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

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Ph.D., is the author of The Universe Bends Toward Justice: Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church and the Body Politic (Orbis, 2011). He is one of the nation’s most provocative and innovative commentators on the intersection of religion, politics and social policy in America. A widely sought lecturer and media spokesperson, Dr. Hendricks has been featured on C-SPAN, PBS, National Public Radio, al-Jazeera Television, NHK Japan Television, Air-America, Radio One, Fox News, the Discovery Channel and the Bloomberg Network. He currently is an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for American Progress and a Trustee of the Public Religion Research Institute. The Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation calls his work “the boldest post-colonial writing ever seen in Western biblical studies.”
A former Wall Street investment executive and past president of Payne Theological Seminary, the oldest African American theological seminary in the United States, Dr. Hendricks is currently Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary and Visiting Scholar in both the Department of Religion and the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. He 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.

Show full bio

Hide full bio