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Resource: Books (720.1400) Fearless Dialogues : A New Movement for Justice     
Author: Ellison, Gregory C.
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017
Length: 160 pages
Heading: 235 — Social Justice
Subjects: African Americans / Social conditions; Conversation / Religious aspects / Christianity; Hospitality / Religious aspects / Christianity; Social change / United States
Location: E185.86 .E4373 2017
# Copies: 1
ISBN/ISSN: 9780664260651
Description: Pastoral theologian Ellison (Cut Dead but Still Alive) presents an impressionistic guide to a technique he has developed to facilitate community conversation about difficult subjects. Fearless dialogue he explains is intended to bring together unlikely partners and lead to social change when conversation partners come to appreciate different perspectives. Although the book is not a strict how to manual on the process (which is never fully described but relies on a series of exercises) Ellison riffs on practices such as radical hospitality and living museum-- a conversation starting technique that relies on images. He analyzes the social fears that inhibit frank exchange such as what he calls plopping or what happens when a person's contribution to a group conversation goes unacknowledged. Ellison writes in a thoroughly idiosyncratic way (My nostrils deciphered the pungent gas from the blue orange flame) and his sources including Barbara Brown Taylor
and D.W. Winnicott are eclectic. The result is an intellectual quilt fabricated to brilliant effect. The book's real value arises from the unexpected connections Ellison teases out (for example psychotherapist Carl Rogers helps the author explain the process of welcoming) although some of the jumps are hard to follow (the FunkJazz Café needs more explanation). While Ellison's prose is generally conversational the book maintains a pastoral quality with its insistence on seeing and hearing the marginalized. Ellison is a theologian for our times and this book will inspire new connections in communities that choose to heed the lessons here. (Nov.)" Publishers Weekly Copyright Pwxyz, LLC. All rights reserved."
Age Groups: None specified.


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