(REVIEW) Writings on historical racial justice figures are accessible, but in “The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance,” Jamar Tisby provides a survey of leaders whose devotion to racial justice resulted from their belief in God and commitment to God’s work in the world. Here, the church has been given a resource that explores people of faith and their work in racial justice.

It is a book about what Tisby calls resistance and “resistance to the resistance.” Perhaps churches need a canon of role models from which to learn. Christians of all races and ethnicities can benefit from knowing those who made a clear connection between their faith and justice and acted accordingly.

Tisby starts with the history of the construction of race and its impact on the church. Then, beginning with slavery, Tisby talks about Black and White Christians who sacrificed their livelihood raising awareness and fighting for racial justice. 

Such women and men include Richard Allen — a co-founder of the Mother Bethel church who, according to David Walker, will go down in history as one of the “greatest divines who have lived since the apostolic age.”

Tisby explains that prior to that, John Wesley, a Methodist, wrote about the fact that the institution of slavery had no place in Christianity in what was called the “General Rules”. 

Tisby also discusses the role Black women of faith played during the Civil Rights Movement and how their grit and faith carried the movement onward. 

These women are rarely discussed except in relation to their husbands. However, they were spiritual and racial leaders in their own right.

Although Harriet Tubman is taught broadly, what is often excluded from her narrative is the deep faith that enabled her to lead so many people to freedom during slavery and the Civil War. 

Maximizing her influence, dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley roused a church to develop a relief association that raised money to support people recently freed.

In the early 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. attended an event in which a female member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee offered an invocation using the reframe, “I have a dream.” Following the event, that young woman, Prathia Hall, permitted King to make that powerful phrase his own.  

Along with discussions about the faith traditions and organizations that impact racial justice, Tisby argues four thematic virtues existing in more than 40 individuals he presents: faith, courage, imagination and resilience. These are all virtues the church can practice today.

For those interested in sharing this rich history with a younger audience, Tisby has written “Stories of the Spirit of Justice” for children; and teamed up with Malcolm Newsome and Nadia Fisher to present “I Am the Spirit of Justice” for young children. 

Learning about racial justice heroes of our Christian history — even if they did not belong to the fellowship of Churches of Christ — can encourage, empower and enable the church to move past the discomfort of truth-telling and on to sustainable racial healing.

This piece is republished from The Christian Chronicle.

Stephanie Hamm is an associate professor of Social Work at Abilene Christian University. She can be reached at stephanie.hamm@acu.edu.