Unmasking White Preaching

Lis Valle-Ruiz is assistant professor of homiletics and worship and director of community worship life at McCormick Theological Seminary.Andrew Wymer is assistant professor of liturgical studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.

• Racial Hegemony in Homiletics1. The Missionary Connection: White Preaching in the British Colonies of the CaribbeanGennifer Benjamin Brooks2. Unmasking the Homiletical Whiteness of Jerry Falwell Sr. and the Moral Majority Debra J. Mumford3. The Towering Sermon: Duke Chapel as Monument to White Supremacy Peace Pyunghwa Lee and David Stark4. Theorizing about the Whiteness of Asian American Homiletics Gerald C. Liu5. White Mainline Protestant Preachers Addressing Racial Issues: 2017 v. 2021 Leah D. Schade6. Civility and the “Purple Church”: An Insufficient Response to White Supremacy Andrew Thompson Scales7. Resisting White Fragility: Preaching towards Indigenous-Settler Reconciliation in Canada Sarah Travis8. Through a Glass Dimly: White Preaching and Epistemological Ignorance Christopher M. BakerResistance and Possibilities in Homiletics9. Multi-Tasking Preaching: The Liberating Power of Unmasking Whiteness from the PulpitHyeRan Kim-Cragg10. Wrestling with Whiteness in Hom

How can the United States be a “Christian nation” given its history of racism, sexism, homophobia, and its stunning tolerance of poverty? The answer to this perplexing question is found among the essays in this book. White preaching and white preachers are partially to blame. People in this country have been fed a diet of sermons that either vocally support or silently consent to a worldview that celebrates and seeks to preserve white supremacy and especially white male privilege. Rather than the sovereignty of God, these essays point us to a history of racial hegemony at home in the pulpit of far too many white churches.