Sympathy for Jonah: Reflections on Humiliation, Terror and the Politics of Enemy-Love

By David Benjamin Blower and Ched Myers

The story of Jonah is sacred to all three Abrahamic faiths and remains a recognizable legend even in the most secularized corners of the West.

And yet the maritime prophet's story has been trivialized as a quaint children's tale, his character has been blasted by unsympathetic commentators, and even his alleged tomb has now been destroyed by Islamic State militants who, in 2014, took the city of Mosul on the Nineveh Plains.

Now that Nineveh is once again in the grip of tyrannical violence and communities across the West and the Middle East are deep in a time of discord and soul-searching, we might do well to recover the story of Jonah, a guiding light, who marches into the very heart of empire and confronts it with the radical politics of the kingdom of God, even as his own certainties are shaken to the core.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jul 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781498237284

David Benjamin Blower

David Benjamin Blower is a writer, musician, and theological agitator from Birmingham, UK. He is a prolific recording artist and the author of Kingdom vs. Empire (2013).

Book preview

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Reviews for Sympathy for Jonah

[nmele_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Brief, but pithy, Blower asks and tries to answer the questions about Jonah we tend to avoid--why wouldn't he go to Nineveh? What was so effective about his preaching? What was that business with the "great fish" anyway? I agreed with his answers, but just thinking about the questions raised by the story of Jonah is an exacting and rewarding effort.