{"id":58220,"date":"2025-02-20T13:05:54","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T18:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=58220"},"modified":"2025-02-20T13:05:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T18:05:55","slug":"seminary-professor-introduces-forthcoming-book-at-convocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2025\/seminary-professor-introduces-forthcoming-book-at-convocation\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminary professor introduces forthcoming book at Convocation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Historical research has a funny way of changing your writing plans, says Dr. David Evans<\/strong>, professor of history and intercultural studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What began as a book that aimed to celebrate the contributions of white allies in the fight for Black freedom, he said, morphed into a research project that questioned the effectiveness of those allies and their movements toward racial justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That book, Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement<\/em>, will publish in November by The University of North Carolina Press. Evans, who has worked on the book for the past seven years, introduced the book and shared some passages at Convocation on Wednesday in Lehman Auditorium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Watch the full livestream of his talk here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Evans said work on his book began as a response to an invitation from scholars like Beverly Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race<\/em>, to narrate the stories of white individuals and groups who have resisted racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA number of books on abolitionists and a small number of texts on white allies have become available,\u201d Evans said. \u201cThey told the stories of people like Mary White Ovington, a white socialist woman who helped W.E.B. Du Bois start the NAACP. They narrated biographies of people like Judge J. Waties Waring, who grew up in a segregationist household, but later in life became an advocate for racial justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese stories of segregationists to anti-segregationists, from racist to anti-racist, from enemy of black folks to allies, are important stories, maybe even necessary stories. But what’s interesting about these texts that I mentioned is the things that they didn’t do.\u201d

Damned Whiteness<\/em> explores the work of \u201cthree of the most celebrated white Christian allies of the Black freedom era\u201d: Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement; Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm; and Ralph Templin, who was an American missionary in India. Each of these allies either created or led movements that launched them into similar trajectories with Black freedom organizations that opposed racial segregation, Evans said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut because the visions of these movements were disconnected from the Black communities they aimed to help, they failed to meet them on their path to liberation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evans is the co-editor of Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity<\/em> (Cascade, 2018). His teaching and research focus on the braided identity categories of race, religion, and nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

EMU\u2019s students, faculty and staff, rooted in the value of active faith, practice compassion, mutual love, and appreciation for the diversity of religious and cultural expressions represented in their community.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historical research has a funny way of changing your writing plans, says Dr. David Evans, professor of history and intercultural studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. What began as a book ... read more about Seminary professor introduces forthcoming book at Convocation<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":302,"featured_media":58228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5583,17562,5642,265],"tags":[18222,18322,5868,18321,14201,18324,18323,17459],"feature":[17427,17426,17241,17422],"class_list":["post-58220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community","category-digest","category-faculty-and-staff","category-seminary","tag-active-faith","tag-books","tag-convocation","tag-damned-whiteness","tag-david-evans","tag-peace-justice","tag-racial-justice","tag-seminary","feature-emu-home-page-feature","feature-myemu-feature","feature-news-feature","feature-news-landing-page-main-feature"],"yoast_head":"\nSeminary professor introduces forthcoming book at Convocation - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2025\/seminary-professor-introduces-forthcoming-book-at-convocation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Seminary professor introduces forthcoming book at Convocation - EMU News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Historical research has a funny way of changing your writing plans, says Dr. David Evans, professor of history and intercultural studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. 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