Praise for Baptized in Tear Gas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist
Elle Dowd is the only white writer I have ever encountered in this weird space of progressive Christianity talking to her cousins about their sin of racism who isnt making a dime from her book100 percent of every dime she makes off this book goes back to the community she learned from. Thats the bestfar from the onlyreason to listen to her or buy this book.
Lenny Duncan, author of United States of Grace and Dear Church
Baptized in Tear Gas is a powerful and honest reflection rooted in equipping others with the skills and tools to engage in transformative change. Its a necessary read, especially for white people in this time. With the protests in Ferguson and the movement they birthed as a core experience, Baptized in Tear Gas helps to expand our collective understanding of how people take action to change their communities and society.
DeRay Mckesson, civil rights activist and co-founder of Campaign Zero
As a former Evangelical Christian, Im well versed in our religions collective resistance to woke culture. Wokeness is demonized as a secular movement, established to diminish the importance of Jesus. However, in Elle Dowds transformative memoir, we see that the grueling fight to uproot white supremacychristened and propagated by no less than our own church fathersis indeed holy work. Dowd shows us that its Christ himself shouting through the voices of our bullied, imprisoned, and murdered Black brothers and sisters.
Brenda Marie Davies, creator of God Is Grey and author of On Her Knees: Memoir of a Prayerful Jezebel
White people explaining abolition to other white people is part of the work. Im thankful to have this book as a part of my arsenal that I can recommend to other white folks working through issues of police and prison abolition.
Emily Joy Allison, author of #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing
In Baptized in Tear Gas, Dowds prose sears the readers heart with the fire too few of us caught after the murder of Michael Brown. But in the ever-sharpening glare of white supremacy, Dowd casts a vision for a transformed people and church, showing by example how we can move past Dr. Kings white moderate into a faithful body willing to confront our own complicity and challenge the lies of American racism.
Emmy Kegler, author of All Who Are Weary and One Coin Found
Elle Dowd writes with a sober clarity about the demon of white supremacy in a way few white people have. She speaks to us not as any kind of white savior; rather, echoing John the Baptist, she emphatically points the way to a world where justice reigns and where lions give up their very nature to lie down with lambs. Baptized in Tear Gas is a primer for those of us who are white and seek a better world.
Jason Chesnut, co-founder of The Slate Project and filmmaker with ANKOSfilms
Through her own experiences of learning and unlearning during the Ferguson Uprising, Elle Dowd holds up a mirror for white people. She invites honest reflection onand action in resistance tothe everyday ordinary ways whiteness, white supremacy, and specifically anti-Blackness show up in our thought, faith, and behavior. Digging beneath the same old surface-level narratives catering to white comfort, this book is thoughtful, real, faithful, and true.
Rev. M Barclay, co-founder and executive director of enfleshed
In 2014 I watched as the Ferguson Uprising unfolded on my phone screen through Elles Facebook posts. Her ability to communicate what was happening, both through her posts and through this book, helped me shift from denial and fragility to action.
Dani Bruflodt, creator of The Daily Page Planner
While many books convict and educate white Christians about white supremacy, racial capitalism, and anti-Black racism, Baptized in Tear Gas compels and equips you to do something about these matters. With humility, honesty, power, and graceand without an ounce of shamingElle Dowd will help you imagine your own journey from white moderate to abolitionist and will inspire you to get moving! You will be challenged. You will be changed. You will be grateful.
The Rev. Mike Kinman, rector of All Saints Church, Pasadena, California
Elle Dowd is the real dealpassionate, thoughtful, and gritty. She is accountable to the communities she serves. This book is a much-needed addition to the antiracist conversation, one that moves white folks beyond basics to a passionate belief in abolition and liberation. Its a story that resonates because Elles story is one that is shared by so many people. We cant wait to recommend this book to our entire community.
Father Shannon TL Kearns and Brian G. Murphy, co-founders of QueerTheology.com
If you are a white person of faith wrestling with the state-sanctioned violence you witness in the streets of America, this book is a must-read. Dowds stories and theological insights will steel our resolve for the next time we demand justice and are met with tear gas, white supremacist hatred, and our own insecurities.
Nathan Roberts, pastor and community organizer in Minneapolis, editor of The Salt Collective magazine, and author of two books
The opposite of protest tourism, Baptized in Tear Gas powerfully excavates the chamber of the human heart where joy, hope, and faith collide with fear, propelling a young minister out into the streets to learn anew what the gospel demands.
Rev. Elizabeth M. Edman, author of Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know about Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity
While many white moderates arrive on corners of poor urban ghettos looking to do safe ministry among dark bodies in despair, I celebrate Rev. Elle Dowds Baptized in Tear Gas for its daring audacity to confront the insidious white moderatism among folk whove been the ultimate provocateurs of oppression since 1619. Submerge yourself in the divine waters of these pages, repentant and reignited to enter (as Jesus did after his baptism) the wilderness of authentic, anti-capitalistic justice activism.
Danielle J. Buhuro, author of Spiritual Care in an Age of #BlackLivesMatter: Examining the Spiritual and Prophetic Needs of African Americans in a Violent America
If youre a white Christian and you find yourself on the sidelines quietly lamenting another story of racist violence, go read Baptized in Tear Gas. Itll get you off the bench. In telling the story of her own conversion, with all its sorrows and joys, Dowd reveals how each of us can move beyond milquetoast moderation and toward true, risky discipleship. Theres an abolitionist inside you. Dowd will help you find them.
Peter Jarrett-Schell, head pastor of Calvary Episcopal Church, Washington, DC
