Author: Susan Squires

Color of Compromise

“Churches remain racially segregated and are largely ineffective in addressing complex racial challenges. In The Color of Compromise, Jemar Tisby takes us back to the root of this injustice in the American church, highlighting the cultural and institutional tables we have to flip in order to bring about progress between black and white people.”

“This book provides an in-depth diagnosis for a racially divided American church and suggests ways to foster a more equitable and inclusive environment among God’s people.” Read more here.

Jemar Tisby’s book & video series on the history of racism in and around the American church has become a bestseller. He is speaking to the moment we are in right now.

Who: Christians who are concerned about racism and ready to learn.

What: The Color of Compromise Video Study

When: Wednesdays, Sept. 15 – Nov. 10, 6:30-7:45 p.m.

Where: Bethel Lutheran Church, 5110 Grand Ave., Gurnee

Why: The church needs to be honest about her complicity with racism and actively work against it.

How: At each session we will watch a video (usually 20-25 minutes) together then discuss in small groups. There is no required reading.

Please register by completing this simple Google form. Please register by Friday, Sept. 11

Recommended Watching: Poverty

There are many excellent resources online to help us understand poverty and God’s call for us to pursue justice alongside the poor. Here are some videos that stand out for me.

Ms. Hutchinson is an advocate for the poor who has lived in poverty herself. Here she testifies about the ways American public policy can trap people living poverty even if they are able to work full time. We must correct our story of what poverty is and what is causes it. This 6-minute video is not to be missed.

The Generosity video from the Bible Project is a beautiful picture of Christ-motivated generosity.

This 6-minute video explaining the federal policy of redlining, which I regularly use in teaching Bridges Out of Poverty, concisely describes both the race-based policy and the wealth-building consequences.

Even though we may have been reading the Bible our whole lives, we may not yet see clearly God’s heart for justice throughout the Biblical narrative. This video helps us to see it.

The past year has brought us a rich collection of documentaries revealing the intimate suffering of poverty. This is one of 2 hour-long films about families in poverty from the PBS Frontline series.

I LOVE THIS FILM. The Florida Project is a feature-length movie told from the perspective of a young girl living in a hotel. She is a smart, fun, and resourceful child living as “the hidden poor” – she has a bed to sleep in but not a home. Discovering the dangers of her family’s life on the margins through her eyes is powerful.

On Critical Race Theory

Should we be afraid of critical race theory?

“In the church when we talk about any issues around race or criminal justice it brings up the question of should we be afraid of Critical Race Theory? Could you give us a working definition and talk about that idea?”

I had never heard of critical race theory (CRT), and then suddenly I heard it and now it seems to be everywhere. As the question quoted above reflects, sometimes Christians express fear of critical race theory, believing, I think, that it draws people away from the gospel. CRT is a way of describing how racism works in the United States, how deeply embedded it is in many systems. It was first developed by legal scholars and now informs scholarship in many areas.

The Southern Baptist Convention has been in a relatively high profile debate over CRT. President Trump issued an executive order banning diversity training rooted in CRT.

Every Christian social justice leader I follow has addressed critical race theory in about the same way: “I’d never heard of CRT until someone ‘accused’ me of using it. Then I looked into it and realized, hey, this describes what I’ve been seeing!”

I appreciated how the LRJ panel addressed this topic. Dr. Koehlinger and Rev. Lattimore both address the question from their different perspectives – academic and theological.

When Rev. Bolling picks up the discussion later, he addresses the connection between a theory (like critical race theory) and a concrete experience (like the criminal justice system, which disproportionately punishes people of color). He compares it to the theory of gravity and a child’s ice cream falling on the floor. Whether or not you are willing to discuss the theory of gravity, the effect of gravity happens: ice cream on the floor, inedible. We can refuse to discuss CRT, but it is just describing an actual experience people are having in the world. With or without the theory, the experience remains.

The panel’s discussion here met a need for me and I am thankful for it.

Coming next: On the U.S. prison system and the church

Why study history?

For Christians who advocate for racial justice, understanding a Biblical perspective on justice is essential. It’s also complicated, and ongoing, and sometimes controversial.

