A People’s Story
in Black & White

Towards a Flourishing Future

The work towards a community of flourishing life for all its members continues. Read the thought provoking words of community members as they think theologically to envision what could be and challenge us to the work of change.

Practicing Beloved Community by Dr. Marcia Riggs

Beloved community is a metaphor that resonates for many political activists and persons of faith who engaged in the Civil Rights Movement, and consequently, it has the power to evoke in us a desire for justice and love.

“What, then, is the Church?”: The Perpetuation of Racial Injustice and the Failure of Repair at Columbia Seminary in the Antebellum United States by Dr. William Yoo

In 1851, James Henley Thornwell delivered a report on the relationship of the Church to slavery to the Synod of South Carolina. The synod’s desire for a more precise theological expression defending slavery emerged at a meeting in Columbia, South Carolina four years prior. It is not hard to imagine why Thornwell was tasked with the assignment to write this crucial document. 

Job and the Dismantling of a Supremacist by Dr. William P. Brown

The older I get, the more ambivalent I feel about Job. He still has my respect for holding fast to his integrity from beginning to end, for not giving up when the odds were stacked against him. I continue to be amazed at his chutzpah when he boldly railed against God and vigorously defended himself against his so-called “friends.” My ambivalence, rather, lies in the fact that Job is no biblical posterchild for the oppressed, despite the severity of his suffering.

Transformative Reconcilers: Living into Tensions by Dr. Marcia Riggs

“An invitation to dwell in the space the ethical emerges, in the overlap of deception and moral courage . . .”