Howard Thurman, the influential African American theologian who mentored Martin Luther King Jr., wrote this treatise in 1949 to address a fundamental question: what does the religion of Jesus offer to those who stand with their backs against the wall? Thurman argues that Jesus himself was a poor Jew living under Roman occupation, and that his teachings must be understood from this position of marginality. The gospel, properly read, becomes a manual of resistance for the oppressed. Thurman examines the three options facing the disinherited: deception, which protects but corrupts; hatred, which provides energy but destroys the hater; and love, which Jesus taught as the only way to maintain dignity while resisting injustice. The book draws on Thurman's experience growing up in segregated Florida and his travels in India, where he met Gandhi and discussed nonviolent resistance. Thurman was dean of chapel at Howard University and later at Boston University, where he influenced a generation of civil rights leaders. His theology insists that Christianity's revolutionary core has been obscured by its alliance with power. This slim volume packs enormous spiritual and intellectual force, offering a reading of the gospels that speaks directly to anyone facing systematic oppression.