|
Free To Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonathan Wilson-hartgrove
Publisher: NavPress Publishing Group
Category: Book
List Price: $12.99
Buy New: $7.39
You Save: $5.60 (43%)
New (25) Used (12) from $6.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 67481
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 206
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1600061907
Dewey Decimal Number: 277.3083089
EAN: 9781600061905
ASIN: 1600061907
Publication Date: February 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New. MULTIPLE COPIES AVAILABLE. PLEASE READ AMAZON'S SHIPPING RATES AND ESTIMATED DELIVERY TIMES BEFORE ORDERING.
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
"Jonathan was a product of the new South: color-blind and culturally sensitive. Yet despite his progressive worldview, he was unaware of the invisible borders that still divide local communities. As a member of a new monastic community, Jonathan began to reach out to his mostly black neighborhood, including a dynamic church. What he discovered forever transformed his view of the body of Christ. Free to Be Bound chronicles Jonathan's experience as he crosses color lines that fragment the church--lines that should make us question why they exist at all. With an honest heart and passionate voice, Jonathan delivers a call for true unity within the church that will inspire every believer."
|
| Customer Reviews:
A critical wakeup call May 3, 2008
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.
The Gospel of Father Joe: Revolutions and Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok
theological reflection framed in personal narrative March 1, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
