Grace Matters: A True Story of Race, Friendship,  and Faith in the Heart of the South
Chris Rice, a columnist for the ChristianSojournermagazine, takes on a memoirist's voice as he builds a dramatic story of racial harmony.Grace Mattersbegins in the early 1980s as Rice takes on a daunting role--that of a white man working within a predominately black church to help heal racial tension in Jackson, Mississippi. As a new member of the Voice of Calvary Church, Rice attends one of his first meetings. Here is where he meets the man who will eventually become his co-author of the award-winning bookMore Than Equals:Then Spencer Perkins rose from his seat at the back of the church ... Spencer's eyes narrowed. His voice was gruff, defiant and confident. "What I want to know," he said, "is, what are all you white people doin' here?" That's all he said.... All lessons about how to win friends and influence people went right out the window. With one quick sentence, Spencer Perkins iced over the sunny land of my racial idealism.As this memoir unfolds, we are privy to a magnificent friendship between two men of different races and extremely different backgrounds who discover that they each have tough spiritual lessons to teach one another. Eventually the story pans outward from the fiery friendship, as the duo helps to build an inspirational and interracial church community that brings "a culture of grace" to an impoverished inner-city neighborhood. Few would have thought that this kind of racially inclusive Christianity could have been accomplished in the Deep South. Rice not only shows that it's been done, he offers a testament to how it can be done again and again.--Gail Hudson