Dr. Obery Hendricks, an Elder Scholar-in-residence at the Children’s Defense Fund, is the most widely read and perhaps the most influential African American biblical scholar in America today. He has been a Wall Street investment executive, a theological seminary president, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Democracy Collaborative think tank, and served in the U. S. Department of State Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group under Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in the Departments of Religion and African American and African Diasporic Studies, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary, an advisory board member at the Institute of Christian Socialism, and a trustee of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). 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. Among his books is the best-selling The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted (Doubleday: 2006). His most recent book is the critically acclaimed, Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith (Beacon: 2021).