Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 71 but it contains the words of a prophet who was ahead of his time. At the beginning of the so- called “Christian Century,” when science and progress seemed to be bringing Christendom to its full height of glory, Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt heard a word that cut through his cultural formation and easy assumptions: Everyone belongs to God. Cultural captivity is, of course, a far cry from exile, but the long march of Christen­ dom, as we now see more clearly, took God’s people as far from the Promised Land as Nebuchad- nezzar’s forces ever did. As in the Babylonian captivity, we face a dual temptation. On the one hand, there are those who say, “All you’ve got to do is believe.” God is greater than the forces of secularism and material- ism, atheism and individualism. Yes, Western Christianity is compromised. But the pure in heart – those who really believe – can be saved right here, right now. All you have to do is bow your head and say this simple prayer. . . . On the other hand, the cynics point out, the Good Book became the Bad Book in so much of the Western missionary enterprise. We over- evangelized the world too lightly, exporting cultural hegemony along with the faith, doing more harm than good. Christendom has failed, they say, and so it is best to leave the name of Christ behind. Do good, for goodness’ sake. At the very least, try to do no harm. In the midst of this crisis, I hear Blum- hardt’s words for twenty-first-century Christians in the same vein as Jeremiah’s to seventh-century-BC Israel: “The Risen One wants to draw people to himself, and so pro- paganda for a particular confession of faith or church is no concern of his. You must stand up and represent the gospel of the kingdom that shines for all people, no matter who they are.” We cannot give up on the missionary enterprise because we have misunderstood and abused it. Instead, Blumhardt insists, we must reclaim the heart of Christian mission. Our gospel has been too small. It is, indeed, too small a thing to think that the hope of the world rests in our ability to recruit others into a religion which has too often made us morally worse. To confess that the hope of the world is Jesus Christ is to open ourselves to a kingdom beyond our control – beyond our imagination, even. It is to embrace the revolutionary notion that everyone belongs to God. Though Bonhoeffer had not yet introduced the term when Blumhardt wrote these letters, it was in the midst of his own confrontation with the crisis of Western Christianity that he wrote of “religionless Christianity.” Bonhoeffer had so little time to explore what this term meant, even less how one might practice it in the world. But this volume fills some of that void. For it, we can all be grateful. Take and read the words of a prophet for our time.  Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove lives at the Rutba House, a Christian community and house of hospitality in Durham, North Carolina. He is the author of Stranger at My Door (Convergent, 2013). This article is from the foreword to Blumhardt’s Everyone Belongs to God, a new book from Plough (see opposite). “In every street and workplace, it should be pro- claimed: ‘You all belong to God! Whether you are godless or devout, under judgment or under grace, blessed or damned, you belong to God, and God is good and wants what is best for you. Whether you are dead or alive, righteous or unrighteous, in heaven or in hell, you belong to God, and as soon as you are swept into the current of faith, the good within you will emerge.’ Speak like this and you will have different results from those who peddle the truncated gospel that gives with one hand and takes away with the other.”  Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt