Embracing Cracks; Deepening Community: A Riff on Stephanie Spellers, The Church Cracked Open

Abstract

Stephanie Spellers’ The Church Cracked Open (riffing on the upstart woman of Mark 14) offers sharp reprise and generous invitation to Christians (especially Episcopalians) to embrace a multi-faceted break with a past rife with compromise and championing of White Supremacy, Colonialism, and Imperialism. Her critique is sharp; her visioning prescient, her discussion at once detailed and accessible. This review from a position of continuous “rupturing” experienced by a white male educator/activist/poet, living and working in inner city Detroit for more than 35 years, finds both direction and encouragement from her counsel and would only stir into the mix what is already implicit in the book: in an age of climate change, the need to learn deeply from indigenous wisdom about land-return and land-wisdom. As Spellers intones—may the church be cracked open and poured forth like oil! And even more may we become like cracked seed of John 12!