The Color of God: America, the Church, and the Politics of Race” by Rick Donkor is extremely rich with church history and context as to “how we got here.” As an academic with a Bachelor’s degree in Adult Education, a Master’s in Interracial/Intercultural Communication and a Doctorate in Higher Education: Faculty Leadership & College Teaching, I strongly recommend this book as a tool to help lead adults into critical thinking and conversations about race, the church, scripture, and social justice.
It will make an excellent text for Christian Education class, Bible Study, book club, inclusion networks, and even text book for many college level humanities, cultural studies, religious studies, and communication courses. People who fall anywhere in the spectrum from being well-informed to struggling to catch up and understand the current conversations around whiteness, white supremacy, racism, black power, black pride, social justice, and the long, twisted road from the ideals of “liberty and justice for all” to our current state, MUST read this book.
Whether a pastor, employer, educator, community developer, citizen, or thinking person of any or no faith at all, this book will help you understand the cultural contexts and mantras that were selectively siphoned and perverted from Holy scripture to create the cauldron of our American Holocaust, our perpetual historic shame, and our current chronic struggle for racial inclusion, trust, and reconciliation across the color line. Thinkers who are not of the Christian faith will find this book very beneficial to gain understanding of how some of the teachings of the Holy Bible have been distorted, twisted, perverted, and politicized to support an inhumane and unholy agenda of subjugation of those kidnapped from Africa so long ago. The cultural beliefs of Western Christianity have often been derived from scripture which is taken out of context. It is helpful for any change agent to thoroughly understand the true context of scriptures that have been used to support myths such as “The Curse of Ham” and “benevolent paternalism” of slavery, Jim Crow, and the vast networks of law and policy that have been developed (with purported support of Scripture) to protect these myths.
Reconciliation is the theme of the second half of “The Color of God.” Mr. Donkor teaches how the multicultural church can “break the chains” by serving as a healing agent, “Having contributed actively to the creation of a fragmented culture, the Church cannot now remain passive or silent; it must engage the society in the effort to dismantle the vestiges of racism that still dots American institutions and cultural landscape” (Donkor).
This book is scriptural, historical, academic, comprehensive, and it is an easy read. It is one of the BEST compilations of factual information which synthesizes the facts of history, the distortions and true teachings of scripture (about race), and the lasting effects on our current social, political, economic, and spiritual condition. I have read this book through twice now, and it is still like drinking from a fire hydrant each time. I can’t wait to get my hard copy and mark it up!
Thank you, Rick, for this brilliant work of critical analysis and spiritual insight. You are a gift!
The Color of God: America, The Church and the Politics of Race calls Christians to look at their Christian faith rather than worldly principles to deal with our racialized society. We would be wise to take heed to this calling.
It is axiomatic in American discourse that to a very large extent, the constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is shaped by two powerful elements – race and religion. This axiom is significantly palpable in politics, and political life. In “The Color of God – America, The Church and the Politics of Race, Rick goes beyond the obvious by presenting a vivid picture of the antecedent conditions that have served as breeding grounds for much of the chaos in today’s America, e.g., political divisiveness, racial discrimination, injustice, hate crimes, etc. As his contribution to literature on this subject matter, Rick boldly ventures into an otherwise “forbidden” area, by identifying and pin-pointing the Church as part of the problem. In a conscientious manner, he posits that the centrifugal forces that enabled the church to be a conduit of the existing problem can be contained and reversed by the same Church. The Church as a sinner, can thus, be “born again” and become a multicultural, multiracial, multi-ethnic and didactic conduit for the centripetal forces needed to achieve racial healing and reconciliation.
The Color of God: America, the Church, and the Politics of Race
Book by Rev. Rick Donkor
Is a clarion call to racial healing and reconciliation in a racially polarized America, and an urgent message to Black America to rise up and fulfill its divine destiny in the land of its birth. Highlighting the confluence of race, religion, and politics, without being overly polemic, the message contained in its pages will captivate, provoke, educate, occasionally frustrate, and even infuriate you – regardless of which side of the political spectrum you belong to.
What is racism? What are its nuances? How has the Church contributed to the shaping of a racially fragmented society? What is the panacea for America’s racial wounds? How do we foster racial healing and reconciliation in this racially polarized and toxic, yet increasingly pluralistic and multiracial context?
The Color of God highlights the concept of racial healing and reconciliation in America by
•Exposing the cancer of racism as a social, political, economic, and legal construct aimed at subjugation, control, and dominance.
