David Schrock’s Dividing the Faithful: How a Little Book on Race Fractured a Movement Founded on Grace tells a story. There is much to thank God for in the unusual and fruitful unity of the movement we’ve come to call the “Young, Restless, and Reformed.” But that movement has faded. On the one hand, this is to be expected. Movements come and go; the church does not. On the other hand, what happened? And what can we learn from it?

David points us to a short book published back in 2001 by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith titled, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. The work gained traction in the mid 2010s among evangelicals, and to date it has received little sustained examination and critique.

Although this book was published long before “Critical Race Theory” was a household phrase, it nevertheless pushed this secular social theory about race into the conversations and even pulpits of many evangelical preachers. David shows us how this happened. Importantly, David offers an overdue correction to the errors of this book. Whether you have read or recommend Divided by Faith or not, Dividing the Faithful will help you discern the underlying categories that so often dominate evangelical discussions on race.

We are offering this book at no cost for the month of July to those who subscribe to Christ Over All. We encourage you to take up this book and consider its arguments so that God’s people may be guarded from ideologies that ultimately do more harm than good. And if you’ve been helped by the church-equipping resources that Christ Over All provides, we would encourage you to support our efforts so that we can continue our mission to “help the church see Christ as Lord and everything else under his feet.”