mercy & justice
racial reconciliation & justice
Redeemer West Side is committed to helping our church pursue racial reconciliation and justice from a biblical and gospel-centered perspective. The following resources have been curated to help us toward that end.
Foundational Theology and Appoach
- Justice, Race, and Scripture: A Theological Foundation
- Sermons
- The Gospel at the Table – Rev. Bijan Mirtolooi
- One But Not the Same – Rev. Bijan Mirtolooi
Redeemer Network Events
Grace, Justice, & Mercy: An Evening with Bryan Stevenson & Tim Keller
Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, joined Tim Keller for a conversation on grace, justice, and mercy in 2016.
Recommended Resources
Note: While we don’t agree with everything written in these books, they provide thoughtful perspectives on race from various angles.
1. What does the Bible say about race and justice?
A Theology of Justice – These books show how the Bible calls us to pursue justice.
- Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just by Tim Keller
- Compassion (&) Conviction by Justin Giboney, Michael Wear, and Chris Butler
The Bible and Racial Justice – These works root the call to pursue racial reconciliation and justice in Scripture.
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCaulley
2. How has race played a role in the church and in society?
Race and the Church – These books provide an analysis of how race and culture have shaped the theology and practice of the American church.
- Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith
- The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
- The Elusive Dream: The Power of Race in Interracial Churches by Korie Edwards
Race and Society – These works show a few examples of how race has had an impact on our shared life in society.
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Byran Stevenson
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
3. How does the gospel speak to my personal experience with race and my place in the world?
- Beyond Colorblind: Redeeming our Ethnic Journey by Sarah Shin
4. What can I do?
- Faithful Antiracism: Moving Past Talk to Systemic Change by Christina Edmondson and Chad Brennan
- Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism by George Yancey
get in touch
If you have any ideas on how to build racial reconciliation and justice as a church or have any other feedback you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you!
Pray March Act 
Redeemer West Side is partnering with Pray March Act (PMA), which is a coalition of churches committed to work toward racial justice in our city. Among other things, PMA is focused on policy advocacy in the areas of housing, public education, and the criminal legal system. Together, we are seeking to build a biblically grounded and well-informed policy platform in these areas and then to use our collective voice to advocate for more just policies in our city. If you have any interest in being involved, you can sign up directly through their website or talk to Pastor Paul about more details (paul.yoo@redeemerws.com).
One of the convictions that has informed our partnership with PMA is that the church can and should pursue justice beyond forming and equipping individual Christians. While the church will continue to equip and release its people to pursue mercy and justice as individuals, we also believe there is a role for the church as a collective to seek justice. If relief is giving someone a fish and development is teaching someone to fish, reform is changing the conditions of the pond. Through wise policy advocacy, we believe the church can play a role on the level of reform to work toward a more just world for all people.
