Amid the struggle for social justice after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks, student leaders of Princeton Presbyterians were looking for anti-racism resources in the Christian tradition. As a ministry, and as individuals, we imperfectly acknowledge our complicity in racist systems in the Church and world. We realize that our struggle against these sins will be marked by mistakes and opportunities to grow. Nevertheless, we commit to this work as a community that strives to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”
Chaplains Andrew and Len Scales have put together an annotated list of resources for learning more about the intersections of Christian faith and anti-racist activism. This list is by no means exhaustive, but we hope that it sheds light on our individual and collective responsibility as Christians to confront and dismantle systemic racism in the United States and the world.
Articles and Letters
Brian Blount, “Statement from President Blount on the Death of George Floyd”
Brian Blount is the President of Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA, and the foremost New Testament scholar on Revelation (The Apocalypse). His New Testament Library commentary on Revelation examines the Church as a community radically committed to proclaiming Jesus as Lord in opposition to the cruel and oppressive Roman Empire. His scholarship deeply influenced Breaking Bread’s 2019 Lenten sermon series “Revelation: All Things New.” Reflecting on the death of George Floyd, Dr. Blount draws upon Revelation’s rejection of systemic evil and its meaning for today.
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Martin Luther King’s 1963 letter from prison addresses the urgency for civil rights, and the betrayal of white liberal Christian friends who named support for integration, but did not speak up or act in the struggle for justice.
Celeste Kennel-Shank and Ibram X. Kendi, “Antiracism is Everyone’s Work,” The Christian Century, February 12, 2019
Nguyên Thảo Thị Nguyễn, “You Can’t Speak Up Now Without Owning Your Racist Past,” Sojourners, June 10, 2020
Jelani Cobb, “William Barber Takes on Poverty and Race in the Age of Trump,” The New Yorker, May 14, 2018 issue.
Sarasota Statement
In 2017, Presbyterian pastors, scholars, and leaders drafted the brief Sarasota Statement to reaffirm the Church’s commitment to working toward the Kingdom of God in our time, and to renounce racism, discrimination, and injustice with our words and actions.
Belhar Confession
In 1982, Reformed South African theologian Dirk Smit (now a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary!) was one of the authors who drafted the Belhar Confession as a rebuke to Apartheid in the 1980s. The Belhar Confession articulates how the Gospel of Jesus Christ stands opposed to segregation, racism, and apartheid, all systemic evils of our time.
Lectures and Sermons Online
Theresa Thames, “Rebellious Resistance”
Dr. Thames, Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University, preaches at The Riverside Church in NYC on Pharaoh/the President in Exodus/America: “What do you do when you are oppressed on every side?”
William Barber, II, “Preaching is More Than Words”
Dr. Barber’s sermon examines the Hebrew prophets and the ministry of Jesus to talk about the need for social justice movements in the United States today.
Katie Cannon, “Journey to Liberation: The Legacy of Womanist Theology”
Dr. Cannon, one of the major voices of womanist theology, was one of the most incisive critics of racism in the Church. This short video features her and other theologians who have centered the stories and experiences of women of color in both Scripture and the Church today.
Shorter Clips
Oscar Romero Animation
Catholic saint Óscar Romero was a bold voice who confronted systemic evils of economic inequality and political repression until his assassination during worship. This short clip from the Archbishop Romero Trust gives a glimpse of what it looks like to bear witness against corporate sin.
James Baldwin’s Conversation with Paul Weiss on the Dick Cavett Show
Within about two minutes, James Baldwin dismantles Yale philosophy professor Paul Weiss’ focus on individual responsibility for overcoming oppression with a devastating account of what it’s like to live as a Black man in an America defined by systemic racism.
Kimberlé Crenshaw: What is Intersectionality?
A short primer on “intersectionality” from Kimberlé Crenshaw, the legal scholar who coined the term.
Eunjoo Mary Kim, “Preaching in Multicultural Context”
Dr. Kim is a professor of homiletics (preaching) at the Iliff School of Theology, and speaks in this clip about the need to represent different voices to grow in our understanding of who God is.
Podcasts/Recordings
Interview with Austin Channing Brown on Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast (begin at 14:40)
Queerology Podcast (particularly the episodes from June 2 & 16)
Christianity and White Supremacy: Heresy and Hope Conference at Princeton University, March 29-20, 2019. Opening & Closing panels.
Social Media
The Nap Ministry on Instagram
Study Guide and Habit Builder
21 Day Anti-Racism Challenge by the PC(USA)
Books
James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree
Cone was a brilliant theologian who developed African American liberation theology from the 1970s until his death in 2018. He is unsparing in his criticism of white churches in the United States as racist institutions. He demonstrates with clarity and creativity how the sins of racism are individual and systemic evils, that our whole society must confront its deep commitment to terrorizing Black people. The Cross and the Lynching Tree sets the horrors of lynching in America against the crucifixion of Jesus. Cone explores how the historical death of Jesus is so similar to the murder of African Americans, but he also excavates the failures of prominent white American theologians and pastors to confront racism.
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
Thurman was a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and he met with Gandhi in India in the 1930s. He became one of the most important voices for shaping the concept of non-violent resistance in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s. Thurman was part of the movement to desegregate the YMCA, he served as Dean of the Chapel at Howard University and Boston University, and he co-pastored a large, racially integrated congregation (Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples) in San Francisco in 1944. Jesus and the Disinherited explores Jesus’ life as an oppressed Palestinian Jew living in Roman-occupied Judea. Thurman confronts a complacent American Christianity that has nothing to say to the disinherited, the “people who stand with their backs to the wall.”
William Barber, II, The Third Reconstruction
Barber is the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, NC. He founded the Moral Mondays Movement in Raleigh in 2012, and he received the MacArther Genius Grant. He has recently revived Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Poor People’s Campaign” with Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. The Third Reconstruction is the story of Dr. Barber’s activism in “fusion coalitions.” On June 20, 2020, Barber and Theoharis led a digital justice gathering for the Poor People’s Campaign: a National Call for Moral Revival.
Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation
Gutiérrez is one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the 20th and 21st century. His A Theology of Liberation is not specifically about systemic racism, but rather about how systemic issues that oppress the poor are sins that the Gospel of Jesus Christ confronts. His context orients him toward a particular focus on extreme poverty and political repression in Latin America in the late 1960s. He offers a transformative perspective that God works in and through human history to deliver people from oppression (see Exodus, the Minor Prophets, Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels), and that theology must reflect critically on Christian praxis. For Gutiérrez, what we believe and what we do as Christians are inextricably linked. Furthermore, Christian practices should be critically evaluated by their impact more than their intentions.
Wilda Gafney, Womanist Midrash
Gafney is a Hebrew Bible scholar, She blends ancient Jewish interpretive methods (midrash) and African American preaching practices (sanctified imagination) to look at the lives of oppressed women and girls in the texts of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). She examines systemic evil as a theme in Scripture, and what it means for us reading, teaching, and preaching these texts today.