Christianity Today is running a fascinating piece by Dan Hummel on the history of Jemar Tisby‘s breakout best-seller The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. Here is a taste:
Then Tisby began to shop his book proposal in 2017, a half dozen publishers were interested. Zondervan offered a significant advance.
“To me, this indicated two things,” Tisby said. “One, their resources. And two, their confidence in me and the book.”
For a new Black author in particular, this confidence was essential. In order for the book to be taken seriously, Tisby thought, a publisher would have to put some institutional weight behind it. He wanted to write about the failure of white Christianity to reckon with race and deal directly with the history of violence, compromise, and cowardice. He knew many would rather look away.
“The story is worse than most imagine,” Tisby said. “I was very honest with the team at Zondervan about speaking forthrightly about race, about knowing from personal experience how people push back against these conversations.”
Read the entire piece here. Color of Compromise has sold over 100,000 copies.
Listen to our interview with Tisby in Episode 48 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast.
