Skin and Blood

Police shootings and street protests have made it impossible to pretend that America is free of racial problems. Douglas Wilson isn't pretending. In Skin and Blood, he calls for an honest look at both white sins and black sins, and then directs the reader's gaze to the red blood of Jesus, which is the only cure for either. The trouble with the current moment is that evangelical Christians have largely abandoned their own tradition in favor of whatever Black Lives Matter says about race and guilt. But Wilson argues that when a culture is already drowning in guilt, more guilt statements accomplish nothing. You will always be guilty of white privilege. The condition of black Americans will not change. What changes things is the Gospel. Not diversity statements. Not denominational apologies. Not improved HR policies. The only path to racial reconciliation runs through our reconciliation in Christ, in whom, as Paul puts it, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free. Skin and Blood is not a comfortable book. It names sins on all sides without flinching, refuses the false comfort of political activism, and insists that the Gospel is not merely relevant to race, it is the only answer that actually works.