When Heaven and Earth Collide
download cover image ►

When Heaven and Earth Collide

Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus

Alan Cross

Foreword by William Dwight McKissic

Title Details

Pages: 320

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 11/01/2014

ISBN: 9-781-6030-6350-0

List Price: $25.95

eBook

Pub Date: 11/01/2014

ISBN: 9-781-6030-6356-2

List Price: $25.95

Imprint

NewSouth Books

When Heaven and Earth Collide

Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus

Alan Cross

Foreword by William Dwight McKissic

Skip to

  • Description
  • Reviews
When Heaven and Earth Collide is an investigation into what went wrong in the American South in regard to race and religion—and how things can be and are being made right. Why, in a land filled with Christian churches, was there such racial oppression and division? Why didn’t white evangelicals do more to bring racial reconciliation to the South during the 19th and 20th centuries? These questions are asked and answered through an exploration of history, politics, economics, philosophy, and social and theological studies that uncovers the hidden impetus behind racism and demonstrates how we can still make many of the same errors today—just perhaps in different ways. The investigation finally leads us in hopeful directions involving how to live out the better way of Jesus with an eye on heaven in a world still burdened and broken under the sins of the past.
This is a necessary book by a man steeped in the white evangelical tradition but willing to expose what went wrong there. It would be easy for Christians in a different tradition to call down shame on those white Southerners for their failures, but every tradition has its own failures that need this kind of intense scrutiny so they don't continue into the future.

—Bill Tammeus, Bill's "Faith Matters" Blog

About the Author/Editor

ALAN CROSS is pastor of Gateway Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he has served on staff since 2000. A Southern native, he was born in New Orleans and grew up in Picayune, Mississippi. He earned an education degree at Mississippi State University and a master’s of divinity from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, California, where he focused on intercultural studies and urban ministry.