Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

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Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ECPA BESTSELLER • “When it comes to the intersection of race, privilege, justice, and the church, Tasha is without question my best teacher. Be the Bridge is THE tool I wish to put in every set of hands.”—Jen Hatmaker
 
WINNER OF THE CHRISTIAN BOOK AWARD® • Winner of the Christianity Today Book Award • A leading advocate for racial reconciliation calls Christians to move toward deeper understanding in the midst of a divisive culture.
 
In an era where we seem to be increasingly divided along racial lines, many are hesitant to step into the gap, fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing. At times the silence, particularly within the church, seems deafening.
 
But change begins with an honest conversation among a group of Christians willing to give a voice to unspoken hurts, hidden fears, and mounting tensions. These ongoing dialogues have formed the foundation of a global movement called Be the Bridge—a nonprofit organization whose goal is to equip the church to have a distinctive and transformative response to racism and racial division.
 
In this perspective-shifting book, founder Latasha Morrison shows how you can participate in this incredible work and replicate it in your own community. With conviction and grace, she examines the historical complexities of racism. She expertly applies biblical principles, such as lamentation, confession, and forgiveness, to lay the framework for restoration.
 
Along with prayers, discussion questions, and other resources to enhance group engagement, Be the Bridge presents a compelling vision of what it means for every follower of Jesus to become a bridge builder—committed to pursuing justice and racial unity in light of the gospel.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780525652885
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Publication date: 10/15/2019
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 282,232
Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Latasha Morrison is a bridge-builder, reconciler, and a compelling voice in the fight for racial justice. Ebony magazine recognized her as one of their 2017 Power 100 for her work as a community crusader. Tasha has spoken across the country at events that include: IF:Gathering, Justice Conference, Youth Specialties, Catalyst, Orange Conference, MOPS International and many others. A native of North Carolina, Tasha earned degrees in human development and business leadership. In 2016 she founded Be the Bridge to inspire and equip ambassadors of racial reconciliation. In addition to equipping more than 1,000 sub-groups across five countries, Be the Bridge hosts a closed, moderated online community of bridge-builders on Facebook with more than 20,000 members.

Read an Excerpt

1

How We Begin

A Posture of Humility

The professor stood at the front of my African American History class, educating freshmen about the African civilizations prior to the Atlantic slave trade. For the first time, I heard the full story of my heritage beyond slavery, the unwhitewashed truth. And all of it felt so significant to me.

As I listened, a feeling of discomfort set in. Why hadn’t I heard about the African empires—the kings, queens, and ingenuity of the people—prior to college? Why didn’t I learn this in high school? Why didn’t my family teach me? Why had no one introduced me to any of the scores of books on the slave trade?

Sure, I’d been taught simple Black history. “Your ancestors were slaves,” my high school teachers said. “Your ancestors were sharecroppers,” my parents taught me. I knew that before President Lincoln freed the slaves, Harriet Tubman had an underground railroad. I seemed to remember that maybe Frederick Douglass was part of that railroad. I knew Douglass had written a few books and published a newspaper. I knew about the Civil War, but there was a massive hole in my understanding of history. What had really happened between that war and the time when Martin Luther King Jr. marched for expanded civil rights? I didn’t know. And why did America seem so bogged down in racial division and discrimination so many years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed? I couldn’t quite say, at least not before I took that class.

I listened to my professor at East Carolina University share the unfiltered history, and as I received this fuller truth about African culture and my African American heritage, something shook loose. Why was I so uncomfortable with hearing this?

Underneath my shame and embarrassment, I felt ignorant. Ignorant of the historical context of my people. Ignorant of my own roots. I wondered how the White students in the class felt. Did they feel as ignorant as I did? Were they filled with embarrassment and shame by what their ancestors did to my people?

That history was part of our truth, the richness of the African cultures before the institution of the slave trade by White colonialists. It was a sort of shared history, even though my ancestors and the ancestors of the White students had been on opposites sides of a divide. Now we were together, facing the full truth of our past, and it was awkward for all of us.

