Suggested Reading: David Swanson, Rediscipling the White Church
David W. Swanson, Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity (IVP, 2020)
Chicago area pastor David Swanson claims that white Christians have been “discipled by race.” Drawing on the work of Calvin College philosophy professor James K.A. Smith and Dean of Yale Divinity School Willie James Jennings—two thinkers important to my forthcoming book—Swanson plainly states that the imagination of white Christianity in America has been shaped by racial categories and racism. Such insidious formation has taken time to concretize, but in the 21st century we see a church that is not very resilient to the way the racist winds blow. Swanson writes:
“For the most part, white Christianity is not making disciples who reflect and announce the division-healing kingdom of God, and the evidence is plain to see. And the reason for this failure of discipleship is profound if also relatively simple. White Christianity has been blind to the powerful racial discipleship that has formed the imaginations of white Christians.”
Swanson further explains “racial discipleship” as formation “framed by the narrative of racial difference and formed by racial practices.” While we like to believe ourselves to be thinking, rational beings—willfully choosing and acting our way through the world—we are largely moved by our desires. Desires, I would add, bent toward our security and self-preservation. One need not be a Qanon-er, militia member, or card-carrying white supremacist to slip into such defensive postures and behaviors. In fact, it’s the everyday, largely unconscious choices away from racial solidarity and toward our own ends that eventually result in a polis, church, or individual that cannot recognize its own failings.
Speaking directly to the Church, Swanson says, “Because white Christianity has largely ignored this deforming cultural discipleship, we have been unable to resist it.”
Rediscipling the White Church is a highly readable book written for church leaders and lay readers. Swanson helpfully recounts his own biases, offering several illustrations to flesh out what the lay reader might consider to be more philosophical concepts. He names his own failings and never succumbs to a preachiness that signals his arrival at the mount of perfect racial awareness. Far from it. Readers will recognize a kind and humble approach by Swanson that invites readers to trade in “racial discipleship” for a renewal of church practices, which at their best, reorient us to seeking the Kingdom of God.
Swanson names the first steps on this journey: Listen and lament. Discipleship is, simply put, following Jesus…the real Jesus, not the ideal into which you’ve stuffed your pre-packaged hopes and dreams of American life. Following Jesus “leads us from segregation to solidarity with those we have wounded.” Swanson continues that we (if you’re a white Christian) “must become accustomed to the very thing whiteness has insulated us from: uncomfortable truth.”
Of course the uncomfortable truth will turn off some people. Rather than take the time to listen, lament, and then learn, they’ll run to their favorite YouTube personality who’s made some slick video dismissing everything they want to be dismissed and confirming their every bias. That is the quick, easy fix of “racial discipleship.” But, it’s not the radical discipleship of following the first-century Jewish prophet of Roman-occupied Palestine.
Who should read this?
Church leaders and lay-members looking for a “next steps” approach to their journey toward solidarity. I could see a church reading Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise alongside, or prior to, Swanson’s book. If you’re outside of the Church, it’s not likely to be your kind of book, because well-over half of Rediscipling is devoted to church practices. On that note, too, if you belong to an evangelical church, several of these practices may be foreign to you compared to those grounded in more obvious liturgical traditions. Still, Swanson offers a gift to church-folk of any stripe who want to get involved in the holy work of eradicating white supremacy from the Church.
Author/book LINK: https://dwswanson.com
(© 2020, Justin Phillips)