Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove - Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
ivpress.com

2018 by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Pressis the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges, and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, visit intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

While any stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information may have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Published in association with the literary agency of Daniel Literary Group, Brentwood, TN.

Cover design:David Fassett
Interior design: Jeanna Wiggins
Images: preacher: photograph by Arthur Rothstein / Library of Congress
Union chaplain in uniform: photograph by John Chapin Spooner / Library of Congress
torn paper: Daniel Cullen / EyeEm / Getty Images
flag illustration: tintin75 / iStockphoto / Getty Images

ISBN 978-0-8308-8648-7 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-4534-7 (print)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

S o-called white evangelicals, who say so much about what God says so little and so little about what God says so much have dominated public discourse about religion in America for my entire adult life. They have insisted that faith is not political, except when it comes to prayer in school, abortion, homosexuality, and property rights. They have overlooked the more than 2,500 verses in Scripture that have to do with love, justice, and care for the poor, and they have tried to make Jesus an honorary member of the NRA.

What these so-called evangelicals have done is nothing short of theological malpractice. With pornographic sums of money from corporate backers, they have hijacked the gospel and used it to justify what the Bible calls sin.

Im not surprised when I meet people who tell me theyre agnostic. When I was a guest on the talk show of one of Americas most famous atheists, I told Bill Maher that if youre talking about a god who hates the poor, immigrants, and homosexuals, Im an atheist too. I dont know that god, and I definitely dont believe in him.

But I am an evangelical because, as my grandmama used to say, I know Jesus for myself. Between my mother and fathers family histories, I count more than eight hundred years of preaching Jesus in my lineage.

In his first sermonnot his second or third, but his very first sermonJesus said,

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor. (Luke 4:18)

This is normative preaching in the Christian tradition. The good news Jesus proclaims is euangelion in the Greekthe root of our word evangelical. And it is, from the very beginning of his ministry, good news to the poor. I dont know a gospel that doesnt challenge the injustice of poverty.

Biblically speaking, to be evangelical is to be concerned about the poor. The Greek word Jesus uses in Lukes Gospelptchosrefers to those who have been made poor by unjust systems. To be an evangelical is to be committed to challenging injustice and economic exploitation. It is the very opposite of the message preached by many so-called evangelicals today.

So what happened to Christianity in America? This is the question my brother Jonathan faces head-on in this book. He follows this question to the heart of Americas original sin, and he invites all of us to join him there and face another question: Is our God greater than Americas racism?

This is a question we must answer, no matter the color of our skin. Slaveholder religion has infected every corner of the church in Americaincluding the black church. We must never forget that there were enslaved people who accepted the theology fed to them on plantations.

The original sin of racism in America began with a deeply flawed and demonic notion that shaped this nations development. Bad science claimed that black bodies were biologically deficient, then extrapolated a sick sociology that assumed that people of color had to be placed in subordinate positions. Evil economics perpetuated the lie that money and profit are the chief ends of human existence, and these ends justified almost any means. Slaveholder religion blessed all of this with a heretical ontology, asserting that God ordained racism, slavery, and systems of subjugation. The cumulative effect of this lie threatens not only the witness of Christianity in the world but also our existence as creatures on Gods good earth.

Because Americas self-deception is so closely tied to the incomprehensible power of weapons that can destroy the world a dozen times over, the immorality of slaveholder religion presents a very real threat to our future. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw clearly in the last years of his life, we face a real choice between chaos and communitywe need a moral revolution. If that was true fifty years ago, then we must be clear today: America needs a moral revival to bring about beloved community.

The main obstacle to beloved community continues to be the fear that people in power have used for generations to divide and conquer Gods children who are, whatever our differences, all in the same boat. I will confessI inherited these fears too. When I met Jonathan twenty years ago, I didnt want to work with white evangelicals in rural North Carolina. People who looked and talked like him burned a cross in my uncles yard when I was still a boy.

We dont erase the memories we each carry in our body when we come to follow Jesus. But the Jesus I know can make the children of slaves and the children of slaveholders into friends who link arms and work together for justice. This is the story of Gods movement in every generation. Its also an experience Ive known for myself over two decades of friendship with Jonathan.

With a broad coalition of sisters and brothers from many backgrounds, Jonathan and I are working together to build up a Poor Peoples Campaign for Moral Revival, taking up the unfinished work of the Poor Peoples Campaign of 19671968 spearheaded by Dr. King. In view of the global challenges we all face, we cannot put off the essential work of reconstructing the gospel. God has given us good news to proclaim to the poor. May it stir us to prophetic action.