Includes bibliographical references (pages 184-218).

Introduction to the introduction -- Introduction: Air puffers and rubber gloves -- The cry of the oppressed -- Get down your harps -- David's other son -- Genital-free Africans -- Swollen-bellied Black babies, soccer moms on Prozac, and the mark of the beast -- Blood on the doorposts of the universe -- Epilogue: Broken and poured.

There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers. It's a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity, it's about empty empires and the truth that everybody's a priest, it's about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from. It's about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers. - Publisher.