Obery M. Hendricks, Jr.

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Ph.D.

A life-long social activist, Obery Hendricks is a celebrated commentator 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 publishing today. Cornel West calls him “one of the last few grand prophetic intellectuals.” His most recent book, Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals are Destroying our Nation and Our Faith (Beacon, 2021) is hailed as “brilliant” (Eddie Glaude, Jr.) and “a must-read book for this crucial moment in our nation’s history” (Robert P. Jones).

A widely sought lecturer and media spokesperson, Dr. Hendricks’ appearances include CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Fox News, Fox Business News, the Discovery Channel, PBS, BBC, NHK Japan Television and the Bloomberg Network. He has provided running event commentary for National Public Radio, MSNBC, and the al-Jazeera and Aspire international television networks. Dr. Hendricks has been a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Democratic National Committee, for whom he delivered the closing benediction at the 2008 Democratic Convention; served on the National Religious Leaders Advisory Committee of the 2008 Democratic Presidential campaign and 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. He has been a Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Democracy Collaborative in Washington, DC; an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for American Progress; a Senior Fellow at The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communications think tank. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and advisor to both the Institute for Christian Socialism and the Abolition Sanctuary, and is Elder Scholar-in-Residence to the Children’s Defense Fund. Dr. Hendricks is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post, Sojourners magazine and Salon.com, a former editorial advisor to the award-winning Tikkun magazine, and a contributing editor to The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion. The Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation has called his work “the boldest post-colonial writing ever seen in Western biblical studies.”

Hendricks’ bestselling book, The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted (Doubleday, 2006), was declared “essential reading for Americans” by the Washington Post. Social commentator Michael Eric Dyson proclaimed it “an instant classic” that “immediately thrusts Hendricks into the front ranks of American religious thinkers.” The Politics of Jesus was the featured subject of the 90-minute C-SPAN special, “Class, Politics and Christianity,” hosted by the Center for American Progress, The tenth anniversary of its publication was celebrated in 2016 at the American Academy of Religion at its annual convention in San Antonio, TX. Governor Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, declared his last book, The Universe Bends Toward Justice: Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church and the Body Politic (Orbis, 2011), a “tour de force.”

A former Wall Street investment executive and past president of Payne Theological Seminary, the oldest African American theological seminary in the US, he has been a visiting professor at a number of educational institutions, including Emory University, Union Theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in the Departments of Religion and African American and African Diasporic Studies, and Emeritus Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary. An Ordained Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Hendricks holds the Master of Divinity with academic honors from Princeton Theological Seminary, and both the M.A. and Ph.D. in Religions of Late Antiquity from Princeton University.

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Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Ph.D.

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