More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel

Spencer Perkins · Chris Rice

Sep 2009 · InterVarsity Press

About this ebook

Recipient of a Christianity Today 1994 Critics Choice Award! Here is living proof that white and black Christians can live together. When Spencer Perkins was sixteen years old, he visited his bloodied and swollen father (pastor John Perkins) in jail. Police had beaten the black activist severely, and Spencer never forgot the moment. He couldn't imagine living in community with a white person after that. But his plans were changed. Chris Rice grew up in very different circumstances, of "Vermont Yankee stock," attending an elite Eastern college and looking forward to a career in law and government. But his plans were changed. Spencer and Chris became not only friends, but yokefellows--partners for more than a decade in the difficult ministry of racial reconciliation. From their own hard-won experience, they show that there is hope for our frightening race problem, that whites and African-Americans can live together in peace. This revised and expanded edition includes a new introduction, a new afterword, a new study guide, updated resources and a new chapter by Spencer, "Playing the Grace Card." In compellingly practical detail, Chris and Spencer present their hope, which is boldly and radically Christian. "The cause of racial reconciliation needs yokefellows," they argue, ". . . not solely for the sake of racial harmony--even though it will lead to that--but for the witness of the gospel."

About the author

Until his death in 1998, Perkins served the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development. He was an editor of the magazine Urban Family.

Chris Rice (DMin, Duke Divinity School) is the Duke Divinity School Senior Fellow for Northeast Asia. He and his wife, Donna, serve with the Mennonite Central Committee as MCC Country Representatives for Northeast Asia. They are based in Chuncheon, South Korea. He previously served as founder and codirector of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation from 2005 to 2014. He grew up in South Korea, where his parents were Presbyterian missionaries. He also spent many years living and working in Jackson, Mississippi, with Voice of Calvary Ministries. He was managing editor of Urban Family magazine, cofounder of Reconcilers Fellowship and convener of the Issue Group on Reconciliation at the 2004 Lausanne Forum on World Evangelization. He serves as chair of the Lausanne Special Interest Committee on Reconciliation and the leadership team of the Global Network for Reconciliation. He has written for such magazines as Sojourners, Christianity Today and Christian Century, and is author of Grace Matters, coauthor (with Spencer Perkins) of More Than Equals and coauthor (with Emmanuel Katongole) of Reconciling All Things.