Predatory God - by Jo Luehmann (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

For readers of Jesus and John Wayne, a powerful investigation of Christianity, the inherited worlds we mistake for reality, and what it takes to build differently.

Jo Luehmann, a Colombian immigrant and ordained pastor, believed she had found a forever home in the evangelical church. Christianity gave her language for love and sacrifice, authority and belonging, suffering and redemption. Ministry was her entire life.

But the harder she worked to become the person she believed she should be, the less reality resembled what she had been taught to expect. She began to see how easily control could be called protection, obedience maturity, and self-erasure love. Eventually, she left.

Leaving changed what Jo believed. It did not undo how she had been formed. In Predatory God, she draws on memoir, psychology, theology, history, and systems thinking to examine how inherited worlds teach us what is good, dangerous, and required for belonging--and how people reproduce that logic even while consciously opposing it. Here, "God" is both a figure of faith and a grammar: a way of organizing power so completely that domination can become fluent in the language of goodness.

Neither an indictment of Christianity nor an argument in its defense, Predatory God finds no simple villains or heroes and does not exempt its author from the systems it examines. It asks what becomes possible when we recognize the worlds that formed us, decide what deserves to be carried forward, and build differently.

Review Quotes

"The first time I heard Jo Luehmann speak, I was moved and inspired by her combination of courage, imagination, and passion. In her writings as in her speaking, she challenges the comfortable assumptions of what passes for christianity in our time. Hers is a welcome, important, and necessary voice."
--Brian D. McLaren, author of Life After Doom

"Jo has spent years wrestling with some of the most important questions of our time, including the systems we inherit, how we hold complexity and morality together, and how we make meaning collectively. I love that she is bringing her experience and expertise forward and inviting readers into a deeper examination of how belief, power, and identity shape our lives and our communities."
--Simran Jeet Singh, bestselling author of The Light We Give

"Jo Luehmann is an urgent moral voice that must be heard. Her story is both an indictment of religion and a reason to hope that belief systems can be reordered to support relationships with God where human dignity defines holiness, sanctuary produces sanctity, and loving ourselves contributes to loving each other."
--Rabbi Mike Moskowitz, Director of Scholarship and Multi-faith Engagement at The Beacon and author of Inviting Order

"Predatory God is one hell of a book, and I'm almost certain I've never read anything quite like it. With an incisive vulnerability and a transcendent personal story, Jo Luehmann manages to deconstruct our deconstruction... This book obliterated some of my perceptions, helped heal pain I thought I'd processed, and gave me a new ideal in which to evaluate my life. Whether you believe, doubt, or feel agnostic about all of it, Predatory God should be your next read."
--Matthew Paul Turner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Is God Like?

About the Author

Jo Luehmann is a writer, speaker, and strategist who examines how religion, psychology, and power shape the way we live, relate, and make decisions. Trained as a systems engineer and formerly an ordained pastor, her work identifies the patterns that sustain harm within families, organizations, and institutions--and clarifies what is worth carrying forward, changing, or leaving behind. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, she brings a cross-cultural, systems-based perspective to questions of authority, formation, and change. She is based in the greater New York City area, where she lives with her four children.