About the Book
There is an answer to white Christian supremacy that is centuries in the making. For many oppressed and vulnerable people, Western Christianity has been a nightmare. Just centuries after the life of Jesus, the rise of Western Christendom contorted Christianity into an instrument of domination and violence. The church fused with the state, sanctioning empire-expanding crusades, colonization, and chattel slavery. Author Drew G. I. Hart challenges the church to wake up to how this past persists in the present, calling Christians to confront the living legacy of plundered people and lands in the name of Jesus.
Making It Plain offers a novel pathway for Christians to live out a decolonial and antiracist faith in the aftermath of Christendom: the convergence of the radical discipleship of the Anabaptist tradition and the prophetic witness of the Black church. In the witness of Black and Anabaptist Christian communities across time, we find a faith that takes the life and teachings of Jesus seriously. Despite oppression or persecution at the hands of mainstream Christianity, these traditions salvaged a liberating and peacemaking vision of Jesus right under the nose of empire and white supremacy.
Weaving together narrative history, theology, and practical guidance, Hart compells readers to engage the best of these faith streams to forge an Anablacktivist faith where everyone belongs, where everyone can thrive, and where everyone matters, especially the last and the least. The shared wisdom of these faith traditions offers signposts towards a Jesus-shaped, Spirit-filled, community-oriented movement capable of surviving and resisting new mutations of white Christian nationalism, antiblackness, and settler colonialism today.
About the Author :
Rev. Dr. Drew G. I. Hart is an author, speaker, and professor of theology at Messiah University, where he has directed the Thriving Together: Congregations for Racial Justice program since 2021. With a decade of pastoral experience, Hart is a leading voice in Christian ethics, Black theology, and Anabaptism, and he regularly speaks at colleges, conferences, and churches and to community groups across the United States. He is the author of Trouble I've Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism and Who Will Be A Witness? Igniting Activism for God's Justice, Love, and Deliveranc and cohost of the Inverse Podcast. Hart is also a coeditor of and contributor to Reparations and the Theological Disciplines: Prophetic Voices for Remembrance, Reckoning, and Repair.
Hart's writing combines deep theological insights with a commitment to justice and peacemaking, challenging the church to engage in liberative discipleship that leads to God's shalom. Hart has received several community awards for his activism and scholarship, and he lives with his family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Review :
"Making It Plain brings together rigorous scholarship and a deep, personal resonance that left me feeling both challenged and seen. As a Black Anabaptist, I have rarely seen my theological lineage reflected with such clarity and care. Drew Hart's exploration of these two traditions is more than historical analysis--it's a reclamation of faith rooted in justice. In a time when 'Christian values' are too often distorted to uphold oppression, this work offers a necessary corrective and a deeply encouraging guide for those seeking a faithful path forward."
----Regina Shands Stoltzfus, professor and director of peace, justice, and conflict studies at Goshen College and coauthor of Been in the Struggle
"Making It Plain is a nonviolent-messianic-cocktail thrown into both the sanctuary and the academy, which have accommodated narcissistic self-congratulatory quietism while the crucified class in the streets cries out under the rise of white supremacy, plantation capitalism, and Christofascism. Rev. Dr. Drew Hart distills his scholarship and vocation in these pages to offer what I pray will be an incendiary invitation to Anablacktivism, the fire of radical discipleship that our Lord wishes were already ablaze!"
----Jarrod McKenna, Australian peace award-winning pastor, social change trainer, and cohost of InVerse Podcast with Drew G. I. Hart and the Good on Wood podcast with Stephen Schallert
"At a time when many are disillusioned with Christianity's complicity in injustice, Making It Plain offers a vision of faith rooted in resistance, repair, and redemption. Dr. Drew G. I. Hart invites Christian activists to walk a new path, one shaped by the subversive teachings of Jesus, the radical witness of the Black Church, and the peace ethic of Anabaptism. This book doesn't just critique--it commissions. Please read it, wrestle with it, and let it sharpen your justice journey."
----Latasha Morrison, author of the New York Times bestseller Be the Bridge
"Discerning a future for gospel faith after eighteen centuries of Christendom's death-dealing, Drew G. I. Hart summarizes the historic strengths and contradictions of the radical discipleship stream of Anabaptism and the prophetic stream of the Black Church and envisions how they might improvisationally converge today in Anablacktivism. I commend this passionate, creative, and invitational advocacy for how to 'salvage the Jesus Way' in our fraught age of resurgent white Christian nationalism."
----Ched Myers, author of Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke's Jesus and Sabbath Economics
"Drew G. I. Hart indeed makes it plain in his new tour de force contribution to the health of the church. Both a love letter to the church and an indictment of mainstream Western Christianity, Making It Plain lifts the veil on Hart's own faith journey, sharing what he discovered about the particular and necessary power of a spiritual formation that integrates both the Black Church and Anabaptist traditions, for such a time as this. With historical acumen and theological precision, Hart holds no punches, withholds no treasure, and comes with receipts."
----Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel and Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World--and How to Repair It All
"We are living in a unique moment when distorted, twisted versions of Christianity are doing unimaginable damage. Christian nationalism is a heresy, and many people are trying to camouflage their racism, bigotry, and xenophobia under the guise of Christian faith. Anabaptism and the Black Church offer a much-needed cure to the malignant theology that is spreading quickly throughout the church in the United States and beyond. We need this book, now more than ever, to remember the past so that we can build a better future both for the church and for the world."
----Shane Claiborne, author, activist, and cofounder of Red Letter Christians
"Wow! Drew Hart has given us a no-holes-barred unfiltered treatise that prompts readers to sit up straight, take a deep breath, and seriously consider who they are, what they believe, and what they should be doing at this critical moment in history. Hart educates and motivates us to pursue a better way--the radical way of Jesus which rebukes the perversion of civil religion, Christian nationalism, and all expressions of Christianity that privilege a few at the expense of others. This book makes plain where Christians have been, where we are, and where we need to go."
----Dennis R. Edwards, dean and vice president of church relations at North Park Theological Seminary and author of Humility Illuminated
