Summary

Call to Worship – The author outlines the past and present situations of black and white people in America, suggesting that tensions between the two races have been at the core of American political and cultural life since before slavery and have continued through the elections of both the first black president and his white successor. “… black and white people,” the author writes, “don’t merely have different experiences; we seem, to occupy different universes, with worldviews that are fatally opposed to one another” (3). He describes feeling called to write about the racial situation in America; how every effort to do so with an academic style seemed to lead to failure; and how he, a Baptist preacher, finally landed on the format of a religious service (specifically, a sermon) to make his point. Finally, he writes about his hope that speaking to American white...