Moving Beyond Divisions: Evangelicals and Racial Reconciliations in the Twenty-First Century

Posted on March 27, 2015 by PLT Staff

Recording of a lecture given by Valerie Cooper at the Spring Institute for Lived Theology 2008 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Churches in the United States remain startlingly segregated even today, despite increasing diversity the workplace and in academic institutions such as the University of Virginia. Cooper attempts to understand why Protestant churches lag so far behind their ideals and argues that deliberate institutional change and hard work are needed to create integrated churches.

Excerpt: “I think our hope is located in the power of the Gospel to move people beyond their own comfort, to live lives of self-sacrifice that include embracing the difficult business of building a truly representative church. Our hope for changing the segregated nature of our Sunday worship is located in a vision of the beloved community, of the Kingdom of God that includes a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb with palm branches in their hands. The transformative vision of eschatological hope to which we must cling is the hope that the church can recover her mandate to transform the world, rather than to be transformed by it. And how might society be changed if we could see racial brother- and sisterhood in our own congregations, instead of simply having to imagine it.”

  • Audio Information
  • Date Recorded:May 30, 2008
  • Location Recorded:Charlottesville, VA
  • Audio File:Download File »
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