When we lack historical understanding, we lose part of our identity. We don’t know where we came from and don’t know what there is to celebrate or lament. Likewise, without knowing our history, it can be difficult to know what needs repairing, what needs reconciling. As I sat in the class, I realized I had a lot to learn about my ancestral identity, about our collective history, and about the history of our country. And over the course of that semester, as I discovered more about where I came from and who I am, a sense of pride began to well up. I realized my very existence was a miracle in the making. I came from brave people, a dignified people, a resilient people. I came from a significant people, and this made me significant. As I learned more and more about the injustices wrought against my ancestors, I began to realize that we deserved justice. This realization awakened within me indignation, pain, and a holy discontent.

This holy discontent intensified after I graduated from college and began my career in corporate America. I worked for a predominantly White Fortune 500 company in Atlanta, an office in which very few people understood the history of Black America, much less the full implications of our country’s discriminatory past. When I later moved to Austin, Texas, in 2012 to join the staff of an almost entirely White church with an almost entirely White staff, that holy discontent reached a boiling point.

As I became friends with church and staff members, I began to see our historical and cultural disconnection. We had different worldviews, experiences, and perspectives. I’d come to learn the ways the White church in America had perpetuated slavery, segregation, and racism. I had learned how so many churches used and abused Scripture to justify the practices, how some denominations even split over slavery. (The Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, was formed in 1845 as a result of a split within the Baptist denomination over whether or not slave owners could serve as missionaries.) My White friends had no connection with my heritage, had no idea how much had been taken from my people when we were sold into slavery. For the most part, they didn’t understand the heritage of racism baked into their own social and cultural structures, including their church.

It was a good church, full of good people, but I came to realize that I was the first and only African American person many of them had ever worked with. As a person of color, I’d integrated within their majority culture. I had become familiar with their movies, music, and fashion. I listened to contemporary Christian music and was familiar with what some of my Black friends call “White worship.” You know it: the moody guitar-driven music that sounds like Coldplay. I watched Friends, The Office, Gilmore Girls, and even the Hallmark Channel. I was comfortable and familiar with White culture, but they’d never had to learn about the history or culture of my people. If I quoted a line from The Color Purple or Doug E. Fresh, my friends were lost. And because I was the only Black person in so many of their lives, I became the go-to source for answers to all their questions about hair and music and all things Black. It felt as if people had saved all their “ask a Black person” questions for me, and they unloaded until it almost drove me insane.

But being the point person for all things African American wasn’t the only thing that led to my deepening disillusionment. A racial disconnect and a surprising level of ignorance about the divisions between our cultures was deeply rooted in the way they did church, and the more I encountered it, the more broken my heart became. Church leaders were slow to acknowledge, let alone lament, the continuing racism in our country. They didn’t have any understanding of the prevalence of police brutality against brown bodies in our country or how so many of my Black brothers are pulled over simply for being Black in a White neighborhood. They equated working hard with success, and they dismissed the reality of systemic issues that create barriers for people of color. They’d never been followed in a department store for being Black, never been stopped and questioned simply for walking down the street. They had always been given the benefit of the doubt, believed to be innocent until proven guilty. They couldn’t see the privileges they enjoyed simply because of the rules set by White society. And sometimes church leaders even referred to non-White communities with terms like they, them, and those people.

The longer I worked in the church, the more I came to see that it wasn’t a credible witness for racial reconciliation. This wasn’t true of only that local congregation, either. As I spoke with my Black friends across the country, I came to understand just how divided the non-White culture and majority-culture churches are. But why is it this way?

I began to ask questions of and have conversations with my White friends within the church about this topic, and as I did, I found that many were oblivious to the full scope of American history and its multicultural realities. With that realization, I made a conscious decision: I’d do my best to build a bridge between the majority and non-White church cultures. That bridge might open space for my White friends to better understand my history, culture, and experience and would provide room for my non-White culture friends to share their pain. I didn’t know exactly where to start, so I started simply. I invited my White friends to watch the movie based on Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple.

As I stretched deeper into this bridge-building process, a few friends joined with me and we formed a racial-reconciliation discussion group. We came together under an umbrella, the shared idea that we could and must do better, and doing better meant showing up to listen and learn. We met once a month to discuss racial tensions in America. Around our reconciliation table, I shared about the history of racism in American Christianity and challenged us to remove the words them, those, and they from our vocabularies, at least in reference to people who represent a different culture from our own. I asked my friends to explore their own family histories, the ways they might have been complicit in racism. Together, we talked, laughed, cried, ate, and prayed. Sometimes we alternated formal meetings with social events to get to know one another in more casual contexts. We pushed deeper into reconciliation and relationship, and as we did we found we understood one another a little better. That understanding brought such healing.