•Highlighting the Church’s historical hypocrisy and, by extension, its complicity, in the creation of a racially fragmented American society and world.
•Questioning the absolute absurdity of blaming the “White man” and racism for all Black and minority woes.
•Provoking the Black body-politic to reject and debunk any false notions and attitudes within the culture that equate deviant and pathological behavior with “Blackness”
•Sensitizing White America to the need to own the damage inflicted by the ideology of White Supremacy on entire populations, and to take steps to mitigate its legacy.
•Elevating the discourse on restorative justice, the “redemption and lift” of Black America, as fundamental to any real healing and reconciliation.
•Inspiring a generation to take America’s “unfinished business” – racial healing and reconciliation – to its logical conclusion.
The Color of God: America, the Church, and the Politics of Race” by Rick Donkor is extremely rich with church history and context as to “how we got here.” As an academic with a Bachelor’s degree in Adult Education, a Master’s in Interracial/Intercultural Communication and a Doctorate in Higher Education: Faculty Leadership & College Teaching, I strongly recommend this book as a tool to help lead adults into critical thinking and conversations about race, the church, scripture, and social justice.
It will make an excellent text for Christian Education class, Bible Study, book club, inclusion networks, and even text book for many college level humanities, cultural studies, religious studies, and communication courses. People who fall anywhere in the spectrum from being well-informed to struggling to catch up and understand the current conversations around whiteness, white supremacy, racism, black power, black pride, social justice, and the long, twisted road from the ideals of “liberty and justice for all” to our current state, MUST read this book.
Whether a pastor, employer, educator, community developer, citizen, or thinking person of any or no faith at all, this book will help you understand the cultural contexts and mantras that were selectively siphoned and perverted from Holy scripture to create the cauldron of our American Holocaust, our perpetual historic shame, and our current chronic struggle for racial inclusion, trust, and reconciliation across the color line. Thinkers who are not of the Christian faith will find this book very beneficial to gain understanding of how some of the teachings of the Holy Bible have been distorted, twisted, perverted, and politicized to support an inhumane and unholy agenda of subjugation of those kidnapped from Africa so long ago. The cultural beliefs of Western Christianity have often been derived from scripture which is taken out of context. It is helpful for any change agent to thoroughly understand the true context of scriptures that have been used to support myths such as “The Curse of Ham” and “benevolent paternalism” of slavery, Jim Crow, and the vast networks of law and policy that have been developed (with purported support of Scripture) to protect these myths.
Reconciliation is the theme of the second half of “The Color of God.” Mr. Donkor teaches how the multicultural church can “break the chains” by serving as a healing agent, “Having contributed actively to the creation of a fragmented culture, the Church cannot now remain passive or silent; it must engage the society in the effort to dismantle the vestiges of racism that still dots American institutions and cultural landscape” (Donkor).
This book is scriptural, historical, academic, comprehensive, and it is an easy read. It is one of the BEST compilations of factual information which synthesizes the facts of history, the distortions and true teachings of scripture (about race), and the lasting effects on our current social, political, economic, and spiritual condition. I have read this book through twice now, and it is still like drinking from a fire hydrant each time. I can’t wait to get my hard copy and mark it up!
Thank you, Rick, for this brilliant work of critical analysis and spiritual insight. You are a gift!
The Color of God: America, The Church and the Politics of Race calls Christians to look at their Christian faith rather than worldly principles to deal with our racialized society. We would be wise to take heed to this calling.
It is axiomatic in American discourse that to a very large extent, the constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is shaped by two powerful elements – race and religion. This axiom is significantly palpable in politics, and political life. In “The Color of God – America, The Church and the Politics of Race, Rick goes beyond the obvious by presenting a vivid picture of the antecedent conditions that have served as breeding grounds for much of the chaos in today’s America, e.g., political divisiveness, racial discrimination, injustice, hate crimes, etc. As his contribution to literature on this subject matter, Rick boldly ventures into an otherwise “forbidden” area, by identifying and pin-pointing the Church as part of the problem. In a conscientious manner, he posits that the centrifugal forces that enabled the church to be a conduit of the existing problem can be contained and reversed by the same Church. The Church as a sinner, can thus, be “born again” and become a multicultural, multiracial, multi-ethnic and didactic conduit for the centripetal forces needed to achieve racial healing and reconciliation.