How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice

by Jemar Tisby

if we printed our entire genetic code on paper, it would take 262,000 pages and only about 500 of those pages would differ from person to person.

Even though the Bible does not talk about race in the same way we commonly use it today, it still has plenty to say about how people should relate to one another across cultural and ethnic differences.

In theological terms, the phrases “I am a man,” “Black is beautiful,” and “Black lives matter” all express the biblical concept of the image Dei, or “image of God.”

God’s fingerprints rest upon every single person without restriction. The image of God extends to Black and white people, men and women, rich and poor, incarcerated and free, queer and straight, documented and undocumented, nondisabled and disabled, powerful and oppressed. All people equally bear the likeness of God and thus possess incalculable and inviolable value.

“The masses of [people] live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed.”22 While the world may overlook the people who have their backs against the wall, these are precisely the people who have the most to teach us about justice. Unfortunately, the disinherited of the world often have the least access to formal education, book publishing, and other platforms that would enable their voices to be heard loudly across the nations. To compound the problem, many theologically conservative churches and academic institutions rarely look to the theological resources of the disinherited as credible sources of knowledge.