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Reconstructing the Gospel

Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
  • 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalists - Multicultural
  • "I am a man torn in two. And the gospel I inherited is divided."Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in the Bible Belt in the American South as a faithful church-going Christian. But he gradually came to realize that the gospel his Christianity proclaimed was not good news for everybody. The same Christianity that sang, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound" also perpetuated racial injustice and white supremacy in the name of Jesus. His Christianity, he discovered, was the religion of the slaveholder.Just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, our compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction that undoes the injustices of the past. Wilson-Hartgrove traces his journey from the religion of the slaveholder to the Christianity of Christ. Reconstructing the gospel requires facing the pain of the past and present, from racial blindness to systemic abuses of power. Grappling seriously with troubling history and theology, Wilson-Hartgrove recovers the subversiveness of the gospel that sustained the church through centuries of slavery and oppression, from the civil rights era to the Black Lives Matter movement and beyond.When the gospel is reconstructed, freedom rings both for individuals and for society as a whole. Discover how Jesus continues to save us from ourselves and each other, to repair the breach and heal our land.

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      • Publisher's Weekly

        Starred review from January 8, 2018
        Wilson-Hartgrove (Strangers at My Door), a white minister serving at a historic African-American Baptist church near Durham, N.C., extends the arc of his previous reflections on New South faith, race, and politics in this impressive work. Not a boisterous guide like many evangelical authors, Wilson-Hartgrove asks the simple question of how Jesus’ good news has “come to sound so bad” to the poor and describes how “the story of Jesus has been hijacked to serve the opposite of what God wants.” Through captivating stories, intelligent use of American Southern history, and genuine introspection, he examines racial blindness in white Americans and his own journey of gaining sight. “Chattel slavery is not ancient history in America. Sometimes, it’s close enough to touch. We all carry in our bodies stories that haven’t been told.” Wilson-Hartgrove frequently returns to the original landscape of the Bible to reveal the subversive origins of Christianity as he draws parallels between the plight of early Christians and modern day injustices. Bringing together thoughts on the rural working-class, white privilege, and the black-led freedom movement, Wilson-Hartgrove’s book is a must-read for Christians interested in how race-infused politics and religion undermine the American democratic dream.

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    • English

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