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Community & Diversity
Developing Diversity
Download Below are a number of books which you may find helpful in learning more about how to develop diversity in your church. This page will be updated occasionally with new recommendations. Click each title to be taken to an external website to purchase.
Recommended Titles
Ghost Ship by A.D.A France-Williams
The Church is very good at saying all the right things about racial equality. But the reality is that the institution has utterly failed to back up these good intentions with demonstrable efforts to reform. It is a long way from being a place of black flourishing. Through conversation with clergy, lay people and campaigners in the Church of England, A.D.A France-Williams issues a stark warning to the church, demonstrating how black and brown ministers are left to drown in a sea of complacency and collusion.
We Need To Talk About Race by Ben Lindsay
From the UK Church’s complicity in the transatlantic slave trade to the whitewashing of Christianity throughout history, the Church has a lot to answer for when it comes to race relations. Christianity has been dubbed the white man’s religion, yet the Bible speaks of an impartial God and shows us a diverse body of believers.
Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCaulley
Reading While Black is a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation. At a time in which some within the African American community are questioning the place of the Christian faith in the struggle for justice, New Testament scholar McCaulley argues that reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition is invaluable for connecting with a rich faith history and addressing the urgent issues of our times.
Every Tribe by Sharon Prentis
The Bible tells us that Jesus is for every tribe, language, people and nation – so why are all the saints in our stained-glass windows white? In Every Tribe, editor Sharon Prentis and a diverse team of contributors present a powerful challenge to the bias that taken hold of storytelling in the Church. They tell the true, and in some casing surprising, stories of the lives of twelve Christian saints, including St Augustine, who came from present day Algeria, and St George, an immigrant with a Turkish father and a Palestinian mother. This is a book of saints for anyone wishing to deepen their understanding of how church history has been white-washed throughout the centuries, and how that has impacted the way we think about race and diversity within the church today. A celebration of the true diversity of Christian saints, it will inspire the church to become what it is meant to be: the rainbow people of God serving the diverse needs of a diverse world.
