Duke L. Kwon - Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair

We are at an inflection point in our nation. We can either continue with the racial status quo or earnestly engage in the long-overdue process of repair. Kwon and Thompson marshal deep research, theological acumen, and pastoral tenderness to make a timely call for reparations and the dignity of all people.

Jemar Tisby , CEO of The Witness Inc.; author of the bestselling book The Color of Compromise

Reparations is challenging in the best way: it challenges Christians to look squarely at our history, to take responsibility for our complicity in evil, and, most importantly, to take our mission as the church seriously. This book is a clarion call to understand the context of our mission and how that context must shape our work and community.

Tish Harrison Warren , Anglican priest; author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

How do we make things whole? That is the question Reparations helps us answer. Kwon and Thompson walk us through our complicated racial past and give us a glimpse of a future that is reconciled, just, and ultimately more like Christ. This book should be essential reading for every single believer who cares about justice and equality. The history is sound, the facts are compelling, and the ultimate case must not be ignored.

Joshua DuBois , CEO, media commentator, and former director, White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships

Kwon and Thompson have listened to their African American brothers and sisters. They tell us the sad truth about the significant role the church has played in the problem of racism. They demonstrate that reparations is a thoroughly biblical concept and a work of the gospel. And most importantly, with empathy and hope, they show us how we can start repairing our racial brokenness through local and community-based efforts that every one of us can be part of.

Latasha Morrison , founder of Be the Bridge and New York Times bestselling author of Be the Bridge: Pursuing God s Heart for Racial Reconciliation

Kwon and Thompson do a compelling job of laying out the historic legitimacy, the moral necessity, and the biblical urgency for reparations from slavery. With a kind of whiplash effect, they frequently let centuries-old voices speak into this very moment with shocking immediacy. May Christs loving reign over new hearts, minds, and systems reorder the powers of this world that all may freely and justly live.

Mark Labberton , president, Fuller Theological Seminary

Arguments for reparations have often veered into emotional and moral appeals without careful theological, biblical, and historical reasoning. This book ends the era of poor pro-reparations arguments and silences the criticisms of those who suspect reparations as a kind of reverse injustice. Kwon and Thompson have given us the careful yet daring, gracious yet trenchant, historical yet relevant, principled yet persuasive teaching the church and the world has desperately needed.

Thabiti M. Anyabwile , pastor, Anacostia River Church

Writing in the prophetic tradition, Kwon and Thompson are unrelenting in indicting the American church for its complicity and collusion in keeping its relative silence regarding the ongoing cries of the African American communities in the Civil War, during the civil rights movement, and in contemporary contexts. However, along with stinging words of indictment come words of invitation. Kwon and Thompson invite the readers to reimagine the shape of human flourishing in the church if we were to seek ways to repent for past sins, repair the breaches of the present, and rejuvenate communities for a more beautiful future. By engaging with their pastoral counsel and prophetic courage, we will have a better understanding of what it means to see the image of God in every human person.

Paul Chang- Ha Lim , award-winning historian and professor, Vanderbilt University

In a Nazi concentration camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer pondered the future of the German church as it lay in the ruins of its fatal allegiance to Hitler. What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. Has the church so cheapened its witness to the gospel that it now seems incapable of speaking a redemptive word to humanity and the world? Kwon and Thompson give us a profound and urgent answer in the context of the American church crisis. Their book illuminates the costs and joys of discipleship in a nation marked by White privilege and its theological disfigurationsto which I can imagine Bonhoeffer replying, Yes and amen.

Charles Marsh , University of Virginia; author of Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Admittedly, I am still working through what my own response will be to this convicting, sometimes disorienting book written by two pastors whom I respect greatly. Wherever you end up landing in relation to their message and conclusions, I pray that this book will stir you up as it has me.

Scott Sauls , senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church; author of Jesus Outside the Lines and A Gentle Answer