Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion

by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

The greatest threat to the gospel in America is not that it will be lost in translation; it’s that it will be confused for the Christianity of the slaveholder.

The practice of resistance as “staying with” is an invitation to unlearn whiteness.

The gospel practice of nonviolent love instills in each of us a resolve to not fight the way this world’s systems teach us to fight.

But Jesus saw, just as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. did after him, that we cannot dismantle the plantation system with the ways and means of the master.

It was never about race. It was always about our right to decide how and where we want our children to be educated.

The next step for any of us is as particular as our context and the stories that have brought us into the relationships where we are.

White supremacy isn’t something I chose, but I have to own it. It is my inheritance. In this, I am not alone.

Nothing is uglier than the inevitable explosion when white people try to participate in antiracist work without addressing their own hidden wound. Each of us has to do our own soul work.

the shriveled hearts of millions of people who imagine themselves to be white, then personal practices to heal the heart are needed. This is the soul work that each white person must commit to do, each and every day.

but true repentance turns our hearts toward the love of God, compelling us to chase after the gospel life, no matter the cost.

We relocated to a historically black neighborhood and a historically black church to live a life of repentance because, more than anything, we wanted God’s love to heal our shriveled hearts.

listening, staying put, and constantly reforming your life.

Black churches cannot play grief counselor for Christians who carry the hidden wounds of the Christianity of the slaveholder. But, if we are willing to listen, they can be our teachers.

Nothing you can do is going to change the world. But that’s no reason not to do it. If you spend a night in jail, standing up for what is right, you may not change anyone’s opinion on the issue. But you will change—and not only in your own estimation. Your public action will compel every person who knows and loves you to reconsider how whiteness has taught them to imagine the world.