Eric Mason - Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity with the Gospel

The saying goes, When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For far too long apologetics has been a hammer that attempted to strike every false teaching and cultic movement the same way in every community. Urban Apologetics is a much-needed, multifaceted tool kit that offers an interdisciplinary approach to promoting biblical faithfulness and gospel fluency. You will find that it utilizes history, sociology, theology, philosophy, and ethics, giving us the screwdrivers, scissors, pliers, wrenches, and hammers needed to repair broken faith in urban communities. As an urban apologist in New York City, the birthplace of many of the ideologies covered in this seminal work, I plan on carrying this tool kit with me wherever I am called to give an answer for the faith within me, and I encourage you to do the same.

Pastor Rasool Berry, Bridge Church, New York City

Eric Mason and team have captured, in one sitting, the rumblings of the cultural winds that threaten to knock down the pillars of our truth that are lost in retweets and likes and memes. Masons pen is a testament that orthodoxy and swag can coexist like Christ and the most current colloquialisms. This book shouts loud to our times! Jesus is real! No cap.

Kirk Franklin, award-winning gospel artist

As its title suggests, Urban Apologetics is about the defense of the faith and, more particularly, a contextualized defense of the faith. It addresses serious threats to the truth of the gospel within the Black community that are mostly unfamiliar to believers outside that community. The contributors are expert analysts who serve readers well with insightful, intelligent commentary and strategy. But the book is so much more. The editor wisely anticipates that many readers will first need to understand why so many in the Black community reject the gospel in favor of some truly bizarre belief systems. The common denominator is dismissal of, and reaction to, whiteness. Urban Apologetics helps outsiders comprehend what the problem of whiteness means and how it is a genuine impediment for so many to embrace the gospel of Christ. Only after understanding how Western history, culture, and Christianity have contributed to the power of this obstacle can one understand why so many people in the Black community are attracted to belief systems that seem so peculiar to outsiders. Urban Apologetics simultaneously informs and provokes, inspires and saddens, educates and chastises, all with an irenic tone from brothers and sisters in Christ that will stir believers within and without the Black community to spiritual solidarity under Jesus our king and brother.

Dr. Michael S. Heiser, executive director, Awakening School of Theology and Ministry, Jacksonville, FL, bestselling author of The Unseen Realm, cohost of The Naked Bible Podcast

It is my privilege to endorse this very timely and important work, full of information and insight. In contrast to historically false claims that Christianity is a white religion or irrelevant to justice, this work articulates the real story based on real facts from African and African American Christian history. It also invites the church to communicate that message. If you care about communicating to the rising generation, this book is worth your time.

Dr. Craig S. Keener, F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary

The urban context of America warrants a fresh and fiery apologetic. With this text, Dr. Mason delivers! The contributors provide the reader with ample tools to cast down numerous obstacles to the faith. Moreover, this book transforms defenders of the faith to be holistic disciples in their cities. For far too long, our communities have awaited a book like this. At last, it is here!

Pastor Cam Triggs, Grace Alive

In a social climate where genuine Christianity is increasingly seen as irrelevant and impotent, false religions proliferate and entice in every area of culture. The authors of Urban Apologetics unpack how false religions exploit Western Christianitys errors to target African American communities; their essays simultaneously celebrate the power of the Holy Spirit to expose all falsehoods and point souls home to Christ. Urban Apologetics shows the reader how God transforms persuasive ideological arguments into gospel opportunities, proclaiming Christs victory over sin, error, and human insufficiencyfor his glory and fame.

K. A. Ellis, director, the Edmiston Center for the Study of the Bible and Ethnicity

Eric Masons team of philosophers and theologians has created apologia for a community whose heterodox teachings have been misunderstood and ignored by traditional theological resources. Speaking to those who have whitewashed or consciousness community educations, Urban Apologetics reveals the racial biasesevangelical and secularthat have been baptized as truth and masqueraded as the only right readings of history, theology, and Scripture. Within these pages is a corrective needed to help defend the hope all believers hold while also embracing the human dignity of all persons in the body of Christ. This is a tolle lege call to any who have a heart that longs for the salvation of the spiritually lost within the African American community. It is a masterful work that lays bare the weaknesses of the Black religious identity cults for those tempted to find hope and power in their teachings.

Eric C. Redmond, PhD, professor of Bible, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, associate pastor of preaching, teaching, and care, Calvary Memorial Church, Oak Park, Illinois

Seldom is there a bridge built between the prophetic, the pastoral, and the personal. Such is the case in this work under the oversight of Dr. Eric Mason. The reader senses and experiences the divinely intended connection between the pulpit, the pew, and the prophetic with in this rare work produced out of the contextual hermeneutic of the reality of the westernized urban community.

Kenneth C. Ulmer, DMin, PhD, trustee, the Kings University, author of Walls Can Fall, senior pastor, Faithful Central Bible Church, Los Angeles, presiding bishop, Macedonia International Bible Fellowship

Black Christiansin schools and prisons, on the streets and on the internetare under siege, consistently questioned about their faith in Jesus Christ, aggressively told that Christianity is a tool of white supremacy and incompatible with a healthy black identity. Thats why Urban Apologetics is a godsend, a book that is fully equipped to demolish the myth that Christianity is the white mans religion once and for all. Through scholarship that is irrefutable and writing that is engaging and understandable to laymen and academics alike, this work is a must-read for anyone interested in reaching people of African descent with the gospel.

Chris Broussard, founder and president, the K.I.N.G. Movement, internationally known sports broadcaster

Dr. Eric Mason has assembled a brilliant group of male and female marketplace scholars who have symphonically brought together historical accuracy and biblical truth to dispel destructive myths. These myths, if left unaddressed, will continue to do damage in our culture today and for years to come. This book clarifies our past while at the same time providing insight for engaging the present. Urban Apologetics is one of those rare books that will become a baton to be handed to men and women who are serious about global gospel transformation.