Introduction
CHAPTER 1
We Have No King but Caesar: Genuflecting at Strange Altars
CHAPTER 2
You Will Know Them by Their Fruits: The Strange Fruit of Right-Wing
Evangelicalism
CHAPTER 3
Who Do You Say That I Am?: Right-Wing Evangelicals’ Dangerous
Misappropriation of Jesus
CHAPTER 4
A New Commandment I Give You: That You Love One Another: Right-Wing
Evangelicals, Homosexuality, and Marriage Equality
CHAPTER 5
I Have Other Sheep Not in This Fold: Right-Wing Evangelicals and
the Demonization of Immigrants and Muslims
CHAPTER 6
You Shall Not Add to the Word Which I Command You: Right-Wing
Evangelicals, Abortion, and the Meaning of “Pro-Life”
CHAPTER 7
Thou Shall Not Murder: The Unholy Alliance Between Right-Wing
Evangelicals and the NRA
CHAPTER 8
The Workman Is Worthy of His Keep: The Unholy Alliance of Big
Business and Right-Wing Evangelicals
EPILOGUE
A Spirit of Antichrist
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Obery M. Hendricks Jr. is a best-selling author, an activist, a religious scholar, a former theological seminary president, and an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His books include The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted and The Universe Bends Toward Justice: Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church, and the Body Politic. He currently teaches religion and African American studies at Columbia University and is also a Visiting Professor of Bible and Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
"Christians Against Christianity hits hard. Really hard. But it is
also measured, thoughtful, reasoned, and carefully presented. The
style is concise and evidence-based, with research on evangelical
leadership, statements and polled positions of right-wing
evangelicals, and serious biblical scholarship."
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“[Hendricks’] most recent book, Christians Against Christianity, is
a sustained critique of a group he refers to as ‘faux Christians’:
right-wing, white evangelicals. With scholarly precision and an
ability to engage beyond the tired critiques of right-wing
Christianity, Hendricks imagines a version of Christianity that is
politically committed to social justice.”
—Sojourner Magazine
“If his book were a trial, the verdict would be clear: guilty.”
—Christian Century
“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
“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
“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
“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 Hendricks' urgent and
important work.”
—Rev. Al Sharpton
“Obery M. Hendricks Jr. is one of the most brilliant and
consequential biblical scholars of the twenty-first century. 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
“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
“Christians Against Christianity masterfully exposes the moral,
political, and theological contradictions of the American Religious
Right. Each page of this brilliant text brims with historical heft,
critical analysis, and righteous outrage. This is a must-read text
not only for Christians but for anyone interested in understanding
American faith, politics, and culture.”
—Marc Lamont Hill, author of We Still Here
“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
“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 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
“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 New York Times best-selling
author of Christ in Crisis
"Those who would like to read a well-educated and well-presented
viewpoint on a number of contemporary issues from a thoughtful
biblical perspective would be hard-pressed to do better than
examine this book. You may not agree with everything Hendricks
says, but you will be better informed and certainly challenged by
his exhortation to match balanced biblical guidance with the way we
live out contemporary social issues."
—Scott Moncrieff, Spectrum Magazine
"[Obery’s] comparison is revealing: the Bible opposes conservative
Christian politics at every turn. Not only does right-wing
Christianity threaten American political life, but its false
narrative also threatens Christianity itself. Hendricks is a voice
crying in the wilderness—a prophet claiming the truth of the Bible
for justice and a vision of the God who is love."
—Diana Butler Bass, author of Grounded: Finding God in the
World, A Spiritual Revolution
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