Christian historian, writer, and speaker Jemar Tisby joined us for an interview about his first book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, which was released in January of 2019.
The following article is adapted and excerpted from our full podcast interview with Jemar Tisby, embedded above, and conducted by Denison Forum’s Katharine Elkins. Portions have been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Tisby is currently writing his dissertation as part of the PhD program in history at the University of Mississippi. He serves as president of The Witness, a black Christian collective that engages issues of religion, race, justice, and culture from a biblical perspective, and he’s the cohost of its podcast, Pass The Mic.
He grew up in the Chicago area and became a Christian at the age of sixteen through a youth group. He went to Notre Dame (although he has never been Catholic), spent a semester in Jerusalem, and stayed an extra year at Notre Dame to work in campus ministry.
He joined Teach for America and taught sixth grade for four years at a public charter school in the Mississippi Delta. He then went to Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando for a year. Then God called him back to his former school to be principal for three years. In June of 2011, he moved to Jackson, Mississippi, to finish his MDiv at RTS Jackson. He has a wife and a son.
Why did you write The Color of Compromise?
I moved to Jackson, Mississippi, to do a Masters in Divinity. After that, I was looking at getting a PhD somewhere. Initially, I was looking into theology and seminary programs, but I knew I needed more background because I wanted to do something involving race and African American history and whatnot.
I took a graduate course in history at Jackson State University, which is an historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi. I read some…
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