Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line [Paperback]

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2008

Despite Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's progressive worldview, he was unaware of the invisible borders separating neighborhood churches in the New South. Then, as a political candidate, he began to reach out to the black community, including a dynamic church. What he discovered forever transformed his view of the body of Christ.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

It’s a fact: We live in a divided world. Christians have become so immune to the division that we don’t notice it infecting the church. But we’re compelled to live with a worldview that brings unity instead of division.

Rediscover the power of faith as one believer crosses the color lines. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove realizes the need for black and white Christians to become united in a new way and now proposes a fresh vision of Christian identity beyond the confines of race. Encounter a place where believers of all races are free to be bound in Christ.

About the Author

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an associate minister at the historically black St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church. He is the author of To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon (Cascade, 2005) and Inhabiting the Church: Biblical Wisdom for a New Monasticism (Cascade, 2007). His articles have appeared in PRISM , The Other Side , Radiant , The Christian Century , and Raleigh News and Observer .

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: NavPress (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600061907
• ISBN-13: 978-1600061905
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #465,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, New Monastic, and sought-after speaker. A native of North Carolina, he is a graduate of Eastern University and Duke Divinity School.

Shortly before the United States began bombing Iraq in 2003, Jonathan and his wife, Leah, traveled there as members of a Christian Peacemaker Team determined to tell Iraqis that American Christians did not all support the war. Their experiences became the subject of To Baghdad and Beyond (Cascade Books: 2005), which describes the couple's conversion to the "new monasticism."

Jonathan is an Associate Minister at the historically black St. Johns Baptist Church, and is engaged in peacemaking and reconciliation efforts in Durham, North Carolina. The Rutba House, where Jonathan lives with his family and other friends, is a new monastic community that prays, eats, and lives together, welcoming neighbors and the homeless.

Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, an alternative seminary that hosts courses around the country. He is Editor of the New Monastic Library Series (Cascade Books) and Associate Editor of the Resources for Reconciliation Series (InterVarsity Press).

An evangelical who connects with the broad Christian tradition and its monastic witnesses, Jonathan is a leader in the new monastic movement and conversations about Christianity in the 21st century. He speaks often to churches and conferences of the "new evangelicals," but also connects with Mainline and Catholic audiences who are interested in reconnecting with ancient Christian practices. Writing as both a grassroots intellectual and popular theologian, Jonathan connects with a broad audience, engaging them personally on a wide spectrum of challenges facing the church today.

Connect with Jonathan at www.jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars theological reflection framed in personal narrative, March 1, 2008

By 

N. A. Long "LiteraryJoe" (Fort Wayne, IN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line (Paperback)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! In fact, I read it in one sitting. Wilson-Hartgrove's message resonates with me powerfully. I must admit that midway through I became a little worried that he was preparing to say the Church's new identity in Messiah is "black", but he more than adequately addresses this idea as the story progresses. Which is another thing I like about the book. It addresses significant theological issues as part of a narrative - the narrative of our story as recorded in Scripture and of his particular life. I was cheering over statements like, "forsaking one's people to become part of God's people is an experience so radical that it tests the limits of human language."

I took the primary message of the book to be that in Messiah, we are to be a new people, a people with an identity beyond that of race or culture. To go a step further than Wilson-Hartgrove does (at least in this book) we are to have a new culture - that of the people of God.

I pastor a mixed congregation so I've seen firsthand that the "Black church" has also suffered from the ways in which it has failed to take on the character and culture of God's people.

A good follow-on to this book would be an extended reflection on the Torah as God's cultural guide-book for His people? I'm convinced that if we would simply implement the instruction given there that many of the societal ills we battle would be addressed. It's a society of sowers rather than laborers, yet provision is made for those who are unable to be competent managers of their inheritance, etc. Our congregation is struggling to figure out how to implement the instruction of Torah as our model for the culture that God's new people are to take on. We often run into theological conflict from those who want to challenge whether or not they are obligated to forsake pork, or observe the Sabbath, etc. Personally, I think anyone determined to defend their right to live as their neighbor is still asking the wrong questions. I'm happy to discuss the opportunity of living out God's culture-guide, but have essentially no interest in debating whether it's an obligation or not.

The model of the Exodus is clear: God called His people out and fashioned them into a new society, one that challenged by its very existence the cultural norms of surrounding nations. Unfortunately, Israel was less than successful in implementing God's culture, but I believe we have a new opportunity since Pentecost to do this more successfully, now that the Spirit Himself is writing God's laws on our hearts. I suspect it is in this way that we will make Israel after the flesh jealous.

My black friends often talk to me about how the consumption of pork is physically killing the black people. Imagine if they embraced as part of their new identity in Messiah the necessity of abandoning pork. Imagine if whites embraced as part of their new identity the necessity of abandoning the "American dream", and the practice of relieving debt every 7 years. Indeed, if we became convicted of the need to stop charging interest to our brothers in the first place, as the Israelites were forbidden from doing. Imagine if black men became convinced of the need to bless their wives and children- to be a patriarch to their family (without the misogynistic baggage that has been unjustly added to this term).

One of the other evils we have inherited as the American church is a theological reading of the NT that is based on racial prejudice against the Jewish people. I've benefited greatly from the writings of post-Shoah theologians like Clark M. Williamson and pioneers like Walter Kaiser, Jr. But reading the NT again through the eyes of the Jewish Jesus won't be of any value if we aren't willing to then implement a new society in the midst of a culture that calls itself Christian but is indistinguishable from the economic practices, the music, the food, etc. of the world.

I highly recommend this book both as an interesting read and as an excellent contribution to a continuing conversation about the Gospel as a way of life rather than a set of beliefs.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a spiritual of reconciliation, May 30, 2009

By 

S. Norris (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line (Paperback)

"We are one body in Christ." We talk about it all the time, but it doesn't change the fact that Sunday morning may very well be the most segregated hour of the week in the US. What does race reconciliation look like in the church? Sadly, many times churches may share one worship service together a year, possibly followed by a meal, and this is lifted up as reconciliation.

Jonathan has walked a different road. This book is not a "how to" for churches seeking to make race reconciliation a priority. It is not biblical exposition as much as it is memoir. It is the story of a young man who grew up in an all white church in rural NC and the journey that took him to establish a hospitality house in the heart of one of the poorest neighborhoods in Druham, NC. It is the story of how this young man learned to stand in solidarity with the African-American community and became the associate pastor of a historically African-American church. In the end, it is the story of how Jonathan, in his words, "became black" so that he could begin to truly hear the message of Jesus Christ.

Having grown up in a family of musicians, Jonathan is right at home organizing his book around the spirituals that have fed the theology of the African-American church. It is wonderfully written and difficult to put down. This is first-rate narrative theology as we begin to hear the voice of God in the story of Jonathan's life and will challenge all of us to let go of the categories that we so often use to divide and begin adopting the unifying language of "slaves to Christ". As a personal friend of Jonathan, I can say that he doesn't just write about this topic, he truly lives it day in and day out. Truly, he is a voice of hope that the Church ignores at its own peril.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A critical wakeup call, May 3, 2008

By 

Greg Barrett "Journalist. Author. Former News... (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line (Paperback)

Need to whisper to ourselves this system
stinks and public life was not meant to be
this way. . . . If we continue saying it, the
ideas behind the words will come alive and
grow wings. -- Father Joe's daily journal.

Wilson-Hartgrove's narrative is another important voice in the wakeup calls that are going out to the world, and esp. organized religion, as people begin to open their eyes to the reality around us. Part of the revolution of change it's required reading for the new curriculum of social justice.

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