Choosing Your Lens: How White Christians Can Become Better Allies
by Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts

In order for the seed of reconciliation to take root, white people, even those who already consider themselves to be progressive and/or open, and especially those who are believers, must be willing to sit in the discomfort that both America’s history and its current reckoning of that history has wrought. Part of seeking justice and racial reconciliation has to also include white people being willing to acquire the language necessary to express and examine their authentic feelings about racism and racial injustice. It’s not just that people don’t have the I.Q. to understand what’s happening. It’s that people don’t have the E.Q. (emotional intelligence) to process what’s happening and reconcile the significant role they play in it.

Choosing Your Lens is a compilation of interconnected essays that will spark real, unvarnished conversations about the ugly stain of racism, encouraging those both activists and allies who name Jesus as their Savior to do the healing work necessary to lead the charge toward social justice. In addition to its content, this book will provide a fairly lengthy resource guide and extensive endnotes to bring readers who have had the privilege thus far to not need any nuanced understanding of what’s currently happening in our country around race to…well… “catch up.”

Choosing Your Lens is both unfiltered and biblically-sound. The Gospel of Jesus Christ will be the centerpiece of each chapter (called Action Items). That said, the language and style of this book is designed to remove the veil that many white American Christians have about race and racial justice and, in some cases, unearth this group’s complicity in the systematic dehumanization of people of color. It will challenge and discomfort this audience in a way that doesn’t forgo the love and grace of Christ but encourages awareness and accountability-the true prerequisite to reconciliation.