Wallis - Americas Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America

I am so grateful for Jim Walliss new book. Racism is a sickness that is as old as America itself. Americas Original Sin helps us see how this sickness creates patterns and systems that perpetuate national tragedies such as the one at Mother Emanuel AME Church. Jim gently and passionately invites us to look inside ourselves and acknowledge the ways that pride, privilege, and resentment affect our actions and words, and then he courageously extends a hand for us to walk together into a new future. As an African American man and a fellow brother in Christ, I trust Jims offer in this powerful book, and extend my hand in return.

Joshua DuBois , author of The Presidents Devotional ; former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships under President Barack Obama

Can we calculate the heartbreak, the destroyed families, the broken lives, the jobs denied, the inferior educations, the anger and hatred, the division, the laws meant to segregate or incarcerate, the lengths people go to to avoid each other, or the number of deaths due to racism? The pain created by racism is huge, its massive, and it needs to endnow. In this powerful book, Jim Wallis outlines the path forward, a path of true repentance and one that moves us in a new direction, as a new people. In the land of opportunity and hope, it can be done. With clarity and wisdom, this book shows us how.

Michael O. Emerson , provost, North Park University; coauthor of Transcending Racial Barriers

Jim Wallis takes on the defining challenge not only of our current cultural moment but also of our entire American history. By laying out a bold, prophetic message of hope, Jim calls for the change we need in a society suffering from the deep and open wounds of white supremacy.

Serene Jones , president, Union Theological Seminary

Americas Original Sin confirms Jim Walliss standing as one of Americas foremost prophets and greatest truth tellers. This brilliantly argued, eloquently written, and passionately delivered analysis of the most stubborn feature of our national existencethe yawning chasm of race and the bitter divide of racismforces us to confront both systemic inequities and individual habits that mock our claim to be the greatest democracy in the world. This book echoes the Old Testament prophet Amos and the American prophet Martin Luther King Jr. in calling for justice and righteousness to cleanse our country from the sin of racism that to this day stains our collective soul.

Michael Eric Dyson , author of The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

Jim Wallis is calling America to sincerely address the potholes of injustice that have damaged the undercarriage of justice in America. Civil and human rights are once again caught up in a traffic jam with racial profiling, police brutality, stand your ground laws, poor public education, the lack of a living wage, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Wallis helps us see that this is more than a discussion of polity and praxis; this is a critical issue for people of faith in the sanctuary, the synagogue, and the temple.

Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie , 10th Episcopal District, African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME)

Jim Wallis loves Jesus and hates racial injustice. This gifted gospel preacher has written Americas Original Sin with prophetic courage and pastoral care. In the tradition of Harriet Beecher Stowe, he uses his remarkable literary skills and searing analysis to force our not-yet-United States to look into the mirror of reality and confront the ugly wound of racism and white supremacy. This book may be the match that lights the fire of a redemptive revolution that makes America truly one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all .

Frederick Douglass Haynes III , senior pastor, Friendship-West Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas; board chairman, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference

Americas Original Sin is both unsparing and sympathetic in its brilliant analysis of how racism and white privilege have shaped and disabled American society throughout historyand how they do so today. But Jim Wallis goes much further than tracing how the scourge of racism harms citizens and immigrants of color. This book is a call to action packed with practical and powerful lessons and solutions that individuals, churches, and community organizations can follow to create a new and just social contract for the country we love.

Eliseo V. Medina , labor activist and immigration reform advocate

Jim Wallis has a fire in his bones and cannot be silenced. In this landmark book, he takes on one of the most important issues of our age, Americas original sinracism. But this isnt a rant. It is a thoughtful, heartfelt, compassionate plea for us to heal the wounds of racial injustice and build a new America, and a new world, together.

Shane Claiborne , author, activist, and founder of The Simple Way and Red Letter Christians, www.redletterchristians.org

We stand at a critical juncture in our nations history, as the United States becomes a nation with no clear ethnic majority. Our future could be characterized by great unity or by great discord. Jim Wallis engages in the kind of truth telling that is necessary to move toward a more hopeful future. Revealing the depth of sin endemic in our racialized history, Wallis names not only the symptoms but also the disease. The book is difficult to read at times. But truth does not come easily. Please embrace the truths that are found in this text so that our conversations on race may begin to move us forward.