Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is a Christian writer and preacher who has graduated both from Eastern University and Duke Divinity School.[1] He associates himself with New Monasticism.[2] Immediately prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he and his wife, Leah, were members of a Christian peacemaking team that traveled to Iraq to communicate their message to Iraqis that not all American Christians were in favour of the coming Iraq War.[3] Wilson-Hartgrove wrote about this experience in his book To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon.[4] Also in 2003, he became one of the co-founders of Rutba House, a Christian intentional community in Durham, North Carolina's Walltown Neighborhood.[5] In 2006, he founded the School for Conversion, a popular education center committed to "making surprising friendships possible." He taught workshops there alongside his mentor and freedom teacher, Ann Atwater, until her death in 2016. Wilson-Hartgrove has also worked with the Rev. William J. Barber, II to promote public faith for the common good through Moral Mondays and the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.[6]

In his 2008 book Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line (NavPress), Wilson-Hartgrove writes about racism and the central importance of racial reconciliation to Christianity.[7] He co-wrote the 2008 book Becoming the Answer to Our Prayer: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals (InterVarsity Press) with fellow New Monastic Shane Claiborne,[8] and published a book on what new monasticism has to say to the church, New Monasticism (Baker Books). They also collaborated on the popular daily prayer guide Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Zondervan).[9]

Wilson-Hartgrove wrote God's Economy (Zondervan), which was published in 2009, and a study of the Benedictine practice of stability, The Wisdom of Stability (Paraclete Press), which was published in 2010. He published two books in 2012: The Awakening of Hope: Why We Practice a Common Faith (Zondervan) and The Rule of St. Benedict: A Contemporary Paraphrase (Paraclete Press).[10] In 2013, he wrote a book about his experiences with hospitality called Strangers at My Door: A True Story of Finding Jesus in Unexpected Guests.[11] During Holy Week 2015, Wilson-Hartgrove was one of approximately 400 Christian theologians and leaders who signed a public statement arguing that capital punishment in the United States should cease.[12] He has worked closely with the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II in Moral Mondays and the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and is co-author of The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement (Beacon Press).[13] After the 2016 election, Wilson-Hartgrove began teaching about the legacy of slaveholder religion in American Christianity[14] and published Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion (InterVarsity Press).[15] In 2020 he published Revolution of Values (InterVarsity Press), a book that explores how the religious right taught Americans to misread the Bible as an endorsement of Christian nationalism and invites people of faith to re-read Scripture from the perspective of the poor and marginalized whom Jesus blessed.[16]