“The distinguished scholar and prophetic social critic Obery Hendricks has done it again: he has written a brilliant and heartfelt defense of the Christian gospel that indicts the fakes and frauds who distort it! This book, standing in the great tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. is just what is needed in these decadent times.”
—Cornel West, author of Race Matters
“Unsparing in his criticism and unflinching in his commitment to the Gospel, Obery Hendricks has penned a prophetic ‘takedown’ of right-wing evangelicalism like I have never seen before. He understands the stakes and defends, with the skill of a scholar and a preacher, the importance of loving and being responsible for one’s neighbor. Christians Against Christianity is, at once, bracing and brilliant, powerful and passionate. Read it and join the battle!”
—Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
“A masterful and grounded challenge to right-wing evangelical theology and politics—but 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
“Dr. Obery Hendricks is one of the country’s 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
“It’s a sign of our unsettling times when a figure like Obery Hendricks Jr.—respected biblical scholar, former seminary president, and elder in the church—calls 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 nation’s history.”
—Robert P. Jones, CEO and founder of PRRI, author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity
“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 issues—from abortion to gun control, from immigration policy to commercialized religion, from gay rights to xenophobia—Hendricks 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
“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 nation’s 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 nation’s priorities.”
—Marian Wright Edelman, president emerita, The Children’s Defense Fund, and author of The Measure of Our Success
“Obery Hendricks is a righteous rabble-rouser! This book is the kind of prophetic troublemaking and truth-telling that we all need.”
—Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage
“Dr. Obery Hendricks’s 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 Jesus’s two greatest commandments—to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves—along 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 author of Christ in Crisis