Mae Elise Cannon - Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith

praise for forgive us

Forgive Us strikes me as the hope and sign I have been longing for that a new generation is indeed rising up to lead the church into its calling. Second Chronicles 7:14 says that if Gods people would humble themselves, at any time and in any condition, and pray and seek Gods face and turn from our wicked ways, then God will hear from heaven and will forgive us and heal our land. This book offers the church the chance to do that deep and cleansing work of repentance, not just to say were sorry, but to truly turn from our sinful ways in true humility. The thought that God can use a repentant people in the great enterprise of repairing and redeeming the world...this should humble us. We all need this book. This is the way and we should all walk in it.

Dr. John M. Perkins, Founder, John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation, Cofounder, Christian Community Development Association

There are sins we commit as individuals, for which we usually experience some kind of guilt. This book, on the other hand, is about sins that we, as Americans, are committing collectively and for which we as a complicit people should repent. For all of us who need to be sensitized to corporate sins and to the oppression that is perpetrated because of the evils that are inherent in many of the ways our political and economic systems function, this book is both a revelation and a call to action.

Tony Campolo, Professor of Sociology, Eastern University

Forgive Us points us to vital issues in the American evangelical world where the ball has been dropped and where various traditions may not have provided helpful direction. We are invited by the authors to repent and lament in ways that direct us to strategic opportunities to bring our Bibles and our respective doctrinal standards to the questions of yesterday, today, and tomorrow so that Gods will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. These are some of the most important issues facing the church today.

Anthony B. Bradley, Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics, The Kings College and author of The Political Economy of Liberation

There is now a great deal of talk about the crisis in the church. Most of that talk is frivolous and too easy, propelled by manufactured solutions, business models, or cheap grace. Not here! These writers walk honestly into the failures of the church that has too long, too often, colluded with convenient exclusionary practices. This book is a recognition that serious forgiveness by God follows serious repentance. This is well-informed, highly disciplined theology applied to the lived realities of the church.

Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary

Forgive Us is a strikingly candid and humble admission of the where the contemporary church has been in the wrong. A remarkable quartet of authors and thought-leaders, Cannon, Harper, Jackson, and Rah use biblical examples of honest prayers to seek reconciliation and ask God to heal our land. If you long to see the church be more than right, but also have a right relationship with the world around us, than Forgive Us is a must-read!

Dave Ferguson, author of Finding Your Way Back to God, lead pastor, Community Christian Church; Spiritual Entrepreneur, NewThing

The progress from now we see ourselves in a mirror dimly, but then face to face does not always bring great joy. This book showed me more of myself, of my group, of my heart than I wanted to see clearly. Yet in facing and confessing the ways I have participated in others degradation elevates us both. To ask forgiveness is to not to give up a sense of right and wrong; it is to give up a sense of arrogance and scapegoat theology. This book helps me love my neighbor better and accept Gods judgment of us all.

Dr. Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland A Church Distributed

Its a daunting task, to seek to bring Christians to repentance. With great grace, the authors of Forgive Us reveal ways we in the US church treat as less-than-fully-human people made in the image of God. Read with an open, humble heart. And be blessed to find that lament and confession lead to healing, reconciliation, life.

Deborah Brunt, keytruths.com, author of We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church

At a time when evangelicals are understandably often seen as pompously pious, Forgive Us reads like a confessional booth. Instead of being asked to divulge their sins to us, people who dont share our Christian faith hear us admit how far too many of our predecessors and peers have grievously sinned against others and pledge to live out our faith in ways that are more tangibly aligned with the mercy and grace of Christ. This exceptional book has the power to disarm a cynical world because it is a stunning example of evangelical Christians humbly stripping off our garments of triumphalism and privilege and covering our nakedness with the sackcloth and ashes of true lament and confession.

Ken Fong, Senior Pastor, Evergreen Baptist Church of LA (Rosemead) and Executive Director, Fuller Theological Seminarys Asian American Initiative

In this book a very promising evangelical future is embodied: humble, honest, repentant, post-WASP, post-patriarchal. Evangelical sins are skewered; American (and Christian) history is recounted in terrifyingly unsentimental terms. The contrast between this kind of evangelicalism and that of the reactionary right is staggering. A must-read book.

Dr. David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics Director, Center for Theology and Public Life Mercer University

Forgive Us is a truly courageous and prophetic book. It calls on evangelical to go beyond paying lip service to social justice to engage collective confession for the churchs complicity in racial, gender, and other forms of oppression. Through its engaged historical and social analysis, Forgive Us makes clear that the church must engage in deep introspection to effectively proclaim Gods word. This book will challenge many because it offers no cheap grace and pulls no punches in telling the truth about the churchs histories of injustice. And yet this book offers hope that through serious and engaged collective confession, Christians can finally become the people we are called to be proclaiming Gods justice throughout the world.

Andrea Smith, Board Member of North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Study and author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide

Forgive Us is timely and unique. It is the heart-cry of a group of friends all scholars and justice workers in their own rights to bring the biblical imperative of lament, confession, and repentance to key areas of American church history that are often discussed but rarely from this perspective and with such honesty and humility. It aptly calls out the savior attitude of an American church that continues to try to fix problems without recognizing its own complicated role in creating them. Forgive Us is a counter-narrative of confession and truth-telling that will leave you wondering why youve never heard the fuller story of so many injustices or realized how Christians have and continue to be complicit in them. It will equip and encourage you toward biblical reconciliation and peace-making as well as honest self-examination and engagement. Forgive Us is a much needed addition to the conversation on American religion and politics.

Ken Wytsma is the founder of the Justice Conference and the author of Pursuing Justice: The Call to Live and Die for Bigger Things