Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove Visits Institute for G.O.D.

Spiritual writer, sought-after speaker and graduate of Duke Divinity School Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove visited the Institute for G.O.D. on Wednesday, March 5th to speak to students during our weekly chapel service.   

Jonathan and his family live in Durham, North Carolina, where he and his wife founded the Rutba House, “a house of hospitality where the formerly homeless share community with the formerly housed.” He is also an Associate Minister at the historically black St. John's Missionary Baptist Church.

Weaving a message from Ephesians with his personal narrative and a history of slavery and civil rights, Hartgrove challenged students to consider the effects of what he calls ‘slaveholder religion’ on our Christian faith today.  

Hartgrove encouraged our students to remember Nashville’s history, where young people made faith-filled decisions to break the racial divide. He commented that our students were noticeably engaged.

From 7 years old, Hartgrove remembers wanting to give his all for Jesus. In reflection, he recognized that his community and young people like him were being targeted to believe that one of the most important things that they could do for Jesus was to become a Republican politician.  

Like all of us, Hartgrove was looking for a model, and he found them in people like President Jimmy Carter and other prominent politicians. In finding such models, Hartgrove navigated towards politics and became a Senate page for Strom Thurmond, who he would come to realize was the most active member of the Senate opposed to black participation in public life.  

In time, this racially segregated worldview troubled Hartgrove, and he recalls the very real decision he made to repent and change the direction of his life.  He returned to North Carolina, and met an African-American pastor named William Barber who proposed to him a different reading of the Bible, one in which God’s mission is about liberating people who are captive. This was also when he learned about slaveholder religion.  

“I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to grapple with the legacy of slaveholder religion and how it has impacted Christian faith in the United States, and in particular, Chrisitan mission,” Hartgrove said.   

Students said the chapel was inspiring and were all hoping that he would come back. His two books, “Revolution of Values” and “Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion” were sold out.

It is evident from his understanding of history that he has committed not only time and education, but also his day-to-day ministry efforts to distinguishing between what Frederick Douglass called the Christianity of Christ versus the Christianity of the slaveholder.  

“When I went back and studied the slaveholder religion of the 19th century, one of the things I learned was that the people that the plantation owners paid to preach at their churches, and write their theology books, told people that the slave system was not only good for them, it was good for the enslaved people. This is what white people in the South were told. They never asked the people who were enslaved if they thought it was good for them.”

Hartgrove is clear that this thinking did not end with slaveholders, nor did it end with the civil rights movement, but still pervades our Christian faith in America today. He challenged students to recognize how they can be conscious and take action in their own moment.  

“Yes, there is slaveholder religion in this country, there is also this tradition of people who have believed in the way of Jesus so that they were willing to live and risk things as Jesus did in order to show people that another way is possible. I stopped by today to say that if we are going to be engaged in God’s mission in the world, I think that’s who we should be learning from, that tradition.  And I think that has everything to do with bringing justice and beloved community to the world, but I also think, because I read Ephesians, that it has to do with us knowing God.” 

He rounded out his talk by highlighting one of the more pointed statements from Paul in Ephesians 2:14: “For Christ himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” 

“Whether it’s 50 years ago here in Nashville or 2000 years ago in Ephesus, this movement that we’ve been made part of, this mystery of God that has been revealed through Jesus Christ, is the good news that we have been made part of something that destroys the dividing walls of this world. And that by being part of that, we have hope that we and everyone else can be reconciled to God. That’s how God has planned to redeem the world. That’s the mystery revealed and I’m so glad to get to be part of it. And I’m so glad you have devoted yourselves to Scripture and figuring out how you can live that out.”