Mission Mississippi—the largest sustained ecumenical racial reconciliation initiative in the United States today—claims that it is “Changing Mississippi one relationship at a time.” In Open Friendship in a Closed Society, Peter Slade offers a theological examination of Mission Mississippi's claim that a theology of reconciliation located in individual friendships can change a racialized and inequitable society. Drawing on his own fieldwork, interviews with participants, and historical research, Slade explores what academic theology can learn from Mission Mississippi's experiences and practices ... More

Mission Mississippi—the largest sustained ecumenical racial reconciliation initiative in the United States today—claims that it is “Changing Mississippi one relationship at a time.” In Open Friendship in a Closed Society, Peter Slade offers a theological examination of Mission Mississippi's claim that a theology of reconciliation located in individual friendships can change a racialized and inequitable society. Drawing on his own fieldwork, interviews with participants, and historical research, Slade explores what academic theology can learn from Mission Mississippi's experiences and practices of racial reconciliation. Engaging with recent works in sociology, history, and theology, Open Friendship in a Closed Society is both a significant cultural and historical study of religion in Mississippi and an accessible interdisciplinary work of interest to both academics and lay people concerned with race, religion, and reconciliation. Slade finds, through the interpretive lens of Jürgen Moltmann's theology of open friendship, a way to view and engage with the lived theology of Mission Mississippi. The open friendship of Jesus challenges Mission Mississippi and those in faith-based reconciliation initiatives to cultivate practices that subvert and oppose the injustices perpetuated in closed societies.