Episcopal ny reads 1 book
A message from bishop dietsche
The plans for this diocesan book study began last year, and well before the murder of George Floyd and the nationwide protest which followed. But now this national conversation about race and about the deep currents of racism in our society and institutions has been imbued with a broad urgency which is touching everything and everyone in America.
And in that urgency, at this tipping point, Kendi’s book has become a runaway national best seller. He speaks with candor, truth and personal insight to the ancient American corruption of anti-blackness, and the intractability of white supremacy, to the profoundly historic moment in which we now find ourselves.
I could not be more pleased and honored to commend this remarkable book to the people and parishes of this diocese. Kendi pulls back the social covering to reveal the ways by which often unacknowledged racist assumptions infect every institution and system, and my heart and mind, and yours too. He offers an invitation to all of us and each of us to be transformed, to be enlarged, to be enriched, and to become better and more complete human beings, and more just communities. All together, in all our common humanity.
Reading this book convicted me, but made me grateful and hopeful. In moving past the binary simplicity of racism or nonracism to the broader, deeper and transformative possibilities of antiracism, he calls America to a new way of being. Everyone - white, black, and all people of color - will find their assumptions challenged in this book, but I promise: challenged in ways which signal the possibility of human and godly liberation.
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The Right Reverend Andrew ML Dietsche
Bishop of New York
