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Christians Against Christianity
How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith
2 of 2 copies available
A BIBLE STUDY COMPANION: Detailed analyses of Bible passages show how Christians can return their faith to the life-affirming message of Jesus.
Today’s right-wing Evangelical Christianity stands as the very antithesis of the message of Jesus Christ. In his new book, Christians Against Christianity, best-selling author and religious scholar Obery M. Hendricks Jr. challenges right-wing evangelicals on the terrain of their own religious claims, exposing the falsehoods, contradictions, and misuses of the Bible that are embedded in their rabid homophobia, their poorly veiled racism and demonizing of immigrants and Muslims, and their ungodly alliance with big business against the interests of American workers.
He scathingly indicts the religious leaders who helped facilitate the rise of the notoriously unchristian Donald Trump, likening them to the “court jesters” and hypocritical priestly sycophants of bygone eras who unquestioningly supported their sovereigns’ every act, no matter how hateful or destructive to those they were supposed to serve.
In the wake of the deadly insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol, Christians Against Christianity is a clarion call to stand up to the hypocrisy of the evangelical Right, as well as a guide for Christians to return their faith to the life-affirming message that Jesus brought and died for. What Hendricks offers is a provocative diagnosis, an urgent warning that right-wing evangelicals’ aspirations for Christian nationalist supremacy are a looming threat, not only to Christian decency but to democracy itself. What they offer to America is anything but good news.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 6, 2021 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780807057414
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780807057414
- File size: 1515 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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May 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. -
June 1, 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
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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