GOSPEL & CULTURE
VIDEO SERIES:
WEEK 4 DISCUSSION RESOURCES
Week 4 Video
If you’d like to hear a fuller exposition of Jemar Tisby’s ideas, here are two videos, both from a session to a church in California: 
(and, of course, there’s his book, The Color of Complicity)
Anglican priest Esau McCaulley penned this op/ed in the New York Times: Why Christians Must Fight Systemic Racism
Many American denominations split in the 19th century over the issue of slavery. The Episcopal Church’s experience was slightly different. Here’s a Wikipedia article explaining what happened structurally.
If you’re more curious about how individual Episcopal church leaders grappled with the issues, this article about the Reconstruction era (just after the Civil War) is interesting.
More recently, here’s a letter from the ACNA Presiding Bishop (and others) in the wake of George Floyd’s death last year.
WEEK 3 DISCUSSION RESOURCES
Week 3 Video – Watch it here
Race in America Part II by Phil Vischer
If you’re interested in how the ideas in the video connect to Baltimore:
  • This book documents the history of policies that systematically discriminated against minorities in Baltimore: Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City by Antero Pietila.
  • The Racial Dot Map from the University of Virginia shows you the distribution of different ethnic groups anywhere in the US - it’s 2010 data, and hopefully they’ll find a funder to update with 2020 data. Plan to spend some time with it - once you’re in, you’ll want to look at all kinds of places you’ve lived, visited, or read about.
  • If you really want to dive into data, here are the pages of Census data for Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
This book is a history of the civil rights movement in America from 1954-1965: Eyes on the Prize by Juan Williams and Julian Bond. PBS created a television series from the book; this page has a number of short videos from the series. If you have Amazon Prime or HBO Max, it looks like the series is accessible through both.
It’s Not Enough to Preach Racial Justice. We Need to Champion Policy Change by Esau McCaulley. Reverend McCaulley is a priest in the Anglican church.
WEEK 2 DISCUSSION RESOURCES
Week 2 Video – Watch it here
David French is a commentator who writes on Substack (among other places) about many things . Two recent articles relate to our topic of today.  The second is a response to the responses he got to the first one, and in that sense is something of a dialog on the topic:  
An oldie but still relevant: the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. The white author chemically darkens his skin and travels around the South in the 1960s experiencing life as a black man.
To hear more from Tim Keller, here are a quartet of articles:
This op-ed from Christianity Today was written in response to the unrest of last summer: A Soul Check for White Christians
Psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum wrote “THE BOOK” on how all people form their own racial identity more than 20 years ago, long before the current heated discussions: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria” And Other Conversations About Race. For a shorter and updated summary of how she thinks about this topic, this article is written for parents of children in independent schools.
WEEK 1 DISCUSSION RESOURCES
Week 1 Video – Watch it here
  • A longer video from Latasha with some of her own story
  • Latasha's book - "Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation"
  • Be the Bridge website (in particular, check out the "We Recommend" page)
  • Be the Bridge to Racial Unity Facebook group - you won't agree with everything, but many people post interesting articles, videos, etc.
  • One of Latasha's key principles is that of listening to people whose experiences are different than our own. If you'd like to "practice," here's a few videos of Christian brothers and sisters telling their own stories:
  1. Soong-Chan Rah teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary, but here tells the story of growing up as a Korean immigrant in Baltimore
  2. Kevin Smith is a Black pastor, professor and now leader of the Maryland/Delaware Baptist convention
  3. Melyssa Colón Cordero is a Puerto Rican believer of many ethnicities; she leads Latino initiatives for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
  4. Richard Twiss was a Lakota Christian. This video is from presentation at Gordon College.
Here are a few books if you’d like to listen more intensively:
  • "I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness" by Austin Channing Brown
  • "We Speak for Ourselves: How Woke Culture Prohibits Progress" by D Watkins
Finally, several of us were struck by the exhortation to identify/explore our blind spots. This resource is not from a faith perspective, but is interesting: the Harvard Implicit Bias Assessment Tests. There are actually many tests, including one related to Black/White bias, another related to White/Asian bias, and a third related to dark/light skin tone bias.