Outing Blue Privilege: A Call for Public Love Because Public Safety Is Not Enough (Paperback)

Public love is protest and policy advocacy. Policy advocacy is a civic prayer that impacts the soul of the nation.

There are so many ways we patrol, punish, and compromise our humanity; ways we impugn our faith and shred the fabric of democracy. Policing and punishment hover over us as matters of life and death. Our world aches for a species of love strong enough to undo the personal, collective, and structural terror and trauma of policing and punishment. To make America safe and sustainable for all flesh, we desperately need a more substantial political muscle than those we have dared to exercise in the history of our republic. In our republic, it's common to grapple with intrigues around public policy, public housing, public jobs, public investments, public safety, and public benefits, but what about public love? It is public love that creates the necessary space for justice to be the rendezvous point of the political, moral, and spiritual. In Outing Blue Privilege Willie Francois pushes readers into an activism of public love, the embodiment, creation of, and advocacy for common goodness, equity, and justice.

Willie Dwayne Francois III is an Associate Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary, where he directs the Master of Professional Studies Program at Sing Sing and Bedford Hills Correctional Facilities. He also serves as Senior Pastor of Fountain Baptist Church in Summit, New Jersey, and is President of the Black Church Center for Justice and Equality―a national think tank and policy advocacy organization. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Religion, he holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, and a Doctorate of Ministry from Emory University. He serves as national co-chair of the Social Justice Commission of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.