A few months into our meeting, the landscape of American race relations was exposed. Ferguson, Missouri, erupted with violent protests in the wake of the fatal shooting of an eighteen-year-old Black man, and the surrounding events would shape many of us in the group. Many of my new friends had never before been proximate with an ethnically diverse group. And so as we had hard and raw conversations about Michael Brown, policing, and Black lives, space opened for anger, grief, and empathy. Many of my White friends admitted that if it wasn’t for the group, they might have ignored the context or dismissed the events of Ferguson. Attending the monthly circles ensured they wouldn’t remain silent, wouldn’t be complicit. As they became aware of racial injustice and the history of discrimination, it become impossible for them to turn a blind eye.

These conversations set the stage for the launch of Be the Bridge, an organization committed to bringing the reconciliation power of the gospel to the racial divide in America. As we’ve replicated our reconciliation conversations in hundreds of groups across the nation and beyond, I’ve watched people awaken to the realities of the racial divide and their personal racial illiteracy. I’ve seen them go from living in hard-hearted denial to leading movements toward reconciliation. I’ve seen them awaken to the work of the Lord in their lives.


Understanding Begins with the Right Posture

If you’ve picked up this book, chances are you’re interested in the work of racial reconciliation. I’m glad you’re here. Before we start, please understand this: the work of racial reconciliation requires a certain posture. If you’re White, if you come from the majority culture, you’ll need to bend low in a posture of humility. You may need to talk less and listen more, opening your heart to the voices of your non-White brothers and sisters. You’ll need to open your mind and study the hard truths of history without trying to explain them away. You’ll need to examine your own life and the lives of your ancestors so you can see whether you’ve participated in, perpetuated, or benefited from systems of racism.

If you’re Black, Latinx, Asian, Native American, or part of any other non-White group, you’ll need to come with your own posture of humility, though it will look different from that of your White brothers and sisters. In humility, you might need to sit with other non-White groups and learn their stories. You might need to confess the ways you’ve perpetuated oppression of other non-White people. People of color may need to confess internalized racism and colorism. You’ll need to correct and instruct when necessary and will need to recognize the effort of those trying to cross the bridge, even if imperfectly. After all, the work of racial reconciliation is anything but perfect.

If we come together in the posture of humility, we can start to bridge the racial divide. A bridge that lifts up marginalized voices. A bridge of voices that is about equity of marginalized voices, not equality. How do I know? Because I’ve witnessed it.

Since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, the racial divide in America has only gotten worse. We’ve seen a rise in white nationalism in the media. We’ve heard government officials use language that, to minorities, sounds racially coded. But even though the country is more racially divided than ever, bridge builders are meeting in Be the Bridge groups across America. Week after week, I hear their stories. People of all ethnicities are coming together. They’re learning, growing, and even worshipping together in the spirit of John 17, a spirit of multiethnic unity.

God is inviting all of us to be active participants in racial reconciliation, to show the world that racial unity is possible through Christ. So, in the pages to come, I’m inviting you to journey with me toward racial reconciliation. I hope that as you do, you’ll engage with the prayers that conclude each chapter and use them to form your own prayers. And after each of the three major sections of the book, let the liturgies draw you deeper into God’s heart for reconciliation.

Ultimately, I pray you’ll join a movement of bridge builders who are fighting for oneness and unity, not uniformity, in “such a time as this.”

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. Have you studied the history of non-White cultures in America and how those cultures came to be here? If so, what books and articles have you read and what videos and documentaries have you watched about the history of those cultures prior to their forced migration?

2. Describe some of the books you have read, films you have watched, or art you have admired that were produced by individuals of a different ethnicity than yours.

3. Do you approach conversations of racial reconciliation as if you have all the answers? Do you approach those conversations with a willingness to be corrected? What do you think it looks like for participants to approach those conversations in humility?

4. Are you committed to leaning in to this book, to reading each chapter and answering the questions, even when it’s difficult?


