Christians Against Christian Supremacy -with Dr. Obery Hendricks
A life long social activist, Obery Hendricks is one of the foremost commentators on the intersection of religion and political economy in America. He is the most widely read and perhaps the most influential African American biblical scholar writing today. Dr. Hendricks’ appearances include CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Fox News, Fox Business News, the Discovery Channel, PBS, BBC, among others. Dr. Hendricks has served in the Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group at the U. S. Department of State under Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry; was a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Democratic National Committee.
Dr. Hendricks speaks with Brad about his new book, Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith (Beacon Press, 2021) . They discuss Christian supremacy, how White evangelicals have turned their faith into a Jesus personality-cult while ignoring the Gospel, and the radical message of welcome to immigrants and refugees found throughout the Bible.
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We have some exciting things happening at Straight White American Jesus.
One of them is our seminar, which begins the first Tuesday of January 2022, which is closer than you think.
We have a few spots left.
The seminar is titled Pure America, Religion, Race, Nation, and will explore themes related to Christian nationalism, race, gender, and politics.
Dan Miller will be teaching and talking about his new book.
The seminar includes readings.
It includes four live synchronous seminars, one per week for two hours each.
And a half an hour office hour session with Dan, the professor, where you can ask him about anything you'd like, or discuss his book, or the materials from the class, or whatever.
We did this before, and it was amazing.
People formed community.
They were able to enter into intellectual dialogue, but not feel the pressure of having to be in a class, or be graded, or anything like that.
If you're interested, go to www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com and check our Seminars tab.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
I am faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
And I'm joined today by an incredibly, not only special guest, I feel like all the guests we have on this show are special guests and people I appreciate, but this is a particularly distinguished guest.
And that is Dr. Obery Hendrix, who is many things, writer, commentator, public servant.
And let me just, before I go into your extensive bio here, let me just say, Professor Hendrix, thanks for joining me.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Thank you very much for having me.
So before we jump into a discussion of your new book, your new book is Christians Against Christianity, How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith, and that's out now with Beacon Press.
Let me just tell folks about who you are.
I'm sure many people listening already know, but you are a biblical scholar by training.
Did your work first at Rutgers and then at Princeton and other places.
You've written a number of books, and like I said, we'll talk about the recent one today, but you wrote the award-winning The Politics of Jesus, Rediscovering the True Revolutionary, Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted.
You also wrote The Universe Bends Towards Justice, Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church, and the Body Politic.
Among many other works, you've also been a public commentator, appeared everywhere, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, all those places, as well as served in the Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group at the U.S.
Department of State, Undersecretaries Clinton, John Kerry, and so on, the Faith Advisory Council, the DNC, and I could go on and on and on.
And so, obviously, you're a busy person.
At this point, you're working and teaching at Columbia and also Yale Divinity, so I say this sometimes on the show, But I don't know when you sleep, and so I hope you do find time for that at some point.
But anyway, let's talk about your new book, and let's just jump right in.
This is a book that in many ways falls right in line with things we talk about on this show all the time.
We examine the Christian right, we examine Christian nationalism, white evangelicals, and so on.
Your book is essentially about how right-wing evangelicals are enacting a faith that goes against the core tenets of the gospel.
You're somebody working within the tradition.
You're a biblical scholar.
You're working within the Christian tradition.
One of the things that I want to start with is this.
I grew up in this tradition and eventually found my way out of it.
The thing that you hear every minute, every hour, every day, is that we are Bible-believing people, right?
Folks call their churches Westfield Bible Church and Family Bible Church.
We're the people who follow the Bible.
Those other folks don't.
And you make a key point in the preface, and I have to admit, even after 20 years of being in this sort of game, I had not heard this before, and I just want to make sure we talk about it, because I think it really sets an amazing kind of anchor for our discussion today.
You recall a lesson from a professor at Princeton who said that reading Scripture without context is pretext, and I love that.
I'm sort of embarrassed that I've never heard or learned that before.
Would you mind telling us how reading Scripture without context is pretext, and how that does happen in many right-wing evangelical spaces?
Yeah.
Well, again, thank you for having me.
And that's a good question.
You're right.
They talk about they follow the Bible, and the Bible tells them to do this, that, and the other.
But what we see is that it's not a practice of right-wing evangelicals in particular to Read the Bible in context.
They act like the Bible is one book that was written by one person, and they ignore the fact that it was written in diverse cultural and different historical settings.
And so they read, they'll take, first off, often they take texts so far out of context of the particular passage in which it's even written.
And then they read them as if they were written today, like they have some kind of contemporary, they were written at the contemporary moment.
And they don't pay attention to the meaning in the original language, the culture, they don't look at the political setting, the social setting, the economic setting.
I mean, for instance, in the Lord's Prayer, when Jesus tells them to pray for forgiveness of debts, well, the Greek...
And ofi-le-mu-ta means financial debts.
And ofi-mi means not only forgive, it also means release.
So then when you look at it in historical context, the fact that there was this terrible debt system that oppressed people, enslaved people, destroyed families and whole villages.
You realize that what Jesus is talking about is not just forgive me for stepping on somebody's lawn, trespassing on somebody's lawn.
But he's talking about, he's acknowledging this terrible, terrible socioeconomic dilemma and asking God for deliverance from it, which reflects that Jesus has this real social consciousness and concern that the people who don't which reflects that Jesus has this real social consciousness and concern that the people
To take a minute to look any deeper at the Scripture, something that they don't see, and allows them to deny that there's any kind of political, any kind of radical sensibility.
And that's the tragedy of it.
But that also is in line with their ideological interests.
They don't want to know anything that flies in the face of their ideological interests.
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