In the tradition of Rachel Held Evans, Kristen Kobes Du Mez, and Brian McLaren, a powerful challenge to deconstruct white christianity

Jo Luehmann, a Colombian immigrant, thought she had found a forever home in her evangelical church. An ordained pastor, she taught, preached, and led Bible study. Ministry was her entire life.

But in a church that plastered welcome signs everywhere, the most unwelcome guests in the congregation were Jo’s questions and her increasing discomfort with some aspects of the Christian faith as she knew it, including the secondary role of women. And the more she embraced her authentic self, the less accepted she felt. Eventually, Jo left the church, and found herself in the middle of a major life crisis.

Having nothing to lose is sometimes a gift. Jo finally found herself deconstructing and then decolonizing her faith. In Predatory Gods, she tackles how systems of oppression co-opted and appropriated Christianity to harm and subjugate people. While rooted in Christianity, what is traced in this book extends far beyond it. Here, “God” is reframed not as a distant figure of faith, but as a pattern—a shape power takes in our lives, structuring families, institutions, and the roles we learn to inhabit.

She delves into topics few faith leaders are willing to unpack, like faith abuses, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. Urgent and unflinching, Predatory Gods gives language to what many have felt but could not name, so that we may imagine and claim an honest, nontoxic faith.