Obery M. Hendricks Jr. > Quotes

“The uncompromising example of Jesus Christ places upon every Christian minister the responsibility to withstand the temptation to align oneself with the secular ruling powers. It is true that it is part of every minister’s calling to be a pastor to his or her parishioners, to be a spiritual leader and teacher and a comforter of the sick at heart and those afflicted in mind, soul, spirit, or body. Ministers of the Gospel must comfort the afflicted, but they also have the prophet’s duty to afflict the comfortable.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted

“love your neighbor as yourself.” Because it calls for the same rights, opportunities, and access to the good things in life for others in society as we seek for ourselves, this verse is”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Nevertheless, in too many churches today dramatic predictions about individuals’ unique personal concerns are presented as God-inspired “prophecies” by clergy who have never spoken out against social injustice, never uttered a word of political critique, yet still call themselves prophets. Some even charge fees or request financial “love-offerings” for their “prophetic” services. Despite their claims to prophetic powers, these men and women must be considered false prophets. Yet this is not a new phenomenon; there have been false prophets throughout history, and there are many today. How can a false prophet be identified? There are two telltale criteria: (1) they are silent about issues of social justice, and (2) they function as uncritical supporters of rulers and politicians, rather than as their moral conscience and dedicated arbiters of biblical justice.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted

“This is deeply problematic, because in the final analysis libertarianism and Christianity are essentially incompatible.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Among the twenty-two highest-income countries, the United States accounts for more than 90 percent of all gun deaths of children under the age of fifteen.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“I believe that like those the writer of 1 John railed against in his day, today’s right-wing evangelicals are also imbued with a spirit of antichrist that has them traffic in another kind of docetic heresy, one that dismisses as illusory and phantasmic the aspects of the Gospel that do not suit their dominationist agenda.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“America is the only industrial country that does not offer the legal right to workers to a vacation, paid or unpaid.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“white evangelicals in particular are even more opposed to immigration reform, holding more negative views about immigrants and caring for the poor and the vulnerable than any other religious group in America.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“right-wing evangelicals are consciously supporting a system guilty of gross evil committed against children, the most innocent of all innocents.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“They have suspended their Gospel affections toward those who come to our borders seeking decent lives for themselves and their loved ones.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Tellingly, counties in which rallies were held by Trump, the one extolled by evangelicals as God’s chosen, saw hate crimes rise some 226 percent.34”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“modern right-wing evangelicalism is defined by a shamelessly unholy impulse: to protect the perquisites of white supremacy.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Statement on Social Justice”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Rather than a denominational identity, what all evangelicals have in common is a belief in four basic tenets: (1) that the Bible is the ultimate authority for life (which they profess to accept literally although, as we shall see, they tend to ignore or tendentiously construe passages that do not suit their purposes); (2) that Jesus died to atone for the sins of the world; (3) that a conversion experience, or being “born again,” is necessary for heavenly salvation; and (4) that believers should engage in evangelistic outreach.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Trump’s evangelicals carried a pernicious message directly counter to the faith they profess: that it is acceptable to commit transgressions of virtually any kind against other human beings simply because their skin bears a different hue or they speak in unfamiliar tongues. The extent to which Christians enact, support, or tolerate these behaviors is the extent to which they are at war with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is of such people that Jesus said, “Woe to you . . . hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to” (Matthew 23:13).”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Earlier evangelicals viewed combatting the exploitation of workers as an important issue of biblical faith.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Incredibly, a 2015 poll revealed that nine out of ten evangelicals admit that “the scripture has no impact on their views toward immigration reform.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“This is not biblical Christianity. It is right-wing ideological Christianity, in which the teachings of the Bible are twisted, distorted, and used selectively to support right-wing evangelical ends.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Right-wing evangelicals have evolved what might be called a “Jesus personality cult” that is obsessed with the person of Jesus as spiritual savior rather than with the principles for justly living in the world that he taught and died for.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“In a building dedicated to the Prince of Peace, the pastor proceeded to bless their guns—and their use of them—with a martial supplication suffused with startling irony: he prayed for “a kingdom of peace police and peace militia where the citizens, through the right given to them by almighty God to keep and bear arms, will be able to protect one another and protect human flourishing.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Yet equally bizarre is that among right-wing evangelicals today, the right to own a firearm is virtually a Gospel tenet.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“At Tea Party rallies, Obama was burned in effigy hanging from a noose, depicted as an “African witch doctor” replete with a bone in his nose and as a mugger holding Uncle Sam in a chokehold, and told to “go home to Kenya” in handheld sign after sign.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Their obsession with repealing the Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges abortion and marriage equality rulings shows that they don’t believe in simply transforming hearts to bring social change. They absolutely do believe in advocating for laws—when those laws give them what they want.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“There is simply no legitimate way that the self-serving and, ultimately, deadly claims of the NRA can be reconciled with the witness of the Bible and Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“He called for a radical redistribution of authority and power, goods and resources, so all people might have lives free of political repression, enforced hunger and poverty, and undue insecurity.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“But their sycophantic support of a sitting president who ordered children to be caged without the least glimmer of remorse reveals that their moral outrage begins and ends with their own group interests.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith

“Trump administration went before an incredulous ninth circuit of the US Court of Appeals to argue that it shouldn’t be required to give migrant children toothbrushes, soap, and somewhere to sleep other than cold concrete floors.”
― Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith