Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity Paperback – May 19, 2020

David Swanson has provided the church in the United States with an important invitation...an invitation to first examine, and ultimately, redefine how we disciple Christians in the American church. His thesis is that the white church has largely failed to engage issues of racial injustice and ongoing segregation because we have put our focus in the wrong place...diversity. Instead, he suggests that the proper starting place to live more fully into reconciliation and justice across racial boundaries is discipleship. Not the type of discipleship that has typically occurred in White churches for decades, mind you. The kind that primarily emphasizes individual piety and personal spiritual practices. Instead, he suggests a more robust form of discipleship that can set us free from the racialized liturgies that have formed us, and move us toward solidarity with our racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse brothers and sisters in Christ. He doesn't present a curriculum or packaged approach, but instead reframes some common liturgical and discipleship practices that can more deeply form followers of Jesus into awareness and repentance from our racialized social and spiritual imaginaries, and overall sense of apathy toward racial inequality and injustice...both inside and outside the church.I believe this is one of the most important books that will be released this year, and possibly over the next several years. I plan to use it regularly with my students at the Moody Bible Institute, as I believe it addresses ongoing racial segregation and injustice in the church in a way that is thoroughly biblical and Gospel-centered, and that invites us to disciple people in the way of Jesus. My prayer is that you will buy this book, fight through your discomfort as you read and are challenged by it, and allow it to move you more deeply into the ministry of reconciliation that we are all invited to as we follow Jesus faithfully.

This 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, we need 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," even if he DOES wear a bowtie on the back cover (heh heh). (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.

Rediscipling the White Church is a very important read for American pastors and ministry leaders in a wide array of contexts. David Swanson delivers a powerful, challenging and hopeful word for leaders seeking to guide our churches in the midst of the brokenness of racial injustice in our country, cities and our communities. The book operates by presenting the case that much of evangelical America is still operating under a framework of “whiteness”, no matter what the individual ethnic makeup of our churches. Swanson argues that as long as this goes unacknowledged in our particular contexts, no amount of increased diversity or relational connection in our ministries will simply automatically heal our segregation and injustice. He very emphatically drives a point home throughout the book that states where the root of the problem of segregation and racial injustice lies in our ministries...in our discipleship. Swanson begins the book with this phrase, “The segregation within White Christianity is not fundamentally a diversity problem: it’s a discipleship problem. Addressing White Christianity’s lack of diversity without first reckoning with our discipleship will be like redecorating a house built on a failing foundation.” The book goes on to address what it means to be a devoted disciple of Jesus, how our cultural blinders of White Christianity have fashioned discipleship in our countries own “white” image, and how courageous Christian leaders can face these issues and redisciple the church towards a holistic understanding of following Jesus. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to continue to be awakened to the reality of White Christianity’s impact in our churches and who wants a prophetic and hopeful guide towards a discipleship of solidarity with Christ and his kingdom.