Reconciliation Reading for Black History Month
More Than Equals, co-authored by Chris Rice and the late Spencer Perkins, is considered one of the pivotal books in the Christian racial reconciliation movement that found its greatest momentum in the early and mid 1990s. My husband and I used it for many years in supper club book discussions, and numerous churches and ministries around the nation found it to be an indispensable resource. Against the backdrop of the story of Spencer and Chris’s interracial friendship and evolving ministry during the late 1980s and early ’90s in Jackson, Mississippi, the book covers the definitions of racism in America, white privilege, white blinders, and black rage. A 1994 winner of the Christianity Today Book Award, it’s one of my all-time favorite books on the issue of race, faith, and cross-cultural ministry.
The early ’90s yielded a flood of racial reconciliation books and articles thanks, in part, to Rodney King’s now legendary question: “Can we all get along?” But over the years a host of other books have been written on the subject of reconciliation and social justice in the context of Christian faith. In honor of Black History Month, here is a small sampling of important titles. Please feel free to add your own favorites to the list in the comment box below.