A Prayer for Humility

Lord, we ask that the words of this book fall on the soil of our hearts. Come into our brokenness and our lives with your love that heals all. Consume our pride and replace it with humility and vulnerability. Allow us to make space for your correction and redemption. Allow us to bow down with humble hearts, hearts of repentance. Bind us together in true unity and restoration. May we hear your voice within the words of these pages. Give us collective eyes to see our role in repairing what has been broken. Allow these words to be a conduit for personal transformation that would lead to collective reproduction.

—Latasha Morrison

Table of Contents

Foreword Daniel Hill xi

1 How We Begin 1

A Posture of Humility

Part I The Bridge to Lament

2 History Keeps Account 15

Awareness of the Truth

3 An Invitation to Empathize 35

Acknowledgment and Lament

A Liturgy of Lament 52

Part II The Bridge to Confession and Forgiveness

4 Removing Roadblocks to Reconciliation 59

Free from Shame and Guilt

5 Where Healing Begins 83

Confession

6 The Healing Balm 101

Seeking and Extending Forgiveness

A Liturgy of Confession and Forgiveness 120

Part III The Bridge to Restorative Reconciliation

7 Facing the Oppressed, Facing God 127

Repentance

8 Righting the Wrong 149

Making Amends

9 Relationships Restored 171

Reconciliation and Restoration

10 Building More Bridges 193

Reproduction

A Liturgy of Restoration and Reproduction 210

Afterword Jennie Allen 217

Acknowledgments 225

Notes 227

Reading Group Guide

1. 1. Have you studied the history of non-White cultures in America and how those cultures came to be here? If so, what books and articles have you read and what videos and documentaries have you watched about the history of those cultures prior to their forced migration?

2. Describe some of the books you have read, films you have watched, or art you have admired that was produced by individuals of a different ethnicity than yours.

3. Do you approach conversations of racial reconciliationas if you have all the answers? Do you approach those conversations with a willingness to be corrected? What do you think it looks like for participants to approach those conversations in humility?

4. Are you committed to leaning in to this book, to reading each chapter and answering the questions, even when it’s difficult?

2. 1. Is truth important on the Christian journey? Explain your answer.

2. Why do we sometimes try to suppress truth? What motivation might be at work when we avoid engaging with truth?

3. List at least two scriptures that call us to a common and shared memory of our faith.

4. Why is it important to be familiar with historical events?

5. List three historical facts related to our nation’s racial history that you learned outside school.

6. Why does the process of bridge building begin with awareness?

7. Discuss some ways we can become more aware of our racial history.

3. 1. Read Lamentations 3:22–23. How does God come to our rescue through mourning?

2. How is reconciliation linked to acknowledgment and lament?

3. What do you need to acknowledge as it relates to our racial history?

4. Was anything in this chapter new information for you? If so, please explain.

5. What are you currently lamenting related to our racial history?

6. What connections do you find between Deanna’s story and your own life?

7. Consider researching your family tree and discovering any role your ancestors played in systemic racism or abolition.

4. 1. Reflect on Ezra 9:5–8. Why was Ezra ashamed and disgraced for an act he wasn’t guilty of?

2. Have you ever been ashamed on behalf of someone else’s sin? If so, describe the situation.

3. What historical guilt was Ezra recalling in verse 7?

4. How can experiencing communal guilt be an opportunity to pursue righteousness?

5. Do you agree that as Christians, we bear a burden of guilt for the collective sins of our nation? Why or why not?

6. How do you handle personal feelings of shame and guilt? Do you allow yourself to feel the guilt and shame? Do you confess it? Or do you bury those feelings?

7. Reflect on your cultural upbringing. Were you raised in a more collective communal community or a more individualistic one? How was this evidenced?

8. How does your cultural background affect the way you process shame and guilt?

9. What purpose can communal shame and guilt serve as they relate to redemption and restoration?

5. 1. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, he wrote, “He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you.” What does he mean about being utterly alone? And what changes when we embrace the grace of the gospel?

2. James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” Why is it important for us to confess our sins to one another? How does this differ from confessing our sins to God?

3. Name some historical examples of confession leading to repentance. What about times in your own life?

4. One of the major fears about confession is wondering what others will think of us. What do you fear your confessions will lead others to conclude about you? How do you think others might respond to seeing the real you?

5. How is confession an application of the gospel? What scriptures support this belief?

6. If confession isn’t optional in our faith, why has the church found it difficult to confess its racist past in many cases? How could the church lead the culture and set the example in what confession as a step toward reconciliation can look like?

