Book Review: Bloodlines by John Piper
Comments (none) Published February 10th, 2012 under Book Review
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In honor of the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, John Piper made his latest book, Bloodlines, available as a free pdf download. This work explores his journey in understanding race, ethnicity, and racism within the Kingdom. Piper grew up in the south in the 1950s and 1960s where he witnessed first hand the effects of segregation.
For Piper, there were few heroes in his youth who led with an eye toward reconciliation. His mother had made some bold public decisions to embrace racial reconciliation, but his childhood was void of mentors who spoke for the civil rights movement and against segregation. In this void, Piper developed his prejudices, language, and outlook on Black/White relations.
Because of his influence in the White American Evangelical Church, Piper might very well be the right person to begin conversation about the effects and importance of racial reconciliation. The people who are going to be reading this book may have thought very little about the value for racial reconciliation and have picked up this book simply because it was written by one of their mentors/leaders.
Though the book is marketed as a memoir and reflections on his journey, what it really majors on is his defense for a certain theological paradigm to value racial reconciliation. Piper is unapologetic about being reformed, and what he has done in this book is communicate what reform theology is and why it is the best kind of theology to lead us into racial reconciliation. His thesis is summed up on page 131:
From the standpoint of Reformed faith, every aspect of the way God views and saves sinners is designed to undermine racism and lead to a new reconciled and redeemed humanity from every people group in the world.
That’s a pretty bold statement to make, and Piper has really written the book to make that point. I won’t spend space to agree or disagree with Piper on whether Reformed faith is the road to racial reconciliation. What did disappoint me is that I wanted to hear more about Piper’s journey as a racist (as he called himself) and his movement toward reconciliation. And though he outright said that he is not the model of the person building the multi-ethnic church, he gave almost no picture or example of how reformed theology can prophetically stand against racism in all its forms–even more specifially how that has been true for him.
He has written this book to make a case that racial reconciliation is important and only truly achievable through his theological paradigm. While right thinking is important (and Piper majors on that in his book), so is taking risks in building lifelong relationships across cultural lines. For it’s in relationships that our values and theology is tested. And unfortunately Bloodlines offers no help to that end.
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