So I was intrigued when Lutherans for Racial Justice hosted a panel discussion in response to the Netflix documentary 13th in early December. The panel discussed several issues related to criminal justice and racial justice from their perspective as Lutheran Christians.

The discussion is over an hour long, so over three days this week I’m going to post a short description of one portion of the discussion I found helpful. Each post will have a link to the video that starts at the relevant point. (The video above will start from the beginning of the discussion.)

  • Today: On the value of learning history
  • Wednesday: On Critical Race Theory
  • Friday: On the U.S. prison system and the church

On the value of learning history

What do you know about Black history in America? What do you know about the role of the church during Civil Rights? For most of us the answer is, “Not much.” Does that matter?

Why is understanding the history and experience of Black Americans important?

Our denomination is predominantly White, and we need to make a concerted effort to learn Black history. Rev. Lattimore shows us that this is a need that was identified by our church body more than 50 years ago. In 1968, seminary president J.A.O. Preus wrote that, “the white majority in our Lutheran Churches needs to listen very carefully to what [our Lutheran negro clergymen are saying]… because we need to give to the black man in our churches a position of dignity and equality, which he feels (and probably rightly) that he has not heretofore enjoyed.” (The Springfielder, Summer, 1968)

Dr. Koehlinger talks about the church’s role in the Civil Rights movement and points out that, although we prefer to remember the ways the church supported freedom and dignity, our history is more complicated: for abolition AND for slavery; supporting racial integration AND supporting Jim Crow laws.

Taking an honest account of the church’s role in the struggle for racial justice is essential to moving forward as agents of true hope. God can’t use us to bring healing if we do not acknowledge our complicity with sin. A study of The Color of Compromise, beginning January 11, is one way to do that. Registration is open until Friday, January 8. Find the details here.

LRJ Panel members – Rev. Kyle Blake, Rev. Dr. Gerard Bolling, Dr. Amy Koehlinger, Rev. Warren Lattimore, Chaplain Lorinda Schwarz, and attorney Jacq Wilson.

Coming Wednesday: LRJ Panel On Critical Race Theory

Frontline Explores Poverty

Public Television’s Frontline has produced two excellent documentaries on the experience of American families living in poverty. The first came out in 2012 and followed three families in the wake of the 2008 recession. In September of this year, another documentary followed three different families coping with poverty, COVID, and the foregrounding of racism in our national life.

Both of these films are available online for free. I encourage you to watch them.

Perhaps, like me, you prefer to have an opportunity for discussion with a group. We’d love to meet up with you on Zoom.

Who: Anyone interested in understanding more about the experiences of American families living in poverty.

What: Viewing and discussion of Frontline documentaries on poverty. We will use the tools from Bridges Out of Poverty to consider how families adapt to limited resources. (You do not need to complete Bridges training to participate.)

When:

  • “Poor Kids” documentary (2012) – Thursday, December 3, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
  • “Growing Up Poor in America” documentary (2020) – Thursday, December 17, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Where: Anywhere you can log on to Zoom!

Register for one or both events using this simple Google Form.

Recommended Reading: Online Resources about Poverty

I have shared a list of books I recommend, and here is a list of articles I like that are available online. Please take some time to read some of these. Alleviating poverty is a marathon, not a sprint. We need to run with wisdom.

Being Poor by John Scalzi – This is a brilliant piece for anyone who has never been poor. It’s a set of vivid snaphots of what poverty means in concrete terms. Don’t stop with the original piece – in the comments section people have added from their own lives. (Scalzi wrote this in 2005. After 500+ comments he finally shut down the comment section. )

The Bottom Line: One in three families can’t afford diapers. Why are they so expensive? by Kathleen McGrory, Tampa Bay Times – The story of Lalandria Goolsby, a brand new mother who is barely getting by, and the American diaper industry. Lalandria’s story reveals some of the ways that systems intended to provide support don’t actually work well for people living in poverty.

The Marshmallow Study Revisited University of Rochester – Ok, this one isn’t recommended reading, it’s recommended watching. You’re welcome. This 4-minute video shows a laboratory experiment comparing how self-control develops in a reliable environment vs. an unreliable environment. Poverty is an environment that is chronically unreliable. What does this suggest about our expectations (and judgments) regarding self-control?

