Fans pick 100 books like The Color of Compromise

The idea of “cheap diversity” in the subtitle immediately caught my eye. Too often, churches and parachurch organizations think looking like a United Colors of Benetton commercial (way back reference!) is the end we’re seeking, where a Sunday morning appears mixed but isn’t truly integrated in any meaningful way.

Swanson helps me get beyond that superficial acceptance and suggests we need a complete rewiring of our thinking that only comes through changing our habits and liturgies, forcing myself beneath the surface and into broader communal discipleship among God’s people. 

Using the church's discipleship methods, Swanson gave me practical ways to think about challenging segregation, racial habits, and other cultural captivities that have become our norm and replacing them with more biblically aligned perspectives and behaviors.

Surrounded by so many generalities regarding the treacherous merging of white supremacy with Christianity, I needed this deep-dive sociological study into the reality of how “whiteness” has become a subconscious but tangibly verifiable idol within white Evangelicalism.

The assumption of white cultural superiority has become so hardwired into the church across centuries that, like a fish in water, as white folks, we can’t see how “normal” gets weighed down with racial consequences.

The wetness of water is felt by everyone but the fish, and in this case, what seems experientially obvious to most non-white people requires in-depth study and argumentation for white folks to see. I appreciated how this book named specifics and compared the answers to racialized questions between different people groups in their study.

This book came out a few months before mine, and I thought it landed as the first book written by theologically conservative people taking Critical Race Theory seriously as a lens and analytical tool without getting hung up on it as a worldview.

They look through an intensely biblical lens themselves and see CRT for what it is: a way of interpreting racial power dynamics in a broken world. I don’t think it a stretch to suggest they get us to look at CRT through Jesus’ eyes, placing it in a biblical context large enough to grasp not only what theorists want us to see but also helping us transcend their usually limited secular answers and solutions.

I thought it successfully combined both the academic and the pastoral—rare in books like this—and helped me think about the implications of looking at the world through a lens I don’t normally have… show more.

I find it difficult to locate white pastors in the Evangelical tradition who are both aware of and candid about their own racial history. It’s even more difficult to get them to admit they’ve never thought about “White” as a race and why that might be significant in a world that prioritizes skin color.

He helped me understand both the personal and social realities of living at the intersection of race, culture, and identity and how they merge into one another in my life. I appreciated how Hill puts texture on the idea of racial privilege and the advantages inherent in not having to think about race at all. I found his seven stages to expect on the path to cross-cultural “awakening” disrupting, putting on a very different spin on what it means to be “woke” in our cultural moment. 

D.A. Bourne weaves a story of Christian Fiction and overcoming racism during a time it’s at an all-time high. We all know racism is a touchy subject a lot of people don’t like to talk about, but it’s a sad reality many face every day. This story surrounds autoworkers and their families who find themselves faced with racial conflict that tests their faith, patience, ability to forgive, and all the things they’ve always believed in. 

In From Enemy to Brother, John Connelly, observes, “If there was a neighbor needing a Good Samaritan in the 1930s it was the Jew, yet the day’s moral theology placed Jews on the lowest rung of the ‘hierarchy of love’: after family, after other Catholics, and after members of one’s nation and race.” Jews who converted to Christianity failed to advance much higher. As Connelly shows, at least in Central and Eastern Europe, some Catholic theologians taught that conversion did not immediately free Jews of their Jewish heritage. It could take generations before Christianity completely took hold. Catholic anti-Judaic deicide teaching, fueled by centuries of Christian antisemitism, bore and nourished such a negative outlook toward Jews. In the 1930s, Catholic theologians only had to take one step further to link their primitive view of Jews and Jewish converts to the prevailing National Socialist racial teaching. The result produced an… show more.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a story about the redemptive love of a civil rights icon who was brutally beaten, threatened, and who lived through the era of civil rights unrest and huge racism. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and has received notable awards such as a noble peace prize.

His book is a fascinating read about a man who had every reason to hate white people along the journey or racism and civil unrest but instead chose the path of love and forgiveness. He has titled it One Blood as he believes that we all have things in common, even in the midst of suffering and pain, if we allow ourselves to grow through the suffering and become the mirror image of the hate and bitterness that we have received on the journey of life.

Our enigmatic heroine, Sorrow, rules the Court of Tears, covering for her grief-maddened father, who has turned their once celebrated land into a living monument for the brother who died before she was born. Joy is literally forbidden. But in this twisty turny political tale – in which the magic slowly blooms – nothing is as it seems… I loved it!

This is one of my most highly recommended books for those struggling with baggage from the past, such as rejection, resentment, and perfectionism. 

Wright takes readers through a process of going back to work through past baggage, forgive past hurts, and then change future responses. For Christians committed to moving (and living) beyond their past, this book can help them do just that. Wright is a leading expert in grief, loss, and trauma and has a number of other invaluable books.

I loved this book! It’s easy to get stuck on being busy with many tasks and responsibilities, and not move forward in our lives and careers.

This book helped me learn systems to become more efficient (in life and work), identify what was holding me back from being more empowered with my choices, and recognize when to say yes, and when to say no. Leaving the military – where “no” isn’t as much of an option, this is a good skill for veterans to embrace.