“It’s time to stop prioritizing tradition and civility over the lives of the marginalized. Our well-meaning desires to be tolerant and welcoming have left us ill equipped to face radical evil.”
―Lenny Duncan, Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US
It is past time for us all to name white supremacy as a radical evil in our midst. White supremacy is something found not only on the fringes but in the very bedrock of our society and our nation―and, for those of us who are white, white supremacy is in our hearts as well, even if we do not want it there. Coming to realize and understand this fact is difficult, but it is also necessary work that involves many steps, including listening to people of color. As people of faith, we understand that we must confess to and repent of our sin before we can move forward.
This email includes many books by people of color, along with a curriculum from Sparkhouse that equips adults to have meaningful and transformative conversations about race. While that curriculum is the only resource here explicitly designed for group use, any of the books in this email could be useful in a group study. We hope you will consider doing a racial justice book study in your congregation; for that purpose, many of these resources have quantity discounts.
These powerful books by African American thought leaders show the way as we join them and others in this critical movement toward equity.

Luther's Small Catechism with African Descent Reflections
Edited by Joseph Bocko
In connection with the observance of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation events initiated by the 95 Theses, a distinguished group of African descent Lutheran theologians gathered at the offices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to explore and reflect on Luther's Small Catechism.
While continuing to affirm the gift of the Small Catechism in the life of the church, they recognized that the meaning of these explanations of Christian faith could and should be broadened to address the historical, cultural, and linguistic experience of Lutherans of African descent, both on the African continent and in the diaspora. . . .
This edition of Luther's Small Catechism is not only the version of the Small Catechism widely used among Lutherans in North America today, but also includes reflections from a distinguished group of African descent Lutheran theologians. These brief commentaries offer additional context, language, and illumination from the experiences of African descent people, both past and present, to enrich our understanding of the Small Catechism and enliven faith. ―Excerpt from the introduction by the Rev. Dr. James Kenneth Echols (1951- 2018).


Dialogues On: Race
From Sparkhouse
Sparkhouse's Dialogues On series is designed to create a trusting environment for small groups, engage in conversations about local and worldwide issues, turn conflict into community, and build lasting relationships. The facilitator guide includes a new technique for each session to further those goals.
Dialogues On sessions task participants with reading about a weekly topic, gathering in a small group to discuss what they've learned, watching a video featuring a leading voice, and sharing ideas with the group.
Dialogues On: Race spans seven sessions and includes topics such as the social construct of race, the Bible and race in America, anti-blackness, the erasure of Native American stories, the intersection of race and gender, and the problem with rushing to reconciliation. Contributors to the learner book include Rozella Haydée White, Lenny Duncan, and Jim Bear Jacobs.




White Savior: Racism in the American Church
From Sparkhouse
This documentary repackages content from the Dialogues On: Race course and presents it in the form of a documentary available to individuals and groups not able to do the entire course. Based on interviews and current research, the documentary film White Savior explores the historic relationship between racism and American Christianity, the ongoing segregation of the church in the US, and the complexities of racial reconciliation.




Parable of the Brown Girl: The Sacred Lives of Girls of Color
By Khristi Lauren Adams
The stories of girls of color are often overlooked, unseen, and ignored rather than valued and heard. In Parable of the Brown Girl, minister and youth advocate Khristi Lauren Adams introduces readers to the resilience, struggle, and hope held within these stories. Instead of relegating these young women of color to the margins, Adams brings their stories front and center where they belong. Thought-provoking and inspirational, Parable of the Brown Girl is a powerful example of how God uses the narratives we most often ignore to teach us the most important lessons in life. It's time to pay attention.


Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S.
By Lenny Duncan
Formerly incarcerated, Lenny Duncan is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make the headlines, but Duncan sees a direct line between the church's lack of diversity and lack of vitality. Dear Church offers a bold new vision for the future of communities of faith and calls everyone to the front lines of the church's renewal through racial equality and justice.
Dear Church includes a discussion guide in the back.


30-Day Journey with Martin Luther King Jr.
By Jonathan Chism
Martin Luther King Jr. led a country from division, racism, and hate toward unity and equality. Through brief daily readings and reflections, the 30-Day Journey series invites readers to be inspired and transformed through meaningful reflection and spiritual growth. This journey provides the perfect way to engage the thought of this hero of the Civil Rights Movement.


Strength to Love
By Martin Luther King, Jr.
In these short meditative and sermonic pieces, some of them composed in jail and all of them crafted during the tumultuous years of the civil rights struggle, Dr. King articulated and espoused in a deeply personal and compelling way his commitment to justice and to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual conversion that makes his work as much a blueprint for Christian discipleship today as it was then.


The Death of Race: Building a New Christianity in a Racial World
By Brian Bantum
Brian Bantum argues that our attempts to heal racism will not succeed until we address what gives rise to racism in the first place: a fallen understanding of our bodies that sees difference as something to resist. Bantum examines the question of race through the lens of our bodies and what our bodies mean in a racialized world, one that perpetually dehumanizes dark bodies, thereby rendering all of us less than what God intends for us.


The Last Blues Preacher: Reverend Clay Evans, Black Lives, and the Faith that Woke the Nation
By Zach Mills
Born in 1925 into a life of sharecropping in Brownsville, Tennessee, Clay Evans was desperate to escape life working for the descendants of plantation owners. A greater calling drew Evans into ministry, and he soon stood upon a unique stage as one of America’s most famous gospel singers, civil rights heroes, and the godfather of Chicago’s black preachers.
Zach Mills’s lively and powerful biography, The Last Blues Preacher, brings the life and work of Reverend Evans into our time and examines how current national conversations on race, religion, politics, and popular culture can and should inform contemporary activism.


Coretta: The Story of Coretta Scott King: Commemorative Edition
By Octavia Vivian
Coretta Scott King grew up in Alabama and worked her way through college, only to discover that she was not allowed to teach in white schools in Ohio. She pursued a musical career in Boston, where she met Martin Luther King Jr. The Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 brought Dr. King and his wife into national prominence. Since then, and even in the wake of the assassination of her husband, the nation has seen the beauty and composure of Coretta Scott King as she continues to speak and act on behalf of civil rights.


Bipolar Faith: A Black Woman's Journey with Depression and Faith
By Monica A. Coleman
Bipolar Faith is both a spiritual autobiography and a memoir of mental illness. In this powerful book, Monica Coleman shares her life-long dance with trauma, depression, and the threat of death. She examines the ways that the legacies of slavery, war, sharecropping, poverty, and alcoholism mask a family history of mental illness. Only as she was able to face her illness was she able to live faithfully with bipolar. And in the process, she discovered a new and liberating vision of God.
