





































Ecclesial Futures
2025 – Volume 6 – Issue 2

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Ecclesial Futures – DOI: 10.54195/ef25059

B O O K  r E V I E W

DOI: 10.54195/ef25059

B O O K  r E V I E W

Edwards, Korie L., and Rebecca Y. Kim. 
2024. Estranged Pioneers: Race, Faith, and 
Leadership in a Diverse World

Oxford: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197638309

Reviewed by James Butler

The thing which drew me to this book was the language of “pioneer”. This is language 
I’m familiar with because it is used in a Church of England context to describe those 
who feel a sense of calling beyond the traditional spheres of the church to connect 
with people who are beyond the normal reach of churches. Given that one of the 
critiques of this language is that it is inappropriate because of its colonial connota-
tions and connections, it was interesting to find it used as the language to describe 
those who sense a call to lead racially diverse churches, or multiracial churches, in 
the terms favoured in the book. Not only that, but having heard Korie Little Edwards 
speak, I was aware that these “pioneers” that she and Rebecca Kim had identified 
had experiences in common with the pioneers I work with, particularly around the 
ways they saw themselves following an unusual calling, leading to them feeling 
misunderstood by those around them within their churches and wider denomina-
tional structures.

Estranged Pioneers is a detailed look at the experience of leaders of racially diverse 
churches in the United States. Edwards and Kim are both sociologists, and the book 
takes a sociology of religion approach in its methods and in its theoretical analysis. 
Reading sociology of religion as someone based in practical theology is interesting – 
on the one hand, there is so much which feels in common with my field around the 
close attention to data and the experience of those living this out in the day-to-day, 
and yet it always feels one step removed from the kinds of questions I want to be 
asking. This is not to say it is not a good read; in fact, it is highly readable, and I was 
drawn in to the accounts, the stories and the reflections which came around race, 
congregations, leadership and so on. I would recommend the book on that basis 
alone; it draws the reader into the experience of these pastors and raises important 



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questions about the challenges they face and what that reveals about Christianity 
and the racial landscape of the United States.

The book is laid out in five chapters, building from the experience of pastors 
towards wider questions of race and diversity and the particular challenges for 
churches and experience of leading racially diverse churches. It starts by describing 
the different ways pastors found themselves leading multiracial churches (Chapter 1) 
before turning to focus more specifically on the experience of pastors of colour in 
Chapter  2. Having begun to point towards the challenges faced, these are made 
more explicit and explored in more detail in Chapter 3. Given that so much of the 
pastors’ experience seems challenging and difficult, Edwards and Kim then turn 
to ask whether there are advantages (Chapter 4) before exploring the wider racial 
dynamics of “white pastor privilege” in Chapter 5.

What I found particularly powerful were the stories of pastors of colour who 
had a sense of calling towards leading multiracial churches. In reality, they found 
themselves disadvantaged in comparison to their white colleagues, with barriers to 
overcome in the ways they were perceived by white members of congregations and 
predominantly white denominations, and at the same time felt cut off from some of 
the support structures which would come from their own churches, be that Black, 
Hispanic, or Asian. Much of the book focused on the ways in which identity played 
out in their roles as pastors, and the ways in which they navigated those dynamics.

My frustrations with the book, suggested at the beginning of this review, are 
around the lack of engagement with theological categories. On the one hand this is 
understandable given that the work is located in the discipline of sociology of reli-
gion, and has a focus on the experience of church leadership within the wider racial 
landscape of the United States. But at the same time, I felt that important interpre-
tative tools were missing from the work. For example, it was interesting to me that 
the language of “call” was so prominent within the book, and yet there is very little 
inquisitiveness about what “call” means to those pastors. It is not really dealt with 
as a theological category and is seen in quite secular terms in ways which I believe 
would be alien to the pastors themselves. Given that the participants emphasised a 
sense of calling, it would seem helpful to explore what this sense of call actually was, 
rather than trying to make sense of it in terms of sociological advantages. Similarly, 
there were interesting points of exploration around racial justice, but little account 
was given of the pastors’ motivations for pursuing racial justice coming directly from 
their own faith. For me, this raises important inter-disciplinary questions about how 
sociological and practical theology research might engage together. It would be inter-
esting to explore how practical theological work on these issues could complement 
and further illuminate the work done here. My worry with the sociological analysis is 
that the recommendations can easily be based in assumptions about churches and 
faith which are not shared with the pastors who have participated. I feel that the 



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recommendations to churches about next steps and implications need to be consid-
ered in theological terms to help surface the assumptions which are held by soci-
ology.

All that being said, in terms of my own reflection, this has been a really helpful 
and stimulating book. This is the case not just regarding the pertinent questions of 
racial justice, multiracial church and leadership on which the book focuses, but also 
the bigger questions around the experience of following a calling which takes you 
away from one’s peers, resulting in the experience of pioneering something new 
while feeling estranged from all you knew. It would be great to explore the overlaps 
between the “estranged pioneers” of this context, with the pioneers working in the 
Church of England and other denominations in a UK context. Overall, I recommend 
the book; it is an engaging and absorbing read, and one which can stimulate impor-
tant theological questions, even if it is not interested in them itself.

About the Reviewer
Dr James Butler, University of Roehampton, London, and Church Mission Society, 
Oxford. Contact: James.Butler@roehampton.ac.uk

mailto:James.Butler@roehampton.ac.uk



