"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
05/17/2021
Hendricks (The Politics of Jesus), a professor of religion at Columbia and elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, delivers a thorough condemnation of right-wing evangelicalism in this lacerating work. Taking pains to distinguish between right-wing evangelicalism, Christian nationalism, and classical conservatism, Hendricks castigates contemporary “right-wing evangelicalism” for being a “brutal sham” and a “cynical conceit.” Over eight thematic chapters—covering abortion and gender rights, firearms, minorities, and big business, among other topics—Hendricks explores how a desire for political power and religious uniformity has induced evangelicals to “ to its very depths the Gospel’s call to love and care for one another.” He argues that “not only is their worldview not loving, not generous, not socially inclusive, but the notion of religious freedom they so extol extends no farther than their own ranks.” In contrast, Hendricks praises the early evangelicals of the 19th and 20th centuries who advocated for gender equality, universal education, and the rights and well-being of minorities. While Hendricks’s pessimistic conclusion is undoubtably genuine, the lack of hope or suggestions for ways to reconcile will leave readers disheartened. Trenchant and meticulous, this is certain to be a conversation starter. (July)
06/01/2021
Does right-wing evangelicalism both distort the truth and message of Christianity and threaten American culture? Hendricks (religion, African American and African diaspora studies, Columbia Univ.; The Politics of Jesus) addresses such questions in this most recent book. Hendricks does not attack evangelicals in general, and notes that historically evangelical Christians often challenged social problems, including slavery. His interest is in how a segment of radically conservative believers has developed within evangelicalism since the 1980s Moral Majority movement. Hendricks focuses on believers who have shifted away from stances of inclusivity and toward ones of hostility and intolerance. He particularly criticizes radical evangelicals' fervent support of President Trump and xenophobic Christian nationalism. Spanning religion and political science, several chapters in this wide-ranging book cover subjects (such as immigration and abortion) that have been especially politicized in the 21st century. This book is polemical in nature, yet Hendricks writes as an academic and uses extensive primary sources. VERDICT An examination and call to action that will be of particular interest to readers of White Evangelical Racism, by Anthea Butler, or Jesus and John Wayne, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.—John Jaeger, Johnson Univ., Knoxville, TN
