Love Outside the Lines

November 7, 2022
Rollins, the former pastor of i5 City Church in Maryland, debuts with a jejune call for readers to “love like Jesus loves, and explore the areas in our lives and in our hearts that may be roadblocks to racial reconciliation.” Rollins discusses how Christian principles can enable readers to connect across differences, racial and otherwise, as when he illustrates the importance of reaching across the “invisible fences” that separate Black and white communities with the story of how Ananias’s willingness to build bridges helped him convert Paul, despite Paul’s virulent opposition to Christianity. Rollins’s tendency to couch his suggestions in metaphors amuses but leads to hazy advice. For example, he describes how when he was nine, his basketball team overcame a formidable opponent through teamwork, and he asserts that Christians “have to play as a team on and off the court” without providing further guidance on how to do so. The optimistic message is well-intentioned, but readers looking for a rigorous take on how to confront racism in Christian churches will be let down by the bromides (“We must stop being afraid to break through barriers and form relationships with people who don’t look like us”). This means well, but it doesn’t add much to the conversation.

December 16, 2022

In the introduction to this book about a Christian approach to social justice and antiracism, Rollins, a Black preacher who led 2,000 people in Annapolis, MD, in a Walk for Justice 2020 event, observes that when people remove themselves from their comfort zones, they may discover that they have a lot more in common with others than they realized. This thought, commonplace though it may be, created within Rollins a sense of purpose: to seek tangible ways for him to repair the damage of the stark divisions among people in the United States. For him, that particular division is the boundaries of the racial divide between people of color and an entrenched, tin-eared white ethos. Rollins's narrative, written in folksy style, is fueled by his evangelistic fervor for Christ. His book presents his belief that Jesus is a model showing how to break through racial prejudice, how to see with the eyes of the disenfranchised other, and, ultimately, how to heal divisions. In truth, the real substrate for reflection and discovery in this book is Rollins himself--it is his journey through ongoing racism that slowly unfolds in this work, complete with chapter-ending prayers and questions for reflection. VERDICT One's man's racial pilgrimage of self that will likely inspire many readers to look within and at others through a different lens.--Sandra Collins

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