To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon

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 Jesuss 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 Gods 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)