Speaking of self-control,  check out It’s not a lack of self-control that keeps people poor by Elliott Berkman. “This research makes me rethink both poverty and self-control. The science suggests that poverty has powerful harmful effects on people, and helps explain why it’s so hard to escape. Their choices are much more a product of their situation, rather than a lack of self-control.”

This one is for the ambitious reader. Poverty Interrupted: Applying Behavioral Science to the Context of Chronic Scarcity (2015) This one is full of behavioral science theory and practice, which means there are specific suggestions about how to design programs and organizations so that we actually help people get out of poverty. Chronic scarcity is an environment that nurtures different resources and different needs than the stability of middle class. I hope you’ll check it out.

Recommended Reading: Books on Poverty & Racism

Reading is a great way to grow in knowledge and imagination. There is so much outside my life experience and reading helps me start to see how my neighbors’ lives might be different from mine. These books are some of my favorites on poverty and racial division/reconciliation.

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The Color of Law (2017, Rothstein)

Rothstein’s book directly addresses this question: Is racial segregation in housing de facto (resulting from individual choices) or de jure (created by law and public policy?

Chapter by chapter he illuminates how we created this system by public policy. We chose to be racially segregated.

“When the St. Louis developer Charles Vatterott procured Federal Housing Administration-sponsored financing for his St. Ann suburb, he had to include language in deeds stating that ‘no lot or portion of a lot or building erected thereon shall be sol, leased, rented or occupied by any other than those of the Caucasian race.” (Rothstein, p. 85) Housing developers needed the security of government-backed loans to build; the government required racial discrimination.

Please read this book to understand how public policy can create wealth for some and poverty for others. Even after unjust policies are changed, generational effects persist and we need to understand them.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2015, Stevenson)

“The story of the Equal Justice Initiative, from the early days with a small staff facing the nation’s highest death sentencing and execution rates, through a successful campaign to challenge the cruel practice of sentencing children to die in prison, to revolutionary projects designed to confront Americans with our history of racial injustice.”

It’s a compelling read weaving individual stories with clear explanations of criminal justice policy and the racism woven into our policies. It is also full of grace and mercy and a deep understanding that we are all broken.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016, Desmond)

“Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.” (Desmond)

Like many of the books recommended here, Desmond combines individual people’s stories with clear explanations of policies. We need to understand how the combination of policies, exploitation, community resources, and individual choices make poverty persist.

Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How it Defines Our Lives (2014, Mullainathan & Shafir)

These authors show how experiencing scarcity affects how we think and how we solve problems. They separate the situation of scarcity from the person who is living with it. Very relevant to living in poverty, which is an environment characterized by scarcity.

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (2000, Emerson & Smith)

An insightful, methodical examination of how the church explicitly opposes racism but structurally recreates a society divided by race. We cannot change what we do not see. This book revealed layers to our racial division that I could not see before.

Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces the Keep Us Apart (2013, Cleveland)

Class, race, doctrine, geography… there are so many things that separate us. What does it mean to be one in Christ? Can we draw the circle of “us” so that it truly includes everyone? Cleveland explores this with wisdom and grace.

$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (2015, Edin & Shaefer)

A vivid picture of some individual families living in a very unstable situation. It also has a helpful overview of the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill, including what the policymakers’ goals were and how it has fallen short.

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000, Putnam)

We are disconnected from each other and from our communities. This book explores how that happened and why it matters.

When Helping Hurts book coverWhen Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor… and Yourself  (2009, Corbett & Fikkert)

What is the church’s role in alleviating poverty? This book is excellent. It is the basis of the video-based class I teach.

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping (1994, Sapolsky)

Smart and funny. Especially worthwhile if you are interested in the relationship between socio-economic status and health.

Why Are Our Neighborhoods Divided by Race?

My region, like most around the country, is generally divided by race. There are communities where the residents are mostly white next door to communities where the residents are  mostly people of color. These racial divisions usually accompany differences in wealth. Why is that?

It’s because we designed it that way. After World War II when the GI bill made home mortgages widely available to returning soldiers and their families, the U.S. government and the banks treated soldiers differently based solely on race. This 6-minute clip from the documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion explains it well: