Straight White Male

Chris Furr

Description

As the cultural conversation around race, gender, and sexuality has evolved, straight, white men are becoming increasingly aware of their privilege. But many may be left thinking, "OK, what am I supposed to do about it?" "We need a way forward beyond feelings of guilt, overwhelmingness, anger, and denial." "We are looking for transformative guidance that helps us be the good guys we want to be."

Straight, white, male pastor Chris Furr offers a guide to deconstructing that privilege in Straight White Male. With an emphasis on confession and redemption, Furr invites other privileged men to reconsider the ways they live, work, believe, and interact with others. Alongside Furr's perspective, essays from contributing writers who lack various types of privilege—straight, Black man William J. Barber II, straight, white woman Melissa Florer-Bixler, queer, nonbinary latinx Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, and gay, white man Matthias Roberts—offer insights on how particular types and combinations of privilege (and the lack thereof) shape the way we move through the world. Their combined voices offer much-needed perspective through this deconstruction and provide a vision for how straight, white men can do better for ourselves, our families, and society.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Living
• Personal Growth
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
• Date de parution: 19 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781646982493
• Langue: English

Extrait

“Chris Furr’s words are not for the faint of heart. Though not intentionally provocative, they will provoke you in the greatest sense nonetheless. His candor and conviction will challenge your assumptions, test the story you tell yourself, and galvanize you to live with more attention and intention. He reminds us that faith calls us to do the difficult but necessary work of confronting privilege both in the world and in the mirror.”
—John Pavlovitz, author of If God Is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk
“In Straight White Male , Chris Furr and contributors incisively and powerfully remind us that just because we didn’t create the system doesn’t mean we don’t benefit from it. This call to straight, white men to recognize and deconstruct our privilege is both urgent and desperately needed. This book is a must-read!”
—Josh Scott, lead pastor, GracePointe Church, Nashville, Tennessee
“This graceful book offers a wise pastoral path toward the intentional deconstruction of straight, white, maleness, understood by author Chris Furr as a social construction that delivers privilege to some and harm to all and as fundamentally contrary to the gospel proclaimed and embodied by Jesus Christ. The book is deeply enriched by generous and illuminating contributions from Matthias Roberts, William J. ­Barber II, Melissa Florer-Bixler, and Roberto Che Espinoza. Highly recommended.”
—David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University
“From the start, Straight White Male gets right to the heart of the problems we face when we elevate patriarchal structures. Furr’s use of Scripture and stories made his deconstruction (and reconstruction) personal and empowering.”
—Brian Anderson, cofounder and executive director, Fathering Together
“ Straight White Male couldn’t come at a better time. With words permeated with humility and honesty, Chris Furr takes aim at the social forces plaguing American Christianity. If you are a straight, white dude like me, this thoughtful book needs to be in your hands. We need to read and absorb this book so that we can do better and seek the transformation Furr powerfully articulates in these pages.”
—Billy Kilgore, writer, pastor, and stay-at-home dad
Straight White Male
Straight White Male
A Faith-Based Guide to Deconstructing Your Privilege and Living with Integrity
C HRIS F URR
© 2022 Chris Furr
Contributing essays © 2022 Westminster John Knox Press
First edition
Published by Westminster John Knox Press
Louisville, Kentucky
23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31—10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2
All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396. Or contact us online at www.wjkbooks.com .
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. Scripture quotations marked CEB are from the Common English Bible, © 2011 Common English Bible, and are used by permission.
Book design by Drew Stevens
Cover design by Stephen Brayda
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Furr, Chris, author.
Title: Straight white male : a faith-based guide to deconstructing your privilege and living with integrity / Chris Furr.
Description: First edition. | Louisville, Kentucky : Westminster John Knox Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “Straight, white, male pastor Chris Furr offers a guide to deconstructing straight, white male privilege in conversation with William J. Barber II, Melissa Florer-Bixler, Roberto Che Espinoza, and Matthias Roberts to provide a vision for how straight, white men can do better”--Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022003796 (print) | LCCN 2022003797 (ebook) | ISBN 9780664266615 (paperback) | ISBN 9781646982493 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Men, White--Religious life. | Heterosexual men--Religious life. | Christians, White--Religious life.
Classification: LCC BV4528.2 .F87 2022 (print) | LCC BV4528.2 (ebook) | DDC 248.8/42--dc23/eng/20220223
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003796
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003797
Most Westminster John Knox Press books are available at special quantity discounts when purchased in bulk by corporations, organizations, and special-interest groups. For more information, please e-mail [e-mail] .
For Noah and Jude, with all my love
There’s no such thing as someone else’s war
Your creature comforts aren’t the only thing worth fighting for.
—Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, “White Man’s World”
Contents
Introduction
1. The Lie Beneath
Straight
2. “Queer” Is Not a Four-Letter Word
3. So That All Means All
Gay, White, and Male: Trust Takes Time, by Matthias Roberts
White
4. White Supremacy and the Air We Breathe
5. Shedding Whiteness
Straight, Black, and Male: What I Want White People to Know, by William J. Barber II
Male
6. Patriarchy’s Toxic Fruit
7. Detoxifying Masculinity
Straight, White, and Female: A Tangled Web of Oppression and Hope, by Melissa Florer-Bixler
8. Know Better, Do Better
Multiply Marginalized: Living in the Fragments, by Roberto Che Espinoza
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Excerpt from Good White Racist? , by Kerry Connelly
Introduction
This book is not about Donald Trump. I guess it’s also not not about Donald Trump either, in that the world looked different to me the day after the 2016 election. Two profound things changed for me—the way I saw others, and the way I understood how others saw me. That may be only two things, but there aren’t many bigger than that.
Of course, in the light of that Wednesday morning, it had not changed at all for the folks who were most threatened by a Trump presidency. America was as it had always been, a place hostile to people of color, a deeply patriarchal society standing on the foundation of white supremacy. Those who have not been able to afford to trust in America’s better angels knew better and were not surprised. But it was an awakening for me, and I hope for others like me. We learned that we could no longer assume that the things we’d learned about in our history classes were, in fact, history. We learned that some of us held drastically different views of the world than others.
I am, by nature, a person who assumes the best about people, which leads me to make assumptions about people that I learned abruptly had not been true. That day, I found I was looking at people differently. Behind the counter at the sandwich shop where I bought my lunch, I examined the three white guys, roughly my age, wondering how they’d voted. They looked like me. They could be me. Had they preferred Trump? Had they ignored his misogynistic language and behavior? Heard and followed his racial dog whistles? Everywhere I looked, every person I saw, I wondered. The person driving the car next to me at the stoplight. The parents in the carpool line at my kids’ school. The white guys on the daily podcast I loved, who dismissed the person of color on the show when he insisted that the results had not been about “economic anxiety” but about race. That was the last episode I ever downloaded.
My illusions had been shattered, I suppose, and the consequence was a silent interrogation of everyone around me, especially the ones who looked like me. I knew the demographics, that the overwhelming majority of college-educated straight white men had voted for Trump. It dawned on me (I will admit to not being the most perceptive person): if I was looking at everyone else this way, this was the way folks were likely looking at me. They could look at the car I drove, the color of my skin, the clothes I wore—even the job I do—and make certain assumptions about my political leanings, and therefore my values. I felt like an impostor in my own skin. I looked at people with whom I have so very much in common and instantly felt as though I was not familiar with them at all.
There is something mind-bending about fitting the appearance of a type, but being unable to understand or identify with the particular attributes that go along with that type, and why exactly it feels so foreign. In one sense, it was profoundly isolating to be walking around in a body that carried deep associations about who I am as a person, values with which I definitely did not want to be associated (again, “welcome,” say millions of nonwhite, nonbinary others); to look and sound like one thing but feel internally like something else. It made me think deeply about how I want to be perceived, about how what I hold in my heart or mind isn’t as important as where and how I present my physical self to those around me, in ways that represent who I want to be. It was like one of those bad dreams about being in public with no clothes on. I was all of a sudden aware of what people saw when they looked at me.
The election of Donald Trump was a catalyst for this, but this book is not about him, and the problem I hope to address did not begin with him and certainly will not end with him either. Straight white men have been the apex predators in our culture, and around the world, for centuries. We have wiped out Indigenous populations, owned people as property, used and abused the environment for profit, stigmatized both men and women for their sexual orientation or gender identity to destructive effect—all of this mostly, as I will show, as a means to soothe our own insecurities. This is why “predator” is an appropriate term—because we have made anyone and everyone the prey by which