THE UNIVERSE BENDS TOWARD JUSTICE
Obery M. Hendricks Jr.
Orbis Books, 2011
Subtitled “Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church, and the Body Politic,” Hendricks’s collection of essays plays to his strength: commentary on liberation theologians who emphasize the continuity between the teachings of Jesus and of social-justice oriented prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Hendricks challenges those “Christians” (quotes are his) who hold “corporate interests as sacrosanct, while doing the utmost to dismantle the social safety net that is the last line of aid and succor for the struggling American masses.” Following a path increasingly maligned as the Tea Party extremists gain power over contemporary American political discourse, Hendricks seeks to “recover the radicality of the message of Jesus and the prophetic witness of the Hebrew Bible.” But he goes much further than others before him, providing a detailed path for applying biblical insights to contemporary spiritual, political, and economic realities both inside and outside the Christian world.
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