Episode 89: Reconstructing The Gospel: Finding Freedom From Slaveholder Religion, with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

My guest is Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. He is a celebrated spiritual writer and sought-after speaker. A native of North Carolina, he is a graduate of Eastern University and Duke Divinity School. His newest book is Reconstructing The Gospel: Finding Freedom From Slaveholder Religion. In it he argues that 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. Jonathan lives with his family at the Rutba House, a Christian community and house of hospitality, in Durham, North Carolina, where he directs School for Conversion.Special Guest: Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.