’s position on slavery and racial discrimination, positions that are inconsistent with the message of the Bible.” ~Norman Anthony Peart, Separate No More: Understanding and Developing Racial Reconciliation […]

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Becoming New: Racial Formation and Baptismal Identity

.Reading time 4 minutes.

“What are we to do with a church that speaks to people on the basis of their gender or race, all the while baptizing them on the basis of Galatians 3.28?” “In baptism, the text becomes Scripture for us, canon, laid on us as a new story that illumines our stories. In baptism, we are […]

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