Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice

by Eric Mason; John Perkins; Jennings Ligon Duncan III

Publisher:

Moody Publishers

, 2018

“Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference.” –Frederick Douglass, 1845

The prophets of old were not easy to listen to because they did not flatter.  They did not cajole. They spoke hard words that often chafed and unsettled their listeners. Like the Old Testament prophets, and more recent prophetic voices like Frederick Douglass, Dr. Eric Mason calls the evangelical church to a much-needed reckoning. In a time when many feel confused, complacent, or even angry, he challenges the church to:

Be Aware – to understand that the issue of justice is not a black issue, it’s a kingdom issue. To learn how the history of racism in America and in the church has tainted our witness to a watching world.

Be Redemptive – to grieve and lament what we have lost and to regain our prophetic voice, calling the church to remember our gospel imperative to promote justice and mercy.

Be Active – to move beyond polite, safe conversations about reconciliation and begin to set things aright for our soon-coming King, who will be looking for a WOKE CHURCH.

From the Back Cover

WOKE: (wok) adj. 1. able to understand how cultural, socio-economic, philosophical, and historical realities inform our responsibility as believers in Jesus Christ.

The church in America should have rejected the first whispers of slavery. But we didn’t. We should have preached about the image of God when the dark-skinned among us were declared subhuman. But we didn’t. We should have stopped segregation and Jim Crow before they affected our communities. But we didn’t. We should have protested racial profiling and police brutality before anyone else. We should have been woke, but we’ve been asleep.

Dr. Eric Mason challenges the church in America: "Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead." It’s time to take a hard look at our history and stand together against the indignities and injustice in our world—to understand that justice is both theological and sociological—that there is no intimacy with God without justice in one’s heart.

No more waiting. No more sleeping. Christ our King is coming back, and He’ll be looking for a WOKE CHURCH.

Contents

Top Highlights

“classroom and much more likely to be introduced into the criminal justice system.^{3” (source)}

“Being woke is to be aware. Being woke is to acknowledge the truth. Being woke is to be accountable. Being woke is to be active.” (source)

“I’m so grateful that God saved us to be in relationship with Him. But He also bought us to be in relationship with one another. God’s intent is for us to hurt with one another, to care about the suffering of one another. When I think of Nehemiah’s tears, I have to wonder when such lament will come from the church body of our white brothers and sisters … where is the collective voice, the emotive, empathetic, impassioned cry in response to their black brothers and sisters who are suffering and experiencing trauma?” (source)

“We do not substitute proclaiming for action; and we don’t proclaim and neglect action. We proclaim and engage in activism that flows from the gospel.” (source)

“It’s hard for me to hear the constant refrain of ‘just preach the gospel.’ When the topic is abortion, nobody says, ‘just preach the gospel.’ We preach against abortion as if it’s a gospel issue. When the topic is sex trafficking, no one says ‘just preach the gospel.’ We develop a battalion to go and get people out of sex trafficking. And we should because these are crucial issues. But so is racial justice!” (source)

Praise for Woke Church

Praise for Woke Church

Eric Mason gives insight on societal, racial, and theological matters with proficiency. This book is a rare gem; few leaders are as competent and scholarly in how to address the divides and conflicts in society that greatly affect the church. This is a book I’ll share for generations.

LECRAE
Grammy awarding winning artist @lecrae

While I barely missed the sixties, perusing the current milieu makes me feel as if we are back in those turbulent times. Another black body slain in the streets. Cops called on people of color for walking in their own neighborhoods. Divisive rhetoric from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Silent evangelicals muted by their own incomplete theology. It’s time for the church to awake! My friend Dr. Eric Mason not only diagnoses the problem but provides tangible solutions for the people of God to walk in Christ-exalting unity. I believe when the dust is settled, Woke Church will be regarded as a seminal tome in what it means to be the church.

BRYAN LORITTS
Author, Insider/Outsider

Woke Church is a seriously important book dealing with a core applicational issue in the church and in our society today. It is seriously biblical, showing the connections between reconciliation, justice, love, and the gospel. What God has joined together should not be s eated and the church as a multiethnic, multinational body needs to better reflect what God designed it to be. This book helps us think through how to get there.

DARRELL BOCK      
Executive Director of Cultural Engagement and Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary

So incredibly thankful for Eric. Woke Church is a timely and thought-provoking work to help us in these important times. He does an amazing job of giving us fresh perspective on the intersection of justice, race, and the gospel. Our culture is crying for a gospel-centered conversation on matters of race and justice. Woke Church is an instant classic that will help us both individually and collectively grasp the great opportunity before us to live out the gospel in these important times.

BRYAN CARTER
Senior Pastor of Concord Church and codeveloper of “33-The Series”

The Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps. But not so His church. We have constant need of being told to “wake up, you sleeper” and to “keep watch.” We are like those first disciples in Gethsemane, spirit willing, flesh weak, falling over on our post. Sadly this has been true of the church when it comes to racism and injustice. We need an urgent call, a quickened conscience, an enlivened heart, a clear vision, and working hands to prophetically address with gospel power the ails of the church and the society. Dr. Eric Mason has thought as much about this as anyone in our day and we have much to glean from this clarion call to wake up and rep Christ!

THABITI ANYABWILE
Pastor of Anacostia River Church in Washington, D.C.
Council member of The Gospel Coalition

Dr. Eric Mason has done something remark able in writing Woke Church. From the very first page to the last, you will experience the wisdom and expertise of a theologian, pastor, and cultural architect who practices what he preaches. Buy this book. You will not regret it. It’s time for the church in America to wake up. Dr. Mason is sounding the alarm clock.

