Making It Plain: Why We Need Anabaptism and the Black Church

There is an answer to white Christian supremacy that is centuries in the making.

For many oppressed and vulnerable people, Western Christianity has been a nightmare. Just centuries after the life of Jesus, the rise of Western Christendom contorted Christianity into an instrument of domination and violence. The church fused with the state, sanctioning empire-expanding crusades, colonization, and chattel slavery. Author Drew G. I. Hart challenges the church to wake up to how this past persists in the present, calling Christians to confront the living legacy of plundered people and lands in the name of Jesus.

Making It Plain offers a novel pathway for Christians to live out a decolonial and antiracist faith in the aftermath of Christendom: the convergence of the radical discipleship of the Anabaptist tradition and the prophetic witness of the Black church. In the witness of Black and Anabaptist Christian communities across time, we find a faith that takes the life and teachings of Jesus seriously. Despite oppression or persecution at the hands of mainstream Christianity, these traditions salvaged a liberating and peacemaking vision of Jesus right under the nose of empire and white supremacy.

Weaving together narrative history, theology, and practical guidance, Hart compells readers to engage the best of these faith streams to forge an Anablacktivist faith where everyone belongs, where everyone can thrive, and where everyone matters, especially the last and the least. The shared wisdom of these faith traditions offers signposts towards a Jesus-shaped, Spirit-filled, community-oriented movement capable of surviving and resisting new mutations of white Christian nationalism, antiblackness, and settler colonialism today.

Rev. Dr. Drew G. I. Hart is an author, speaker, and professor of theology at Messiah University, where he has directed the Thriving Together: Congregations for Racial Justice program since 2021. With a decade of pastoral experience, Hart is a leading voice in Christian ethics, Black theology, and Anabaptism, and he regularly speaks at colleges, conferences, and churches and to community groups across the United States. He is the author of Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism and Who Will Be A Witness? Igniting Activism for God’s Justice, Love, and Deliveranc and cohost of the Inverse Podcast. Hart is also a coeditor of and contributor to Reparations and the Theological Disciplines: Prophetic Voices for Remembrance, Reckoning, and Repair.

Hart’s writing combines deep theological insights with a commitment to justice and peacemaking, challenging the church to engage in liberative discipleship that leads to God’s shalom. Hart has received several community awards for his activism and scholarship, and he lives with his family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.