Why Read This Book?

by: The Rt. Rev. George E. Councell

Why read this book (Becoming An Anti-Racist Church, by Joseph Banrdt)?

When I was engaged in an anti-racist program twenty years ago in another diocese we encountered strong resistance. The effort to become an anti-racist church was dismissed as just another attempt at “political correctness.” I said to a black priest, “I don’t want to do this to be politically correct.” “Good,” he said. “Do it because you’re my brother.”

I am inviting us to read this book as an expression of our commitment to repent and to follow Jesus Christ. We know that, by stretching out His arms upon the hard wood of the Cross, Christ reconciled the world to God. No one is to be left outside His saving embrace. And yet, when we look at the hard realities of our life as Church, we can see what Paul described as “the dividing wall… the hostility between us” (Ephesian 2:14). Christ has broken down all walls and made us one. But we do not see the evidence of His reconciling work, not even in His Church. This sin of racism is a slap in the face of our Savior. For this we must repent.

Frederick Buechner once wrote that repentance is not so much about looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry,” as it is about looking at the future and saying, “Wow!”  In calling for our Diocese to read Joseph Barndt, I am not calling for another expression of political correctness or white guilt. I am calling for our Diocese to continue to undergo conversion to the Kingdom of God made manifest in Jesus Christ. He is our peace (Ephesians 2:14). The agenda is Jesus.

Behind my desk at Diocesan House there hangs a famous photograph (by Ernest C.  Withers) of the Memphis sanitation workers whom Dr. Martin Luther King visited on the day before his assassination. Each one of the workers is holding a sign that reads, “I am a Man.” I believe that, in the name of Jesus Christ, we must work to bring an end to any and all practices, policies, attitudes and arrangements that would cause brothers and sisters of color to have to bear signs to bear witness to their humanity while white brothers and sisters never have to think about such things. Joe Barndt’s book will not only show us the things of which we need to repent. It will help us to come closer to Jesus, to His kingdom and to one another. It will help us to say, “Wow!” together.