Grace Matters: A True Story of Race, Friendship, and Faith in the Heart of the South

Grace Matters: A True Story of Race, Friendship, and Faith in the Heart of the South. By Chris P. Rice. Jossey-Bass, 2002. xi and 303 pages. Cloth. $22.95.

Halfway through Grace Matters I began to think about ways to integrate this book into the religion courses I teach. It is a powerful, moving account of Rice's years in the interracial Antioch Community, which attempted to live out the ideas of the Sermon on the Mount in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Jackson, Mississippi. The title is a play on Cornel West's Race Matters. And although it is about race, it is finally, as the title suggests, a book about grace. It is a book about the grace God has extended to Rice in his life and how others have extended grace to Rice. The title is also a play on words. It could signify, for example, that grace matters to us and to God. A second meaning is that the book is about matters--that is, experiences--of grace.

The arena for the grace that Rice wants to share has to do with racial reconciliation. Listen to his vision: "Integration and reconciliation are not the same ... you can't force brotherhood and sisterhood" (p. 114). His "yokefellow" in this ministry was Spencer Perkins, who "carried the scars of his and his family's frontline duty in the civil rights movement" (p. xi).

Grace Matters is indeed a book about racial reconciliation of two men who feared and distrusted each other but grew in love and grace for each other. As Rice says, his relationship to Perkins "was not a gift I would have chosen but maybe it was the gift that I needed" (p. 162). This book with its commitment to racial reconciliation may not be the gift we would choose, but it is and will be the gift we need.

David C. Ratke

Lenoir-Rhyne College

Hickory, North Carolina

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