Customer Reviews

Separate No More: Understanding and Developing Racial Reconciliation in Your Church

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I bought this book at a recent Promise Keepers rally, and it's a great introduction to racial reconciliation. It gives a solid overview of the black experience in evangelical and Pentecostal denominations, and helps whites and blacks understand the barriers that need to be transcended for vital, biracial congregations.

I was a little disappointed, however, that the book focuses too much on Pentecostal denominations. In fact, all the ministers interviewed for this book were from churches like the AOG and COGIC. Very little attention is paid to Roman Catholicism, which itself has a very checkered history in regard to race relations in America, and the abolitionist activities of most mainstream Baptists are mentioned once before the once-aberrant views of the SBC on race relations become the focus of discussion as far as Baptists are concerned. (Except for the aberration of the SBC, the Baptists have an almost unparalleled history of excellent race relations, and credit should be given where credit is due. I personally think that the SBC should have disbanded and re-constituted itself as a new organization to erase the pro-slavery stain that the SBC inflicted on the Baptist name.) I was a little turned off by the excessive focus on churches like the AOG, COG, and COGIC, since I don't feel these groups are very representative of the mainstream of American evangelicalism and Christianity in general. But despite the somewhat unrepresentative sample of denominations, the suggestions in the book are easily applicable to any denominational church, and it's well worth reading.