Will Sampson blogs about a book he highly recommends, by a member of a peacemaking monastic community, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. The book represents a “must read” in the sense of something I blogged about last night, from the Jim Wallis book , Revive Us Again, in this post where Wallis writes of how we must “see their faces”. When we get closer, so as to see, we can, the human among us, find less reason to obey the commands to deal the death-blows. OUr leaders don’t want us to see the faces. It reached its ultimate in the HBombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hirsoshima.

willzhead: “To Baghdad and Beyond”

This war has brought our nation to a time of theological reflection unlike any in my memory. A friend was commenting to me that many of the dynamics of our time are like the 60’s – a nation in a war that many question, a church in a time of deep reconsideration and a culture experiencing significant upheaval. It is at times like these that we need voices that can speak the peace of God into this world. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is such a voice. I can tell you how I feel we should be involved in reconciliation in the Middle East. Jonathan can tell you what he experienced first hand. I recommend To Baghdad and Beyond strongly.

Click the Continue Reading link here for endorsements from Will Willimon, Daniel Berrigan, and Tony Campolo from the Publisher’s Website

from wipfandstock.com (Publishers of the book)

To Baghdad and Beyond’ is the story of a young evangelical couple who followed the conviction of their faith into a war zone and discovered an alternative to the violence of empires and the complicity of quietism in the “third way” of Jesus’s beloved community. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove writes of his journey from a rural Southern Baptist church to Iraq in a time of war to a Christian community of hospitality in an urban neighborhood. Excited by ways that Christian hope is taking concrete form, Wilson-Hartgrove describes a new monastic movement that is witnessing to a world at war that another way is possible.

“Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove takes us with him on a journey, a trip toward the biblical ‘Babylon,’ helping us to see the truth about ourselves and our culture. Here is a retrieval of truly evangelical Christianity – truthful, prophetic, vibrant, apocalyptic, and by God’s grace, hopeful. What a great trip!”

Will Willimon, Bishop, the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church

“‘To Baghdad and Beyond’ tells of a voyage beyond the horizon, to an embattled city. But the story is no simple excursion into the unknown. It tells of inner transformation, from collusive silence and inertia to an energetic torrent of service – from a cultural dead end, defaulting and self-defeated, to a biblical ‘third way,’ the way of Jesus, of nonviolent resistance. Let the ‘official’ churches fret and turn in their sleep. A new dawn approaches. Its signature is Hope.”

Daniel Berrigan, S.J.

“When Christians in the early church read the book of Revelation, they understood its symbolism. They realized that Babylon, the wicked city described in the latter part of this book, referred to the dominant societal system in which they lived. It referred to the Roman Empire.

“As contemporary American Christians read the book of Revelation within the dominant societal system in which we live, we must ask ourselves whether or not our own nation-state has become the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire. We must ask, ‘Has America become Babylon?’ That is the question that Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove endeavors to answer.”

Tony Campolo, From the Preface

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove lives with his wife, Leah, and other friends at the Rutba House, a new monastic community of hospitality, peacemaking, and discipleship in Durham, North Carolina. (www.newmonasticism.org)