A Progressive Reading List on the People Who Hijacked American Christianity
One of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know is my sister, a minister in the United Methodist Church in the southern coastal town of Southport. She was an English teacher and a writer for may years until deciding to go to get a graduate degree from Duke University and pursue ordination. Despite attending church from childhood well into my adult years, I haven't considered myself a Christian in a long time. I'm glad to live in a society where people can (currently) choose to believe or not to believe as they fit. I am committed to working with socially conscious people to build a just and fair society. But, I've lived in the Bible Belt my whole life and I reject any histrionic argument that attempts to paint all Christians with the same reductive brush.
Having established that, let me also say that there are large, visible elements of self labeled Christians who have a long documented history of racist and violent behavior and who seek power by whatever means they feel will help them achieve their aims. I feel like my beliefs are informed by facts. If you are curious, or want more information, I present you this reading list.
- The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory – American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism HarperCollins - Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement.
- The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism - The Gospel Coalition - Tisby has done a service to the church in the US by pulling together into one volume so much significant national backstory too often neglected. That includes not only white supremacy but the commendable lives of many black scholars, pastors, civil rights activists, and other figures, both male and female. It was so helpful to be reminded by The Color of Compromise of such significant components, dignifying and traumatic, of the historical memory and felt identity of many African Americans, including my brothers and sisters in Christ.
- The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church - Greg Boyd - ReKnew - Arguing from Scripture and history, Dr. Boyd makes a compelling case that whenever the church gets too close to any political or national ideology, it is disastrous for the church and harmful to society.
- Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America - HamiltonBook.com - An investigation into the rise of the Christian right over the last half-century that lays out the grim vision evangelicals are enforcing on our democracy. Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.
- In Guns We Trust: The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms | Broadleaf Books - In this unsettling investigation into white evangelicals' fusion of the gospel and guns, veteran journalist William J. Kole exposes how some Christians are standing in the way of reasonable restrictions on firearms--and how it makes us all less safe.
- The Bible Told Them So - How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy - Reading Religion - "White evangelicals who champion racial justice through individual heart changes, or reconciled relationships, or appeals to colorblindness are using the tools fashioned and utilized by their segregationist forebears precisely to avoid the racial justice their descendants now seek"
- The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian movement that is threatening our democracy- ICJS - As Matthew Taylor details in his fascinating and revelatory book, Independent Charismatic religious leaders, who twenty years ago would have been shunned by the mainstream Christian Right, are now front-line captains in the American culture wars, offering biblical rationales for the embrace of radically theocratic, authoritarian agendas. Taylor's sensitively reported exploration is a vital contribution to our understanding of the crisis facing democracy.
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