A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Lenny Duncan writes a love letter and prophetic manifesto to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the wider white mainline church. Drawing on his life as a Black, queer Lutheran pastor, he confronts white supremacy, institutional self-protection, respectability, tokenism, policing, and the distance between public welcome and actual redistribution of power.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
It helps travelers see that progressive language does not by itself make a church just, safe, or transformed. Duncan writes from inside Christian commitment rather than from detached critique, holding love of church beside anger at its failures. The book gives the Library a direct institutional challenge while keeping the author's Lutheran, racial, and vocational location visible.
Good starting place if…
You are ready for a forceful Christian critique of white mainline institutions and want welcome, leadership, money, worship, and power examined together.
Know before you begin…
The book is intentionally confrontational and may evoke shame, defensiveness, grief, or recognition. It is not a general antiracism primer or a complete history of the ELCA, and Duncan does not represent every Black, queer, or Lutheran experience. Accounts of racism, violence, exclusion, and institutional betrayal make this a poor choice for immediate stabilization.