Jennifer Butler - Who Stole My Bible?: Reclaiming Scripture as a Handbook for Resisting Tyranny

WHO STOLE MY BIBLE?

Reclaiming Scripture as a Handbook for Resisting Tyranny

Rev. Jennifer Butler

Foreword by Brian Mclaren

PRAISE FOR WHO STOLE MY BIBLE?

Jennifer Butler has written a forceful manifesto of awakening to the claims of biblical faith amid our deep and costly social political crisis. Butler is deeply rooted in faith and is a major player in public issues as the head of Faith in Public Life. Her chapters in this book, time after time, show how the Bible teems with contemporaneity, both as summons and as assurance. This remarkable book reaches out to Bible believers even as it appeals to the most faithful impulses of progressives. Butlers writing is personal, imaginative, accessible, and compelling. I found it to be an empowering page-turner.

Walter Brueggemann, Columba Theological Seminary

Jennifer Butler's Who Stole My Bible? is a revelation. Among the saddest moments in church history were the moments when multiple streams of the church began to distance themselves from the Bible. In the zeal of the scientific age and in response to white supremacy whole church streams wrote off the Bible as defunct, old-hat, rusty, irrelevant, and the problem itself. In Who Stole My Bible?, Butler shows us these pervasive analyses erase the Brown, colonized, resisting skin and flesh of the writers of these ancient texts. She makes a clarion call for the progressive church to repent from its progression away from the Brown text of colonized women and men and look againthrough decolonized eyes. Liberation is in these pages.

Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel and

president and founder of Freedom Road

Who Stole My Bible? is a bold and beautiful call to every Christian to resist empire and manifest the Reign of God on earth. By brilliantly weaving together a liberative exegesis of biblical texts, a thoughtful exposition of current reality (sitz im laben) and a helpful analysis of models of leadership that work, Jennifer Butler creates a practical map for each of us to reclaim scriptureand the Jesus to which it pointsas a way to heal our broken world. This is a poignant, prophetic, and practical must-read book for all Christian leaders, clergy and lay.

Rev. Dr. Jacqueline J. Lewis, senior minister, Middle Collegiate Church

Jennifer Butler walks the path of faith with the grit of a soldier, compassion of a first responder, creativity of an artist, and unyielding moral voice of a prophet. This book calls to those bruised by religion to witness the healing waters of reclaimed faith while demanding long time practitioners to preach Jesus through embodied action versus shallow slogans and harsh judgment. This is the book to pass on to the spiritual exile and the overly pious believer; each will find joy and common ground in this beautifully written publication.

Otis Moss, III, senior pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ

Rev. Jen Butlers book is a meditation on biblical stories that resonate with the truth of today. She stirs up our very human reactions mirrored in scripture and leads to the challenging need for action then... and now! It stirs my spirit in challenging times.

Sister Simone Campbell, leader of NETWORK and Nuns on the Bus,

author of Hunger for Hope

For years, I have been honored to be both a fan and friend of Rev. Jen Butler. Now, I'm thrilled to recommend her powerful, insightful, and well-written new book, Who Stole My Bible? Like Jen, I love the Bible and I lament how it is often used as a weapon of oppression instead of a handbook for liberation. Jen's new book will reintroduce you to the Bible just in time to help you take your standwith Jen and so many tyranny resistorsin this time of such great danger and opportunity.

Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker/activist

For years, Rev. Jennifer Butler has been a steadfast and leading voice of faith in immoral timesfrom church basements in Georgia to the streets and halls of power in Washington, DC. With Who Stole My Bible?, Rev. Butler has given us a moving, personal, and energizing account of how a deep understanding of the Biblical narrative can be a transformational force for change in a society that is in desperate need of transformation.

Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, Washington director of Bend the Arc Jewish Action

Jennifer Butler's provocative and inspiring Who Stole My Bible? answers the spiritual and moral reckoning our country urgently demands as we endure multiple, divisive crises. Butler's understanding of her Christian faith reminds me, as a Muslim, of the values of social justice and compassion I was taught as a student at an all-boys Jesuit high school. She reveals the true path of the prophets, fierce advocates of a loving God that use faith as a shield to protect the vulnerable and a sword against the abuses of tyranny.

Wajahat M. Ali, New York Times contributing op-ed writer and

award-winning playwright

This is the book we need for such a time as this.(Esther 4:14) Who Stole My Bible? shows us how to take back sacred texts from the radical Christian Right. Instead of cherry-picking biblical texts to support unjust and even cruel social policy, Rev. Jennifer Butler asks us to imagine ourselves in the resistance struggles that formed the scriptures so we can see ourselves as actors in Gods long work of justice and mercy as it is unfolding today. This is not the first time Christians have had to struggle to reclaim scripture. Time and again, tyrants have tried to arm themselves with scriptural warrants, violating the divine message in the process. This imaginative and engaging book says Basta! to that tyrannical practice. This really is a handbook for how to live the resistance with biblical imagination and courage.

Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, president emerita and professor emerita,

Chicago Theological Seminary

Too often the Bible has been used to defend the indefensible and to justify oppression, inequality, exclusion, and all sorts of ungodly things. In this book, my friend Rev. Jen Butler reclaims the Bible as a blueprint for revolutiona revolution of love and compassion and justice. This deep dive into the Holy Book is an invitation to join the ancient Story of a God who is redeeming the world, liberating the captives, breaking the yokes of oppression, and casting the mighty from their thrones. Get ready to get in the way of injustice. Get ready to get into good trouble. Get ready to join the resistance.

Shane Claiborne, author, activist, and co-founder of Red Letter Christians

The Bible is a radical book of justice and love. The life of Jesus shows us how to act in this way. Who Stole My Bible? is a book for people who are tired of having the Bible used for oppression. Reverend Butler shows us how to take our faith and justice seriously!

Reverend Jes Kast, United Church of Christ Pastor

Rev. Jennifer Butler provides the critical moral leadership that our nation craves at this pivotal moment in history. Who Stole My Bible? will inspire Christians to follow Jesus by working for the common good. These arent just good words either because Rev. Butler has a strong track record of good works to back them up.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons,

author of Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity

This book challenged me to see not just Scripture, but the God who inspired that Scripture in a new way. By immersing the reader into the biblical story, Rev. Butler creates opportunities for empathy and new understanding. It's truly inspired me to read the Bible with a new lens.

Juliet Vedral, writer

Who Stole My Bible? is both a timely and timeless book for people of faith facingand resistingoppression, tyranny, and authoritarianism in any age. With both imagination and clear-eyed determination to restore an ethical theological voice in the public square, Butler urges us to recover our prophetic vocation for justice, and she gives us the tools in this book. This handbook is an essential companion for the protestor, preacher, and people in the pews to re-establish Gods vision of radical justice, equality, and liberation that the Bible intended.