Chine McDonald - God is not a White Man

We are delighted to announce that Chine McDonald will be May’s Soul Talk speaker on Saturday 1st May 2021 at 7:30pm. The theme of the evening will centre on Chine’s forthcoming book: ‘God is not a White Man’.

Chine is head of community fundraising & public engagement at Christian Aid. Prior to that, she led the media & PR team there and before that worked at World Vision as head of Christian influence & engagement. She was previously director of communications at the Evangelical Alliance, including running threadsuk.com – an online collective for people in their 20s and 30s exploring faith and life. She read theology & religious studies at Cambridge University before training as a newspaper journalist and over the years has written for several regional and national publications. Chine is a regular contributor to BBC Religion & Ethics programmes, including Thought for the Day on Radio 4’s Today programme, the Daily Service, Pause for Thought and Prayer for the Day. Chine is the author of ‘Am I Beautiful?’ – a book exploring body image among Christian women. She also sits on a number of charity boards, including Greenbelt Festival, the Church & Media Network and Christians Against Poverty. Chine regularly speaks and writes on issues of race and faith. Her second book God Is Not a White Man & Other Revelations will be published by Hodder & Stoughton in May 2021. And it is in relation to her book, God is not a White Man & Other Revelations that our Soul Talk conversation will focus. The Most Rev. Michael B Curry wrote of it, that, ‘this is much-needed medicine for a sickness that we cannot ignore.’

What does it mean when God is presented as male? What does it mean when – from our internal assumptions to our shared cultural imaginings – God is presented as white? These are the urgent questions that Chine McDonald asks whilst looking at her experience of being a Black woman in the white majority space that is the UK church – a church that is being abandoned by Black women no longer able to grin and bear its casual racism, colonialist narratives and lack of urgency on issues of racial justice. 

(https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/chine-mcdonald/god-is-not-a-white-man/9781529349078/?v2=true)

These are vital conversations and to the shame of the UK church, they are very long overdue. We invite you to come and listen, engage and learn. We are so grateful to Chine for writing the experience of her life into print and for being willing to share in conversation at Soul Talk. We have quoted the words written on Chine’s publishers’ website above, we end with them too: ‘…For anyone troubled by a culture that insists everyone is equal in God’s sight, yet fails to confront white supremacy’, God is not a White Man, is ‘…a lament about the state of race and faith, and a clarion call for us all to do better.’

This Soul Talk will take place on Zoom. Tickets are £5 (but as ever, if the cost would prohibit your coming along – just send us a message). There will be opportunity for conversation and questions.