Foolishness to Gentiles

“If one is seeking a contemporary John the Baptist, then Michael Budde may be the one sought: crying out in the wilderness, making plain judgments we’d rather obscure. Herein are hard realities and honest appraisals of distressing failures. Yet he does not despair, and points us toward truths which all of us in the American empire desperately need. May God bless the reading of this book, and the reception of its words.”


—Lee C. Camp, Professor of Theology and Ethics at Lipscomb University





“We tend to think of colonialism as something that happened in the past, something we have left behind. But Budde finds it lurking in all our forms of white supremacy, triumphalism, America First-ism, patriotism, war preparations, and citizenship. After looking all around and through these structures of power, he stands to the side and asks quietly, ‘Where in all this is Jesus?’ The Catholic church’s attitude he sums up in addresses to American nations of the Southern Hemisphere—Pope John Paul asking how these nations can ever be grateful enough for the gift of the faith that the church brought them, Pope Francis asking how we can ever apologize enough for what the church did to them. Francis too is just asking, ‘Where is Jesus in all this?’”


—Garry Wills, author of What Jesus Meant





“The reader must be warned, Foolishness to Gentiles is a terrific, but not easy, book. In his usual eloquent, informed, and witty style, Michael Budde offers a penetrating diagnosis of what is wrong with much of present-day cultural Christianity. Like St. Paul, Michael simply wants Christians to take the Gospel seriously, and thus to not conform to patterns of the world but have their minds renewed so as to seek what is good, pleasing, and true (Rom 12:2). Foolishness to Gentiles offers ways of how to begin that difficult journey.”


—Emmanuel Katongole, Professor of Theology and of Peace Studies at University of Notre Dame