7. List specific historical injustices the US and other countries need to confess.

8. Describe a personal experience you’ve had with racism or colorism. How does that experience, or retelling it, highlight for you the value of confession?

6. 1. Name a time or two that you refused to extend forgiveness to those who hadn’t asked. What was your reasoning?

2. What are some ways that forgiveness has been demanded from the racially marginalized in our communities? List them and talk with a diverse group of friends about the short-and long-term effects of this expectation.

3. List three reasons forgiveness should never be demanded.

4. Do you believe forgiveness primarily benefits the person who has been harmed? Why or why not?

5. How do you know when you have forgiven someone for something?

6. Examine your life. What specific to racism, colorism, or other forms of prejudice and discrimination do you need to be forgiven for? Who might you need to call or visit and ask for forgiveness?

7. Now consider those you might need to forgive. Consider particularly those you might need to forgive for their participation in racism or structural privilege. Consider the Dylann Roofs of the world. Consider the Judge Gosnells of the world. Consider the well-meaning people who’ve been blind to structural privilege too, folks like Brooke Park. What would it look like for you to choose forgiveness?

8. Confession of sin by the perpetrators and forgiveness of sin by those who have been sinned against are both indispensable in the process of racial reconciliation. Discuss what you think would happen if either of these was lacking. What changes about the relational dynamic when both are present?

7. 1. What is your greatest hindrance or barrier to recognizing your own sin? How can you overcome it?

2. Why are we so often blind to our own sins but fully aware of the sins of others?

3. A. W. Tozer wrote, “Repentance is a wound I praywe may all feel.” What do you think Tozer meant by repentance being a wound?

4. In what ways might self-preservation or personal pride get in the way of your moving forward in racial reconciliation and repentance?

5. What are some of the realities we as a country need to repent of in the area of racial injustice? What would true repentance look like at an individual level? Within the local church? At a cultural or governmental level?

6. What is one thing you can do to make sure these conversations we’ve been having about race don’t stop with this book or this study?

7. What tangible acts of repentance do you need to make?

8. 1. How is the desire to make reparations, in the way Zacchaeus expressed, different from guilt? How is reparation related to the concepts of equality and equity?

2. What could reparations look like in the context of the racial dynamics of America?

3. For racial reconciliation to happen within the American church, what are some of the costs the majority culture will need to pay? What price will communities of color have to pay?

4. What is the risk of not making reparations?

5. What would reparations look like in your church? At your work? In your neighborhood?

9. 1. Restorative reconciliation, particularly in the context of racial reconciliation, is primarily about repairing relationships between the parties. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why or why not?

2. Who should take the first step in restorative reconciliation: the offending party or the wounded party? Explain your answer.

3. In the gospel of John, we see Jesus restoring both Peter and Thomas, both of whom had denied him in some way. What observations can you make about the way Jesus acted to restore the relationship with both?

4. What obstacles do you see to restorative reconciliation in our country, your state, your community, and your church?

5. What are some positive signs you’ve observed that confirm that racial reconciliation is possible?

6. Thinking through the previous chapters, where do you think the reconciliation process most often gets hijacked? Why do you think people so rarely make it to the work of restoration?

7. What personal relationship could you work to restore? Is there a specific systemic, structural, or governmental system that’s broken and in which you could engage to bring restorative reconciliation? Make a list of those relationships, those systems, those structures, or those governmental systems, and begin brainstorming ways to open restorative space.

10. 1. Historically, what are some ways the transmission of ideas and values has shifted cultures and communities?

2. Why does reproduction matter in the work of racial solidarity and racial reconciliation?

3. Take the time now to write a plan of reproduction, whether it’s starting your own Be the Bridge group, making a strategic plan of action after participating in a group, or simply sharing with a specific person what you’ve learned from reading this book. Remember that the work of reconciliation—work that we’ve been called to according to 2 Corinthians 5:11—requires a lifestyle commitment to reproduction.

4. How do you plan to help your friends, family, and church members understand the work of racial reconciliation? How do you plan to reproduce people who lean into that work?

5. List people you will follow on social media or books you will read to continue your learning, to help you along your own path to racial reconciliation.

6. What could reproduction look like for your church and community?

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