Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity with the Gospel

African-Americans have long confronted the challenge of dignity destruction caused by white supremacy. While many have found meaning and restoration of dignity in the black church, others have found it in ethnocentric socioreligious groups and philosophies. These ideologies have grown and developed deep traction in the black community and beyond. Previously found primarily in urban communities and conscious Hip-hop songs, now that we are in the Internet age, they have a broader reach than ever. Revisionist history, conspiracy theories, and misinformation about Jesus and Christianity are the order of the day. Many young African-Americans are disinterested in Christianity and others are leaving the church in search of what these false religious ideas appear to offer, a spirituality more indigenous to their history and ethnicity.Edited by Dr. Eric Mason and featuring a top-notch lineup of contributors, Urban Apologetics is the first book focused entirely on cults, religious groups, and ethnocentric ideologies prevalent in the black community. It brings the church up to speed on the legitimate issues that blacks have with Western Christianity as well as the questions alternative religious groups pose about historic Christianity, and it applies the gospel to black identity to show that Jesus is the only one who can restore our identity.Review'The saying goes, 'When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' For far too long apologetics has been a hammer that attempted to strike every false teaching and cultic movement the same way in every community. Urban Apologetics is a much-needed, multifaceted tool kit that offers an interdisciplinary approach to promoting biblical faithfulness and gospel fluency. You will find that it utilizes history, sociology, theology, philosophy, and ethics, giving us the screwdrivers, scissors, pliers, wrenches, and hammers needed to repair broken faith in urban communities. As an urban apologist in New York City, the birthplace of many of the ideologies covered in this seminal work, I plan on carrying this tool kit with me wherever I am called to give an answer for the faith within me, and I encourage you to do the same.' -- Pastor Rasool Berry, Bridge Church, New York City 'Eric Mason and team have captured, in one sitting, the rumblings of the cultural winds that threaten to knock down the pillars of our truth that are lost in retweets and likes and memes. Mason's pen is a testament that orthodoxy and swag can coexist like Christ and the most current colloquialisms. This book shouts loud to our times! Jesus is real! No cap.' -- Kirk Franklin, award-winning gospel artist 'As its title suggests, Urban Apologetics is about the defense of the faith and, more particularly, a contextualized defense of the faith. It addresses serious threats to the truth of the gospel within the Black community that are mostly unfamiliar to believers outside that community. The contributors are expert analysts who serve readers well with insightful, intelligent commentary and strategy. But the book is so much more. The editor wisely anticipates that many readers will first need to understand why so many in the Black community reject the gospel in favor of some truly bizarre belief systems. The common denominator is dismissal of, and reaction to, whiteness. Urban Apologetics helps outsiders comprehend what the problem of whiteness means and how it is a genuine impediment for so many to embrace the gospel of Christ. Only after understanding how Western history, culture, and Christianity have contributed to the power of this obstacle can one understand why so many people in the Black community are attracted to belief systems that seem so peculiar to outsiders. Urban Apologetics simultaneously informs and provokes, inspires and saddens, educates and chastises, all with an irenic tone from brothers and sisters in Christ that will stir believers within and without the Black communi