Free to Be Bound

Despite Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's progressive worldview, he was unaware of the invisible borders separating neighborhood churches in the New South. Then, as a political candidate, he began to reach out to the black community, including a dynamic church. What he discovered forever transformed his view of the body of Christ.

It’s a fact: We live in a divided world. Christians have become so immune to the division that we don’t notice it infecting the church. But we’re compelled to live with a worldview that brings unity instead of division.

Rediscover the power of faith as one believer crosses the color lines. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove realizes the need for black and white Christians to become united in a new way and now proposes a fresh vision of Christian identity beyond the confines of race. Encounter a place where believers of all races are free to be bound in Christ.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an associate minister at the historically black St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church. He is the author of To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon (Cascade, 2005) and Inhabiting the Church: Biblical Wisdom for a New Monasticism (Cascade, 2007). His articles have appeared in PRISM , The Other Side , Radiant , The Christian Century , and Raleigh News and Observer .