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Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. $17.95. pp. 203. ISBN 0-664-22917-4).

Ekblad’s book is a call to Christians to learn how to read the Bible against the grain in order to minister to people who could be classified as the despised and rejected of the earth. This book was written with the purpose of developing a group of Christians who will commit themselves to the task of “communicating good news to people often submerged in the bad news of poverty, social marginalization, addictions to alcohol and drugs, criminal activities, oppression by the state, self-accusation, feelings of inadequacy, and other difficulties” (p. xiv). For this reason alone, Christians should read this book in order to learn how to communicate the liberating message of the gospel with the less fortunate in society.

Ekblad’s book is a collection of Bible studies conducted among people who are considered marginalized because of their race, immigration status, or social situation. Most of his audience are Anglo and Mexican inmates at the Skagit County Jail in western Washington State. Many of them are Mexican immigrants who are in the United States illegally; some are gang members who are in jail because they have committed crimes or abused drugs. These are the people who perceive themselves to be “damned,” condemned to a life of alienation, poverty, and rejection. They see themselves as people in bondage who are oppressed by the society in which they live.

Ekblad learned about the plight of the poor and their struggle for liberation while living and working among campesinos in rural Honduras. He has been highly influenced by Liberation Theology and the work of the Brazilian activist Paulo Freire, who wrote The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury, 1970) as a way to empower base communities in Latin America. He was also influenced by Ernesto Cardenal, whose popular readings of the Bible were published as The Gospel in Solentiname, 4 vols. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 1976).

Ekblad believes the church, which he calls “the dominant theology,” has locked the Bible out to people who live at the margins by allowing the dominant culture to influence the way the Bible is read. His approach is to read the Bible against the grain, to free people to read the Bible for life and liberation, to find God’s presence in the midst of darkness.

Reading the Bible against the grain is to identify Abram and Sarai with an abusive husband, employer, landlord, or prison guard. Reading the Gospel against the grain means to paraphrase the words of Jesus in John 4:10 in the context of a drug addict: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me some cocaine,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living cocaine.” Reading Paul against the grain means to see Jesus as the Good Coyote who, at no charge, brings people into God’s reign or to explain baptism as making all people “wetbacks” (p. 179).

I sympathize with the aims of Ekblad’s ministry. As one who has worked and lived as a campesino in Northern California, who has taught weekly Bible classes in two maximum security prisons, and has ministered to farm workers, undocumented migrants, and homeless people in California, I know of the despair and hopelessness that exist among marginalized people. However, one does not provide hope to hopeless people by portraying the country in which they live as the oppressive empire and the state, the courts, the judges, and the police as the oppressors. After all, when the damned leave their jails or the illegals go back to their communities, they will still be hopeless because they will continue to live in what they consider to be an oppressive empire.

Claude F. Mariottini
Northern Baptist Seminary
Lombard, Illinois 60148

Note: This book review was published in The Expository Times 119 (May 2008), 411-12.

Buy the book from Amazon.com.

Tags: Bob Ekblad, Liberation Theology, Oppressed People, Poverty

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