Theology Resources for those that Care about Diversity

A number of years ago I remember looking at my bookshelf and scanning through the titles when a pattern jumped out: white dude, white dude, really old white dude, and so on. You can imagine how the pattern continued. As my bookshelf focuses on significant passions at the time - theology, missiology, ecclesiology and similar topics - I found this to be quite disappointing as a healthy majority of the world isn’t American or European or anywhere close to “white”. The realization hit me: my bookshelf was colonized and it needed to be decolonized quickly.

The reality is that it is incredibly important to read, understand and learn from a wide variety of perspectives even if you might not always agree with everything that a particular perspective has to offer. This is particularly true for a topic like faith where so much culture gets added to the topic, masking what is actually important (one easy example of this is the rise of Christian Nationalism/Fascism in the US and how foreign it is to Christians elsewhere in the world as it mostly eliminates the life and actions of Jesus).

Like I said - my bookshelf needed decolonization and it needed to be a priority so I got intentional about trying to find resources from people of color that might have different and important understandings of the things I wanted to learn about.

Step one should be obvious: ==stop picking up books by old white dudes.== It’s easier to say than to do because 99% of bookstores stock the faith/theology/spirituality section with…old white dudes. But if one is intentional it’s easier than it sounds because there is a lot of stuff out there. Faith is much richer than stuffy, superficial, culturally American blandness most book stores offer but the richer, deeper, transformative stuff doesn’t sell well it seems. I could guess at some reasons but I’ll leave it at that. (I made up the 99% number based on experience and feeling, fyi)

I do want to help you out and highlight some of the more significant voices I have stumbled on that should be read and paid attention to in the faith/theological space. If you are passionate about spirituality (specifically in the Christian oriented space), please check these voices out. I’m not going to give a lot of commentary about each but rather encourage you to go out and explore them for yourself!

• This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley. If you’ve read this far and only get one book, let this be it. I can’t even begin to express how beautiful and important it is. I’ve read it through a couple of times and listened to the audio book. ==It’s that good.==
• Homeland Insecurity by Daniel White Hodge (He also hosts a podcast that I have learned a lot from called “Profane Faith”)
• The Sacrifice of Africa by Emmanuel Katongole
• The Death of race by Brian Bantum
• “The Next Evangelicalism” and “Prophetic Lament” by Soong-Chan Rah
• “Unsettling Truths” by Soong-Chan Rah and Mark Charles (see above link)
• First Nations Version - A Bible translated by First Nations North Americans for First Nations people.
• “Gods that Fail” and “Subverting Global Myths” by Vinoth Ramachandra (He also has a blog that is well worth paying attention to here)
• “Faith-Rooted Organizing” by Alexia Salvatierra and Peter Heltzel
• “A Theology of Liberation” by Gustavo Gutierrez
• “The New Global Mission” by Samuel Escobar
• The Story of Christianity Vol 1 and Vol 2 by Justo Gonzalez
• “Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor” and “Ecclesiogenesis” by Leonardo Boff
• “The Jubilee Gospel” by Kim Tan
• “Let Justice Roll Down” by John Perkins
• “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” by James Cone
• “Practices of Power” by Robery Ewusie Moses
• A Multitude of All Peoples by Vince Bantu

Important note: This isn’t an exhaustive expression of decolonization. there are many voices missing. Other voices matter and definitely need expression to fully decolonize. I wanted to focus on people of color primarily here in this list as it’s where I’ve found significant benefit in starting the work.

I’m also not reading nearly as swiftly or much in this space at the moment either as passions ebb and flow and transform. And again - please don’t consider this list to be in any way exhaustive as it certainly is not that. Also - please feel free to give suggestions to grow it.

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