Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy - by Ched Myers (Paperback)

About the Book

Myers offers fresh socio-literary analysis of, and engaged commentary on, the Third Gospel. He shows how, amid our modern crisis of socioeconomic disparity, Luke's vision of Sabbath Economics can build social imagination among communities of faith and justice and animate personal and political practices of systemic change.

Book Synopsis

Myers brings a well-honed interpretive eye to a thematic study of Luke's Gospel. He reads synoptically the crisis of socioeconomic disparity in Jesus's world and ours, and proposes powerful analogies that can build social imagination and animate personal and political practices for systemic change and justiceamong communities of faith today.

There has been a revival of interest over the last half century in the Third Gospel's focus on issues of poverty and wealth. However, most exegetical or homiletic work by scholars and preachers of the Global North has been constrained by middle-class social assumptions, which inevitably domesticate Jesus's radical teaching and practice. To counter this, Myers argues that Luke's literary arc and individual representations are best interpreted through the lens of ""Sabbath Economics"" in the Hebrew Bible. He then brings socio-literary analysis and engaged commentary to bear on Luke's wise oldstories, correlating his narrative structures and symbols to systemic political and economic issues then and now.

Luke's unique material, and how he redacts Mark and Q, reveals his unequivocal critique of socioeconomic disparity. Myers closely examines footprints and ""demonstration projects"" of Sabbath Economics in the first half of Luke, then considers archetypal characters, somatic representations, and socially contrasting scenarios of rich and poor in the second half. His approach deploys sociological exegesis, literary analysis, and liberation hermeneutics to recover Luke's story of Jesus in its historical context and its relevance to ours.

Review Quotes

This book is for Christian revolutionary nerds--or, more precisely, for those who encounter God in the struggle for justice and in deep, searching engagement with the Bible. Myers's readable and learned account tracks close to the text, while setting it in the sort of wide-ranging conversation that illuminates its meaning for Jesus's time and our own. Strikingly, Myers uses movement wisdom to read the biblical text, and reads the biblical text for movement wisdom. He thus eschews easy answers (of the liberal or conservative kind), recovering instead Jesus's invitation to Sabbath Economics. I hope it will nourish and strengthen those seeking to accept it. --Lucila Crena, assistant professor of Christian ethics and public theology, Wesley Theological Seminary

For more than a generation, Ched Myers has uniquely combined the tools of rigorous biblical and theological interpretation, critical social analysis, and movement-building for the sake of congregational renewal, social justice, and planetary healing. In this most recent book, Myers brings together themes that have marked his life's work--political economy, racial justice, decolonial discipleship, and ecological repair--in a clarion call for what King named "a radical revolution of values." The result is yet another brilliant and timely contribution from one of our most important scholar-activists: a summons to our seminaries and churches to follow Jesus by getting our hands in the soil and our feet on the ground, marching toward a freedom made possible only through shared abundance, generosity, and justice. --Timothy R. Eberhart, Robert and Marilyn Degler McClean Associate Professor of Ecological Theology and Practice, and director of the Center for Ecological Regeneration, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Ched Myers is the most astute and profound reader of the Scriptures of this generation! Again and again, he discerns previously unseen connections and implications. In his reading of Luke, he shows the way to practice Sabbath Economics in a world suffering from affluenza. This book is a continuous inspiration to reengage in personal and collective economic organization and action. --Richard Horsley, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts Boston; author of Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder, Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine, and You Shall Not Bow Down and Serve Them: The Political Economic Projects of Jesus and Paul

Jesus gave his first sermon in Nazareth, calling for a revival of the Jubilee Year. Myers gives convincing scholarly evidence for making this passage in Luke 4 the centerpiece of Jesus's teaching. He describes the social context of Luke's gospel in a vivid and convincing way. --Michael Hudson, author of . . . and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year

Reaching back into the storied roots of the Torah and Prophets, Myers's insightful and illuminating exegesis probes the oppressive and dehumanizing economic injustices of the first century alongside our own wealth-dominated social and political context. The result is a vibrant picture of Jesus's radical vision for a community shaped by Sabbath Economics. Written with Myers's characteristic quick wit and steeped in wisdom learned from his lifetime of activism, this compelling reading of Luke will resonate with all who long for the biblical vision of Sabbath to renew creation and our world. --Sylvia C. Keesmaat, coauthor of Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice