Obery M. Hendricks Jr - Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

The Gospel has been hijacked! In Christians Against Christianity, Dr. Obery Hendricks affirms the population of people who have given their talents, skills, and abilities to religion and church only to find themselves marginalized, disenfranchised, and vilified. He clearly states that it is time to liberate Jesus and emancipate the heart of the Gospel that is trapped by pseudo-Christianity behaving badly! I recommend this book as a road map to freedom both for the prisoners and the practitioners of Bad Religion. Buy several copies and set captives free!

REV. DR. YVETTE FLUNDER , presiding bishop, The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, and author of Where the Edge Gathers

Obery M. Hendricks Jr. is one of the most brilliant and consequential biblical scholars of the twenty-first century. Christians Against Christianity extends the intellectual arc of his classic The Politics of Jesus, as Hendricks illuminates the moral hypocrisy and spiritual corruption of right-wing evangelicals who are more white than Christian. Touching on all the hot-button issuesfrom abortion to gun control, from immigration policy to commercialized religion, from gay rights to xenophobiaHendricks reads the scriptures through a prophetic lens. He writes with the poetry of a novelist, the learning of a world-class scholar, and the artistry of a thunderous preacher sharing a burning jeremiad. This book is pure fire!

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON , author of Long Time Coming

Dr. Obery Hendrickss latest book, Christians Against Christianity, is a powerful, prophetic denunciation of the brand of right-wing, overwhelmingly white evangelicalism that has done such grievous damage to the body politic and the body of Christ in the United States, as well as to the witness of the Christian church in the United States around the world. In reflecting on the damage of the last four years in particular, Hendricks describes the dangerous heresy and idolatry of Trumpism that has even further distanced far too many right-wing evangelicals literally from the true teachings of Jesus Christ. The witness of the Trumpian evangelicals is truly anti-Christ. Only by following Jesuss two greatest commandmentsto love God and to love our neighbors as ourselvesalong with his teachings in Matthew 25 that the test of discipleship is how we treat the least of these, can these right-wing evangelicals find their way back to Jesus. I strongly recommend this book.

JIM WALLIS , founder of Sojourners and New York Times best-selling author of Christ in Crisis

We are at a time of turmoil, a crossroads that will determine what Christianity will mean and how it will be practiced in the twenty-first century. Any Christian who cares about the central message of the Gospels must read Dr. Obery Hendrickss urgent and important work.

REV . AL SHARPTON , president, National Action Network, and host of Politics Nation, MSNBC

Obery Hendricks Jr. reminds us that two crucial measures of our faith are loving God and neighbor and that whatever we do for the least of these we do for Jesus. Now more than ever we must live out the life-affirming, justice-insistent message that Jesus proclaimed for our nations children. Like Jesus, who put the child among the disciples, as we reclaim the transformative power of Christian faith, we must move children from the margin to the center of our nations priorities.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN , president emerita, The Childrens Defense Fund, and author of The Measure of Our Success

Dr. Obery Hendricks is one of the countrys most insightful voices on faith in the public square and racial justice and equity. This book is a critical contribution to our political and religious debate and deserves to be read and understood by policy and political leaders and people of faith alike.

JOSHUA DUBOIS , CEO of Values Partnerships, CNN contributor, and former director, White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

Christians Against Christianity is a brilliantly and powerfully written prophetic indictment of right-wing evangelicals who misuse the Bible while abusing those they otherize to further their political agenda. Obery Hendricks does a masterful job of shining a spotlight of gospel truth on their hypocrisy, masked as piety, while extending a redemptive invitation to experience and be emancipated by the liberating love of the sable-skinned Savior who majored in ministry to those on the margins. This is the gospel truth!

DR . FREDERICK D . HAYNES III , co-chair of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference

A masterful and grounded challenge to right-wing evangelical theology and politicsbut one not for theologians alone. Powerfully written, forcefully argued, and morally anchored, Christians Against Christianity offers hope and thoughtful insight to all progressives and fair-minded readers.

GAR ALPEROVITZ , author of What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution

Its a sign of our unsettling times when a figure like Obery Hendricks Jr.respected biblical scholar, former seminary president, and elder in the churchcalls on his fellow Christians to rise up against what much of contemporary Christianity has become. Christians Against Christianity is a searing indictment of white evangelicals allegiance to white supremacy and political power and a clarion call to all Christians to go back to the Bible to reclaim a faith rooted in love and responsibility for others rather than domination and self-interest. This is a must-read book for this crucial moment in our nations history.

ROBERT P . JONES , CEO and founder of PRRI, author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

To my beloveds, the bearers of my greatest hopes:

My daughters, Tahirah and Serena,

My granddaughters, Mariam and Diata,

and

My great-granddaughter, Nimah

May your world be more kind, and may you always strive to make it so

He said to them, Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.

MARK 7:68

I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.

PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON (letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792)

A TRAVESTY. THATS HOW I would characterize Christianity in America today. A travesty, a brutal sham, a tragic charade, a cynical deceit. Why? Because the loudest voices in American Christianity todaythose of right-wing evangelicalsshamelessly spew a putrid stew of religious ignorance and political venom that is poisoning our society, making a mockery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Their rhetoric in the name of their Lord and Savior is mean-spirited, divisive, appallingly devoid of love for their neighbors and outright demonizes those who do not accept their narrow viewseven fellow Christians. Perhaps most shocking is their enthusiastic, almost cultish support for the cruel, hateful policies and pronouncements of President Donald Trump, whose words and deeds more often than not have been the very antithesis of Christian faith.