Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw

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The authors of this book present true Christianity as a radical calling. With both biblical and modern-day examples, they show how implementing the spiritual principles of the Old and New Testaments requires us to live our lives in ways that others might find astonishing. For instance, they mention as exemplars the Pennsylvania Amish community that opened its heart to the family of the man who had killed five children at their local school.

From the Publisher

Jesus for President is a radical manifesto to awaken the Christian political imagination, reminding us that our ultimate hope lies not in partisan political options but in Jesus and the incarnation of the peculiar politic of the church as a people “set apart” from this world.

In what can be termed lyrical theology, Jesus for President poetically weaves together words and images to sing (rather than dictate) its message. It is a collaboration of Shane Claiborne’s writing and stories, Chris Haw’s reflections and research, and Chico Fajardo-Heflin’s art and design. Drawing upon the work of biblical theologians, the lessons of church history, and the examples of modern-day saints and ordinary radicals, Jesus for President stirs the imagination of what the Church could look like if it placed its faith in Jesus instead of Caesar.

A fresh look at Christianity and empire, Jesus for President transcends questions of “Should I vote or not?” and “Which candidate?” by thinking creatively about the fundamental issues of faith and allegiance. It’s written for those who seek to follow Jesus, rediscover the spirit of the early church, and incarnate the kingdom of God.

Publishers Weekly

Here is the must-read election-year book for Christian Americans. What should Christians do when allegiances to the state clash with personal faith? Haw and Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution) slice through politics as usual and well past the superficial layers of the culture wars with their lucid exploration of how Christians can and should relate to presidents and kings, empire and government. Their entertaining yet provocative tour of the Bible's social and economic order makes even the most abstruse Levitical laws come alive for our era. They also provide a valuable political context for Christ's life, reminding readers that Jesus did not preach the need to put God back into government-he urged his followers to live by a different set of rules altogether, to hold themselves apart as peculiar people. The compelling writing is enhanced by a lavish, eye-popping layout. The pages are a riot of textured callouts, colors, photos and fonts-the perfect packaging for a message that must compete in a world of sound bites. With this second book, Claiborne emerges as an affable, intelligent, humorous prophet of his generation, calling people out of business-as-usual in a corrupt world and back to the radically different social order of the biblical God. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"Here is the must-read election-year book for Christian Americans. What should Christians do when allegiances to the state clash with personal faith? Haw and Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution) slice through politics as usual and well past the superficial layers of the culture wars with their lucid exploration of how Christians can and should relate to presidents and kings, empire and government. Their entertaining yet provocative tour of the Bible's social and economic order makes even the most abstruse Levitical laws come alive for our era. They also provide a valuable political context for Christ's life, reminding readers that Jesus did not preach the need to put God back into government -- he urged his followers to live by a different set of rules altogether, to hold themselves apart as peculiar people. The compelling writing is enhanced by a lavish, eye-popping layout. The pages are a riot of textured callouts, colors, photos, and fonts -- the perfect packaging for a message that must compete in a world of sound bites. With this second book, Claiborne emerges as an affable, intelligent, humorous prophet of his generation, calling people out of business-as-usual in a corrupt world and back to the radically different social order of the biblical God."

George Westerlund - Library Journal

Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical) and Haw, a graduate student of theology at Villanova University, here lay out an action theology in which Jesus commissions his disciples to become, collectively, a new humanity filled with a contagious love that spreads to communities, nations, and the world with grace. In following him, his disciples partake of his "cup" and will possibly die as sheep among wolves. The authors describe an action theology that boldly confronts social injustice, violence, and war with weapons of grace, sharing, peacemaking, and acts of love, substantiating their position with examples from both the Old and the New Testaments. "Like Abraham and Sarah," they write, "disciples would be a humanity born again in a dysfunctional world...to infect nations with grace." The book ends by illustrating the outworking of this action theology both in history and especially in our present day. Examples include Martin Luther King, war protesters, and "new monasticism" communities such as inner-city Philadelphia's The Simple Way, of which Claiborne is a founding member. This is a good read even if you personally question the theology, idealism, or practicality it espouses. Recommended for large libraries.

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

We in the church are schizophrenic: we want to be good Christians, but deep down we trust that only the power of the state and its militaries and markets can really make a difference in the world. And so we're hardly able to distinguish between what's American and what's Christian. As a result, power corrupts the church and its goals and practices. When Jesus said, "You cannot serve two masters," he meant that in serving one, you destroy your relationship to the other. Or as our brother and fellow activist Tony Campolo puts it, "Mixing the church and state is like mixing ice cream with cow manure. It may not do much to the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream." As Jesus warned, what good is it to gain the whole world if we lose our soul?

So what we need is an exploration of the Bible's political imagination, a renovated Christian politics, a new set of hopes, goals, and practices. We believe the growing number of Christians who are transcending the rhetoric of lifeless presidential debates is a sign of this renovation. Amid all the buzz, we are ready to turn off our TVs, pick up our Bibles, and reimagine the world.

Over the last several years, the Christian relation to the state has become more dubious. The most prevalent example is the Christian language coming from the State Department of the United States. Professing Christians have been at the helm of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, implicitly or explicitly referencing faith in God as part of their leadership. Patriotic pastors insist that America is a Christian nation without questioning the places in distant and recent history where America has not looked like Christ. Rather than placing our hope in a transnational church that embodies God's kingdom, we assume America is God's hope for the world, even when it doesn't look like Christ. Dozens of soldiers who have contacted us confess a paralyzing identity crisis as they feel the collision of their allegiances. At the same time, many Christians are questioning whether God is blessing these wars and whether it's enough for our money to say "In God We Trust" while the daily reality of the global economy seems out of sync with God's concern for the poor.

We hope this book will broaden the definition of political. As you'll find in the following pages, political doesn't refer merely to legislation, parties, and governments. So while we will insist that the Christian faith be political, we also want to redefine what political means or looks like. We hope to redefine it simply as how we relate to the world.

This book doesn't presume to blaze new trails of scholarship. Also, readers hoping to find an exhaustive political account of every book in the Bible will feel we paint with too broad a brush. Rather, as we seek to understand Jesus, we'll attempt to distill the work of scholars and ordinary saints into an accessible read (while having a little fun along the way). The scholars we will cite have busied themselves for generations with finding the truest theological and historical nuances about Jesus. We are grateful for their work and hope to anchor it in poetry, real life, and images in a way that invites us into the story of the most creative king who ever lived.

We begin in the Hebrew Scriptures, since this is where Jesus' story begins. While we may be tempted to jump to the good news and just write about Jesus, we must hear the Story from which he came and anchor his language, politics, and actions in that world. Just as America's narrative did not begin with America and will not end with America, Jesus' story did not begin in Matthew, nor does it end in Revelation.

(Continues...)

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