Nibs Stroupe

"In Passionate for Justice, we find a compass that points us to the future, where we can each give voice and action to justice, equity, and life-giving community. Ida Wells would have had it no other way." —From the Foreword by Stacey Abrams, 2018 Democratic Nominee for Governor of Georgia Ida B. Wells was a powerful churchwoman and witness for justice and equity from 1878 to 1931. Born enslaved, her witness flowed through the struggles for justice in her lifetime, especially in the intersections of African Americans, women, and those who were poor. Her life is a profound witness for faith-based work of visionary power, resistance, and resilience for today’s world, when the forces of injustice stand in opposition to progress. These are exciting and dangerous times. Boundaries that previously seemed impenetrable are now being crossed. This book is a guide for the current state of affairs in American culture, enlivened by the historical perspective of Wells’ search for justice. The authors are an African-American woman and a child of white supremacy. Both have dedicated themselves to working, writing, and developing ministries oriented toward justice, equity, and mercy. This book can be used in all settings, but most especially in churches (pastors and other church leaders, study groups), seminaries, and universities.

Deeper Waters is a sermon collection--but also a manifesto. Its sermons sound forth a call for Christian preaching that is evangelical and emancipatory: unashamed of the good news about Christ's death and resurrection and resolute in resistance to white supremacy, male domination, and redemptive violence. The author, pastor Nibs Stroupe, is a white son of the segregated South, nurtured in its twin traditions of anti-black white racism and Christian faith. But through the courageous witness of black Americans engaged in the Civil Rights movement, Stroupe experienced conversion to a new theological vision. God's loving claim on humanity in Jesus Christ abolishes oppressive idols and breaks down dividing barriers. This conviction propelled Nibs into a lifelong ministry of gospel proclamation and antiracist struggle. For thirty-four years, Stroupe pastored at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, a multiracial congregation in metropolitan Atlanta. The sermons of this collection present the mature fruit of that ministry, and they offer a gift and example to the next generation of preachers and workers summoned as witnesses of Jesus Christ to the American context. ""Jesus-centered, biblically learned, and dead-set against white supremacy--even as he retains awareness of his complicity with it--Nibs Stroupe is one of the most important models for preaching in our time."" --Ted A. Smith, Candler School of Theology, Emory University ""In the midst of so much preaching that is timid, innocuous, and loaded with kitsch, these sermons by Nibs Stroupe strike a very different note. They lack the conventional frills of fancy introductions and entertaining ""illustrations."" They move directly and swiftly to the text; as a result they move directly and inescapably to contemporary assurances and challenges for obedient faith. Nibs has lived the stuff he preaches. We are moved by what he says. More than that, many preachers will be instructed by these sermons in the fresh, dangerous, compelling work of proclamation, and away from custodial safety."" --Walter Brueggemann Columbia Theological Seminary ""The sermons here hit like theological hand grenades--they're explosive, shattering in their honesty, destroying platitudes we've long had about race, class, and sexual identity. You can't help but be changed by them because Nibs speaks from personal experience as well as keen pastoral insight. It's both a confession and a summon to faith in a difficult age."" --John Blake, author of Children of the Movement, religion writer for CNN.com ""For 50 years, Nibs Stroupe has been that rarest of voices in America--an idealist relentlessly confronting not just those with whom he disagrees but challenging himself and all believers in good to examine our own parts in society's systems of inequality and injustice. His sermons are clarion calls for all who seek a path toward a better America."" --Douglas A. Blackmon, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black, Americans From the Civil War to World War II FOR WEBSITE: ""Nibs Stroupe has been a mentor and preacher in my life for 50 years. Before he retired from the mighty multicultural Jesus centered Oakhurst, Stroupe was the best white preacher in Atlanta. Oh, I don't mean his words were fancy or his rhetoric as polished as those who take $100,000.00 a year from their congregation. I am talking about disturbing, nail piercing, bloody cross preaching. Nibs as person and preacher is just the kind of white minister Martin Luther King, Jr prayed for. Read his book. Move in different directions. Get real in troubled waters."" --Ed Loring, Open Door Community, Baltimore, Maryland Nibs Stroupe grew up in the Mississippi River Delta in Arkansas. He retired in 2017 after thirty-four years as pastor of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, a church nationally known for its leadership in multicultural ministry. He is the author of three books, including the award-winning While We Run

Whether we are conscious of it or not, we fear difference. That often unwarranted fear leads us to create enemies in our hearts and minds, and fear was no stranger to Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, as confessed by Pastor Nibs Stroupe: "We have listened to one another's stories here, and we have discovered that the people we feared, those monsters we thought would destroy us -- because of different skin colors, different genders, different sexual orientations, different economic categories -- they are really our sisters and brothers, the folks for whom our hearts long." In the 1960s the Oakhurst congregation was 900 members strong, but by the time Nibs Stroupe arrived in 1983, "white flight" had left less than 100 on the church's dwindling membership rolls. Since then, Oakhurst has undergone an extraordinary transformation, re-inventing itself as a growing community that welcomes everyone. The congregation has attracted national attention for its radically inclusive and egalitarian diversity, which extends beyond racial integration to class, gender, sexual orientation, and theological perspective. How have people from such dissimilar backgrounds come together to create a harmonious and thriving whole? In what biblical vision is it rooted and shaped? By what theological resources is it fed and sustained? The heart of the answer to these questions lies in the exceptional sermons of Nibs Stroupe. Growing out of the experience of a multicultural congregation in which diversity is both valued and feared, these messages offer an uncompromising prophetic vision of the American church's identity and mission. Stroupe firmly grounds a liberal social viewpoint within the biblical and theological traditions of the church, and he calls us to hear God's claim on us in our place and in our time. Underlying his powerful sermons is the fundamental conviction that the barriers that separate us from our neighbors have been brought down in Jesus Christ. Where Once We Feared Enemies will be an indispensable addition to any pastor's library. It is also inspiring and enlightening reading for anyone interested in the future of the American church, as well as its role in the continuing stories of race relations, civil rights, and peace and justice issues. These sermons are not your typical "social action" homilies. Rather Nibs Stroupe cuts to the quick of the biblical message of Jesus as it impacts the minds and hearts of thinking people of every race, class, and political stripe. This is theologically rich fare that will satisfy and energize Christians and non-Christians alike. These are the kind of no-nonsense sermons that have made Oakhurst one of the most faithful and consistent witnesses to the love and justice-making of the gospel that I have seen in more than half a century of ministry. Gayraud S. Wilmore Emeritus Professor of African-American Church History Interdenominational Theological Center Gibson "Nibs" Stroupe and his wife, Caroline Leach, have been the pastors of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia, since 1983. They are the co-authors of O Lord, Hold Our Hands, a book detailing Oakhurst's unique multicultural ministry. Stroupe is also the author of While We Run This Race, which won the 1996 Gustavus Myers Award for outstanding book on human rights. Stroupe and his Oakhurst ministry have been featured in Time, the Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor, on NBC Nightly News, CNN, and National Public Radio, and in several books. Chris Boesel (editor) is an assistant professor of Christian theology at Drew University Theological School.

Can people actually touch the reality that Paul talks about in his letter to the Ephesians, a reality where Christ has "broken down the dividing wall"? The experience of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church says "Yes!" Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia has been nationally recognized as a model of a successful multicultural church. Here, in O Lord, Hold Our Hands, pastors Nibs Stroupe and Caroline Leach share their story--with all of its peaks and valleys--and, in doing so, provide a guide to multicultural ministry that any church can use to build or enhance its own ministry.