DERWIN L. GRAY
Lead Elder-Pastor, Transformation Church
Author of The High Definition Leader: Building Multiethnic Churches in a Multiethnic World

Woke Church is a clarion call of love—the love that is at the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a word of knowledge long overdue for the evangelical context in the secular age. Mason talks with a tone that should mitigate the perceived fatigue factor that of ten leads to backlash, hostility, and/or dismissal on discussions of the gospel’s implications for social and racial justice. Readers—those already woke and still asleep alike—who care for the souls of people perishing all around them should be moved to act with a sense of urgency for God-centered righteousness in society after embracing the Christ-consciousness of this great work.

ERIC C. REDMOND
Associate Professor of Bible, Moody Bible Institute

Any objective reading of the New Testament should bring the reader to the conclusion that God has a great love for the world. This love is demonstrated through the giving of his son who was the prophetic fulfillment of Isaiah 42—a servant of God who would bring justice to the world. A biblically balanced soteriology and ecclesiology always has sociological implications. A lack of balance between righteousness and justice is not only unbiblical, it’s dangerous. It abdicates our responsibility to be salt in the earth and the light of the world. It’s an expression of Christianity that allowed and in some cases endorsed the atrocities of slavery and the Jim Crow South. In this incredible work, Dr. Eric Mason calls the church out of her sleep and slumber and awakens her to her biblical responsibility to not only address the sins in our hearts but also in our systems. He passionately and masterfully reminds us of what the Lord requires; to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God. This book is not only a gift to the church, it is a gift to the world.

DHARIUS DANIELS
Lead Pastor, Change Church
Author, RePresent Jesus: Rethink Your Version of Christianity and Become More like Christ

Dr. Eric Mason has done it. In a day and age when the church is looking to halt its increasing marginalization within mainstream society, seeking answers (like the rest of America) to our nation’s still troublesome problem of racial division and injustice, and desperately hoping to gain disciples among the young, Dr. Mason provides the answer: we need to be “woke.” Not just the blacks, not just the millennials, not just the left-leaning, but all of us. The entire Bible-believing body of Christ needs to wake up to the fullness of the gospel message — that Christ died to reconcile man to God and man to man, or in other words, that Jesus has called us to strive for both personal morality and societal justice. If the church remains stubborn and “asleep,” it could soon find itself completely locked out of the public discourse. If it heeds the words of Dr. Mason, it could be empowered to spark revival.

CHRIS BROUSSARD
FOX Sports Television Analyst and Commentator
Founder and President of The K.I.N.G. Movement

Growing up in an all-white context in the Midwest, but now a part of a multicultural church, I’ve had to do much work to gain clarity on justice and race issues. I am thankful for Dr. Mason’s work showing practical ways we can cultivate meaningful relationships that would cause the church to have an immense impact on this broken world, bringing true justice and true peace.

RACHAEL TURNER
Church planter wife, local church member, Living Stones, Reno, NV

This book is needed and Dr. Eric Mason is the one to write it. Eric is both a theologically astute pastor and a practitioner of the content. In our current cultural climate, this book will help to serve church leaders as they think through the implications of the gospel in church and society. Thoroughly biblical, rooted in history, powerful.

HARVEY TURNER
Founder of the Living Stones Family of Churches
Acts 29 US West Leadership Team

In 1933, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the father of Black History, wrote a transformative book that questioned the effectiveness of the educational system in America for black people, called The Mis-Education of the Negro. Unfortunately his analysis and critique is still relevant today. In the same brilliance as Dr. Woods on, Dr. Eric Mason has written a book that I believe will be transformative for many years to come. Woke Church is written in a manner that provides an accurate historical and philosophical critique, while at the same time it constructs a biblical perspective that is needed. It is a must read in order to correct the dangerous mis-education of the church.

JAMES WHITE
Executive Vice President, YMCA of the Triangle

By highlighting the comprehensive power of the gospel to not only change individual lives but to transform communities, Dr. Mason compels the American church to take a hard look at its complicity in the development of racial inequality and issues a clarion call for the church to confront injustice in all of its forms. However, Woke Church does more than just reveal the church’s shortcomings, but provides practical and Scripture-based solutions. It’s a must read!

TIFFANY M. GILL
Scholar, writer, and professor of African American History

Many still see the gospel and justice as being mutually exclusive. Dr. Mason challenges this notion. He helps us to recognize that the gospel calls us to stand for justice. Not only does Dr. Mason push us toward the presence of God in lament, he also calls us to step into the presence and experiences of those impacted by racism.

JUMAINE JONES
Lead Pastor of The Bridge, Silver Spring, MD
Author of Lost in Love: Navigating the Five Relationship Terrains

I’m excited about Woke Church. My son in the ministry has written a classic theological and practical work that will aid the church in a paradigm shift as it pertains to the brokenness that is in our country today. Eric is a prophetic biblical voice the entire church needs to hear. Read this work and be inspired to renew you commitment to seeing Jesus work in our sphere to challenge and even change racial injustice in America.

TONY EVANS
Senior Pastor, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship
President, The Urban Alternative

Product Details

• Title : Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice
• Authors:
  • Mason, Eric
  • Perkins, John M.
  • Duncan, Ligon
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Publication Date: 2018
• ISBN: 9780802496577

About the Authors

DR. ERIC MASON is the founder and pastor of Epiphany Fellowship in Philadelphia, PA. He and his wife, Yvette, have four children. After more than two decades of gospel ministry, Dr. Mason has become known for his passion to see the glory of Jesus Christ robustly and relevantly engaged in broken cities with the comprehensive gospel. He helps coach and train families to plant churches locally, nationally, and internationally. He is the founder and president of Thriving, an urban resource organization committed to developing leaders for ministry in the urban context, and is the author of three books, Manhood Restored, Beat God to the Punch, and Unleashed. He is the recipient of multiple earned degrees, including a BS in Psychology from Bowie State University, a Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Doctoral degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.