Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society (Made to Flourish Resources)

I really wanted to like this book, but ultimately it was so disappointing. The author heavily over-emphasizes the positive cultural contributions of Christianity while neglecting to reckon with the glaring failures of Christians to pursue shalom, both in the past and present. I appreciate that she includes profiles of churches actively committed to social justice within their local communities. However, I feel that she, as a white Christian author, should have adopted a much more humble tone. I believe she should have spent time wrestling with how white Christians justified slavery and Jim Crow for centuries, which was in direct opposition to shalom and which continues to plague our society today. This is only mentioned briefly in passing, almost as an afterthought.In the chapters on “The True,” which focuses on schooling, there is no mention of the harm white Christians have contributed to in the education sector, such as indigenous boarding schools, laws against enslaved people learning, and violent resistance to school integration. I believe the author should have explored the school-to-prison pipeline, in addition to how the privatization of education hurts public schools and the least of these. And she definitely should have reckoned with how the current anti-CRT hysteria has resulted in the censoring of truth, the banning of books, and the silencing of marginalized people in our schools.There is only a brief mention of the growing movement of Christian Nationalism and no mention at all of the shameful white Christian embrace of Trumpism, which stands for everything that is anti-shalom. I was so disappointed by an almost complete lack of acknowledgement of the Black Church and its inspiring pursuit of shalom, justice, and renewal throughout American history, despite opposition from white Christians at nearly every turn.If we are going to be true Agents of Flourishing, we need to remember our history accurately, reckon with how we got here, repent of our failures, and learn from those on the margins. Skip this book and wait for Jemar Tisby’s new book coming out next spring!