Christian Formation
Children
Older Teens
“Tell Me the Truth About Racism” frames racism through the lens of Christian faith for children aged 5-12.
The Colors of Us by Karen Katz
God's Dream by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
All the Colors We Are: the story of how we get our skin color by Katie Kissinger
From Story Path (children’s literature website): Challenging Conversations: A Bibliography About Prejudice, Tolerance, and Diversity
Teaching Tolerance Classroom Resources
Visualize Diversity activity (older children through adults)
Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney (2013) Grades 4-6
Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom by Tim Tingle (2008)
Preaching to the Chickens: the story of young John Lewis by Jabari Asim (2016)
Exposing the Doctrine of Discovery: A Call to Healing and Hope includes curricula for adults, youth, and children.
We Are All Born Free. London: Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2008. Illustrates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan, 2000
Don't Hold Me Back: My Life and Art by Winfred Rembert, 2003
I Am Enough by Grace Byers and Keturah A. Bobo
Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney
This Is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration by Jaqueline Woodson, 2013
Unsung Heroes of Social Justice by Todd Kortemeier, 2017
Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney, 2010
Let the Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson, 2018
Youth Engagement Strategies: YES kit from Visions, Inc.
Diversity – Episcopal Curriculum for Older Youth Module (8 session plans)
Responding to Racism downloadable from The Thoughtful Christian
Questions Senior Highs Ask: Racism (downloadable)
America’s Dream (from Living in Christ / LinC sessions – downloadable)
From Teaching Tolerance: Teaching About Ferguson: Race and Racism in the United States
Exposing the Doctrine of Discovery: A Call to Healing and Hope includes curricula for adults, youth, and children.
Adults
2020 Vision for Becoming Beloved Community: Resources for each moth of the year that can be used by individuals or small groups to expand understandings of systemic racism. If using as a group, you can pick one resource for everyone to read, watch, or listen to OR have people each choose one and use time together to share about what each person is learning.
Faithful Conversations about The 1619 Project: a 6-week series from Faithful Voices for Racial Justice project of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa
Faith and Racial Equity: Exploring Power and Privilege: an 8-week session from JustFaith Ministries.
Civil Discourse: "On Being" with Krista Tippet
Even the Stones Cry Out for Justice: 3-5 season Bible study or retreat
Sacred Ground: A film-based dialogue series on race and faith from The Episcopal Church
White privilege: Let’s Talk - downloadable curriculum from the UCC
The School for Formation has 5 free video courses for individuals and groups on Racial Justice. Topics include: Spirituality and Racial Justice, Whiteness and Racial Justice, Theology and Racial Justice, Reparation and Racial Justice, and Racism and Racial Justice.
Exposing the Doctrine of Discovery: A Call to Healing and Hope includes curricula for adults, youth, and children.
The Racial Healing Handbook - a workbook for an individual or group to help challenge privilege, confront systemic racism, and engage in collective healing.
Understanding the System of Racial Inequity: 6 sessions for adults.
Immigration, Boundaries, and Borders: 6 sessions for adults.
Transforming White Privilege: A 21st Century Leadership Capacity: The curriculum is organized into a series of topic-specific learning modules, each 30 minutes to two hours in length. The full curriculum can be delivered over a single two-day workshop, 2 one-day workshops or in other configurations that work for a given program, keeping in mind the cumulative nature of the learning and design. The curriculum uses small and large group discussion and exercise, roleplay, videos, movement and other transformative learning strategies.
And check out our lending library for videos that you can borrow for free to show in your adult formation gatherings or small groups. Collection includes: Cracking the Codes, Healing Justice, Lost Nation: The Ioway, RACE-the Power of an Illusion, Slavery by Another Name, The House I Live in, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, YES! Youth Engagement Strategies Kit, Whose Streets?, The Foreigner’s Home, Eyes on the Prize, Iowans Return to Freedom Summer, 14: Dred Scott, Wong Kim Ark & Vanessa Lopez.
Films
World Trust offers several quality films and learning guides for discussion groups.
Brave New Films offers free screenings of their educational films on justice and inequality.
Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. Filmmaker Katrina Browne tells the story of her ancestors, who were Northerners, Episcopalians, and the largest slave-trading family in US history.
Moving Midway. Plans to move the buildings of Midway, the Cheshire family plantation in eastern North Carolina, were controversial within the Cheshire family, but once the move occurred, the buildings played host to a reunion of the extended Cheshire clan, both black and white. (Joseph Blount Cheshire was Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina from 1893 until 1932.)
Race: The Power of Illusion. California Newsreel’s 3-part documentary about race in society, science and history, produced by PBS. Companion materials are here.
Unnatural Causes…is inequality making us sick? California Newsreel’s 7-part documentary exploring racial and socioeconomic inequalities in health.
Slavery by Another Name. The documentary film historical expose produced by PBS about the many ways in which African Americans were intimidated and kept in involuntary servitude long after the Civil War was over.
From the Back of the Line. Documentary about the effect of US immigration policies in Charlotte, NC
13th - In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom. Download a discussion guide from www.influencefilmclub.com
Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools: KUED takes a moving and insightful look into the history, operation, and legacy of the federal Indian Boarding School system, whose goal was total assimilation of Native Americans at the cost of stripping away Native culture, tradition, and language.
Books
The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones (2021)
Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey (2018)
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2015) by Bryan Stevenson. Study Guide available.
Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God by Kelly Brown-Douglas (2015)
The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2013) by James H. Cone. Study Guide available.
Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives by Howard J. Ross (2014)
Living Reconciliation by Phil Groves and Anghard Parry Jones (2014)
Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation by Jennifer Harvey (2014)
Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities, by Mindy Thompson Fullilove (2013)
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, by James Loewen
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander (2012)
Becoming the Anti-racist Church: Journeying Toward Wholeness by Joseph Barndt (2011)
Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving (2014)
The Color of Compromise by Jamar Tisby (2020)
Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, by Paul Kivel (2011)
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise (2011)
Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History by Thomas Norman DeWolf (2009)
Growing Up in America: The Power of Race in the Lives of Teens by Brad Christerson, Korie L. Edwards, and Richard Flory (2010)
Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu by Michael Jesse Battle (2009)
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War Until World War II, by Douglas Blackmon (2009)
God’s Tapestry: Understanding and Celebrating Differences by William M. Kondrath (2008)
Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America, by Joseph Barndt (2007)
Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace by Miroslav Volf (2006)
Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The Other, and the Spirit of Transformation, by Stephanie Spellers (2006)
Seeing God in Each Other by Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook (Editor) (2006)
The Church Enslaved by Tony Campolo and Michael Battle (2005)
Where the Edge Gathers: Building a Community of Radical Inclusion by Yvette A. Flunder (2005)
Remember: The Journey to School Integration by Toni Morrison (2004)
A House of Prayer for All Peoples: Congregations Building Multiracial Community by Sheryl Kujawa- Holbrook (2002)
It’s the Little Things: The Everyday Interactions that Get under the Skin of Blacks and Whites by Lena Williams (2002)
Lifting the White Veil: An Exploration of White American Culture in a Multiracial Context by Jeff Hitchcock, J. (2002)
Racial Sobriety: A Journey from Hurts to Healing by Clarence Earl Williams (2002)
No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu (2000)
Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family, by Pauli Murray (1999)
Yet With a Steady Beat: The African American Struggle for Recognition in the Episcopal Church by Harold T Lewis (1996)