Christopher Pramuk shares a soulful work with his readers in his book Hope Sings, So Beautiful. The limited space of this review cannot do justice to the synthetic character of his project, as Pramuk offers “a method of catholicity” (xxi) that involves not only the construction of a methodology but also the creation of theological language. Pramuk explains that this work is “frankly experimental,” (xvii) and his weaving of personal narrative, social critique, theological insight, and pastoral practice is held together by the theological virtue of hope. The careful weaving reveals the rich and diverse ways people come into conversations, especially conversations around race; the hope is that we can have conversations in which we truly see one another across differences. Pramuk's use of diverse sources serves to resist reduction of each person's unique personhood, which when truly encountered is an experience of grace.

Pramuk's method of catholicity is a way of envisioning and enacting conversations across differences. Two elements are foundational to his method. First, he builds this conversation practice on the belief that we—all of us—are the Body of Christ. Second, he describes racism as a human problem that holds our imagination captive. He argues for the use of storytelling, music, and visual imagery to heal this virulent disease of imagination. Upon these foundations, Pramuk explores entry points in the circle of conversation. He is uneasy with academic categorical descriptors such as white privilege. Pramuk contends that such descriptors obfuscate “the deeper mystery that binds us together as human beings” (13). He turns away from these terms in order to bind himself to the Mystery of Love, which cannot be captured or contained in formal academic descriptions. Through rich narrative detail, he desires to demonstrate that even when whites are painfully aware of their privilege, there are practices that can enable them to—however briefly—meet others across racial lines. Pramuk illustrates his claim by offering examples of what he calls “graced encounters across the color line.” “Grace interrupts our habitual ways of seeing, judging, and acting from day to day, . . . it illumines a truth that already is but was hidden from our sight” (xix). The final step in his method is to offer rituals, language, and images of God that enable us to realize that in these graced encounters we are living the mystery of the Incarnation. In so doing, we “drink deeply from the wellspring of human experience in all its mosaic, sacramental diversity” (xxi). A unique feature of Pramuk's text is the inclusion of a website (www.HopeSingsSoBeautiful.org) with practical support, “especially for folks laboring in the trenches, . . . seeking to build bridges between the many communities . . . who hold a critical stake in the dialogue about race in US society today” (xxiii).

A powerful and refreshing element of Pramuk's book is his substantive and engaging use of the work of Shawn Copeland, who provided the foreword. Copeland's starting point is the particularity of black women's bodies and their suffering; she moves from this beginning toward an understanding of something universal about humanity. Pramuk's starting point differs: he does not begin with the particularity of any body. Drawing on Copeland, then, raises a question: how do bodies matter to the circle of conversation? For example, in the introduction Pramuk describes how he had one foot in the world of white privilege and one foot in the world of black worship (xv). How does his white body make it possible to move between these worlds? Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, reveal that not all bodies can inhabit different worlds, let alone their own, without risking mortal danger. For white people, honestly exploring how white bodies matter to “seeing, judging, and acting from day to day” can lead to the experience of finally being able to hear those whose experiences differ because their bodies are not white.

This book deserves a wide readership not only because of its achievements, but also because of the risks it takes. Pramuk's work challenges all of us to “wade into the waters” of honest and truthful conversation across difference, because it is there that we will enact God's healing of our broken humanity.