Book Review: Dear Church by Lenny Duncan

"Christianity at its core is subversive. But radical evil wants complacency, not subversion...Radical evil wants walls up around our hearts, around our congregation's life, and around this country. Division is how evil operates. We have all become intractable... 

To walk away from a theological commitment to the least of these is to leave Christ on the cross and ignore what happens three days later. To pretend that this isn't our time to stand up and speak a good word over this world is gross misconduct. If I don't accept this call now, I should be defrocked. If the church doesn't accept this call now, it deserves to die."

This is just a slice of the powerful writing in Lenny Duncan's book Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in America. I knew it was going to be a challenging read from the outset. What I didn't expect was that by the end, the proclamation would be far more effective than the challenge. I have to admit that I didn't pay enough credence to the title. I believed I was in for a lecture - I did not believe, evidence to the contrary, that I would indeed be reading a love letter.

That's not to say this is a book of sunshine, roses, and unicorns. It isn't, not by any means. This is tough love, honest love, forthright speech that confronts evil the author has experienced firsthand in my denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is indeed the whitest denomination in American Christianity. What I didn't expect was Duncan's deep, abiding refusal to step outside his own membership in our church. Every time he raises a challenge or confronts us with the brutal facts related to our own racism, sexism, gender inequality, and a host of other failings, he solidly places himself within the tradition and refuses to wash his hands of us - a course of action many people reading this book would have justifiably chosen long ago.

Here are a few examples of those experiences:

"I have friends who have waited years for calls in this church, who have been told to stop talking about racism from the pulpit, who have had gorilla dolls given to them as gifts by the people they serve, who have been told by seminary presidents that they may want to go back to Egypt because the watermelon tastes better."

See? Just one of those experiences might have been enough for many of us to walk away for good. Now imagine years of them - comforting friends after they've experienced the same - being told that things will change over time (but they never do) - I would have walked away long ago. For the sake of this church that I love, I'm grateful Lenny Duncan didn't.

I'll echo the blurb from Nadia Bolz-Weber from the front cover: "I dare you to read this book." I particularly dare you to do so if you're a white, straight, American male in the ELCA. You need to sit down, read,  and listen. You need to know that your privilege is real, that there are things you don't encounter simply because your skin color and your sexual preference fall a certain way. You need to hear from someone like Lenny, who loves this church way more than you do, because Lenny stayed faithful when you would have bailed long ago. You need to hear his deep love for this church and ask yourself: what can I do in order to return this deep, abiding love God and Lenny have for this church? I dare you to open yourself up that much, and see what happens.