An indispensable work that challenges white Christians to confront and atone for past sins.
A writer offers an indictment of six centuries of white Christianity and a guide to racial reconciliation in today’s church.
As a white minister who spent most of his career affiliated with majority black or multiracial churches, Garber is attuned to the “ecclesiastical apartheid” of America’s houses of worship. He devotes the first half of his narrative to a systematic history of the intertwining of Christianity and racism. Beginning with Pope Nicholas V’s 1455 papal bull that encouraged Roman Catholic nations to subjugate non-Christians through Protestant defenses of slavery in the 19th century based on Pauline epistles and an amorphous “Curse of Ham,” Christians justified white supremacy for centuries. Even after the abolition of slavery, white Christians passed Jim Crow laws, participated in lynchings, and responded at best with skepticism, if not outright hostility, to the civil rights movement. The author extends this historical pattern to contemporary Christians who embrace a convenient ideology of “colorblindness” that self-servingly benefits whites and ignores racial injustices like the mass incarceration of black men. The second half of the book centers on healing, which Garber suggests must begin with the confession of racist sins, both historical and contemporary “colorblind” iterations that treat structural and historical racism with ignorant ambivalence. After confession comes redress, which centers not on ignoring race and treating everyone “equally” but on providing justice to those harmed, which often comes at the expense of the culprits, as shown in biblical stories about repentance. Though Garber does not pull any punches in this illuminating and vital work, his analysis is particularly nuanced in differentiating between Catholic, Evangelical, mainline Protestant, and Pentecostal histories and approaches to race. And while his focus is on the white church, he deftly highlights an alternate black religious universe that spans from the liberation theology of James Cone to the Beloved Community of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But this extreme thoroughness comes at the cost of an often overwhelmingly dense book whose central points are sometimes overshadowed by a deluge of supporting evidence.
An indispensable work that challenges white Christians to confront and atone for past sins. (index)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-977208-13-2
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.
One of the best pitchers of his generation—and often the only Black man on his team—shares an extraordinary life in baseball.
A high school star in several sports, Sabathia was being furiously recruited by both colleges and professional teams when the death of his grandmother, whose Social Security checks supported the family, meant that he couldn't go to college even with a full scholarship. He recounts how he learned he had been drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the first round over the PA system at his high school. In 2001, after three seasons in the minor leagues, Sabathia became the youngest player in MLB (age 20). His career took off from there, and in 2008, he signed with the New York Yankees for seven years and $161 million, at the time the largest contract ever for a pitcher. With the help of Vanity Fair contributor Smith, Sabathia tells the entertaining story of his 19 seasons on and off the field. The first 14 ran in tandem with a poorly hidden alcohol problem and a propensity for destructive bar brawls. His high school sweetheart, Amber, who became his wife and the mother of his children, did her best to help him manage his repressed fury and grief about the deaths of two beloved cousins and his father, but Sabathia pursued drinking with the same "till the end" mentality as everything else. Finally, a series of disasters led to a month of rehab in 2015. Leading a sober life was necessary, but it did not tame Sabathia's trademark feistiness. He continued to fiercely rile his opponents and foment the fighting spirit in his teammates until debilitating injuries to his knees and pitching arm led to his retirement in 2019. This book represents an excellent launching point for Jay-Z’s new imprint, Roc Lit 101.
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13375-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Roc Lit 101
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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