Jesus for President, subtitled ‘Politics for Ordinary Radicals,’ is a timely new Zondervan book by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. Following are some excerpts. 

Before there were kings 

Once upon a time there were no kings or presidents. Only God was king.

The Bible is the story of a God who is continually rescuing humanity from the messes we make of the world.

God is bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. God is leading humans on an exodus adventure out of the land of emperors and kings, and into the Promised Land.

Over and over, the people [of Israel] settled for the empty promises of empire over the eternal dreams of God. But God is relentless. God pursued, forgave, wooed them back, as a Lover.

For the sake of a watching world, God systematically interrupted the human systems that created poverty – releasing debt, setting slaves free, prohibiting usury, and redistributing property. Sounds like a platform even we could vote for.

A new kind of president 

 Jesus would enter his people’s story, tears, sweat and hunger – and show them a way out, that doesn’t require the financial, military and political power of kings and presi- dents and cabinets.

Jesus would make for a bad president. And he would be considerably uncomfortable as commander in chief of the largest military in the world. Nevertheless, he was political.

All of his titles granted him political authority. Calling him Messiah or Lord is like acclaiming him – unlikely as it is – as president. He was the president who did not want to be president.

His politics aspired to something different from state power. If we might call Jesus president, we could say that his campaign slogan was ‘Jubilee!’

This is what Jesus had in mind: folks coming together, forming close-knit communities and meeting each other’s needs – no kings, no major welfare systems, no presidents necessary. His is a theology and practice for the people of God, not a set of suggestions for the empire.

Jesus taught a third way

We see a Jesus who abhors both passivity and violence – who carves out a third way that is neither submission nor assault, neither fight nor flight. Jesus is ready to set us free from the heavy yoke of an oppressive way of life.

Plenty of wealthy Christians are suffocating from the weight of the American dream, heavily burdened by the lifeless toil and consumption we embrace. This is the yoke from which we are being set free. And as we are liberated from the yoke of global capitalism, our sisters and brothers in Guatemala, Liberia, Iraq and Sri Lanka will also be liberated.

A baptized empire

Is it possible that we can’t see the destructiveness of our economy – not because we don’t know it’s terrible, but because deep down, we feel that it’s necessary and that therefore it’s hopeless to criticize it?

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Very few Scriptures can be construed to say that we are unquestionly to follow whatever kings and presidents dictate, no matter how out of line they seem to be.

We can support a president – while also worshipping Jesus as the Son of God. But how is this possible? For one says that we must love our enemies, and the other says we must kill them; one promotes the economics of competition, while the other admonishes the forgiveness of debts.

To which do we pledge allegiance?

When we are talking about a baptized empire, one that has dazzled the church into conformity, we are not just talking about the violent militarism of Rome or the United States or Iran or North Korea. We are also talking about a much more prevalent, subtle and powerful empire that seeps into every home – our daily global lifestyle.

We might hope to change the world through better, bigger programs to stop global warming; but global warming will not end unless people become less greedy and less wasteful, gaining a fresh vision of what it means to love our global neighbor.

So even as we see the horror of death, may we be reminded that, in the end, love wins. Mercy triumphs. Life is more powerful than death. And even those who have committed great violence can have the image of God come to life again within them, as they hear the whisper of love.

May the whisper of love grow louder than the thunder of violence. May we love loudly.

A peculiar party 

Jesus is forming a new kind of people, a different kind of party, whose peculiar politics are embodied in who we are. The church is a people called out of the world to embody a social alternative that the world cannot know on its own terms.

It’s easy to have political views – that’s what politicians do. But it’s much harder to embody a political alternative – that’s what saints do. The greater challenge is right living, not just right thinking.

In Jesus, we meet not a presentation of basic ideas or a new political platform, but an invitation to join up – to become part of a movement, a people who embody good news.

One of the ways we can embody a new economy and politics is by making our own stuff from the scraps of the empire. In our communities, we are able to make many of the things we need. Each creation is a deliberate small act of resistance to the corporate global economy.

We are no longer talking about an eye for an eye and a bomb for a bomb, but about how one person committed to enemy-love can transform an entire conflict.

As much as we balk at its mysticism, the central political prayer and hope of Christians is: “Lord, come quickly; may your kingdom come.”

One thing that’s clear in the scriptures is that the nations do not lead people to peace; rather, people lead nations to peace.

The end of war begins with people who believe that another world is possible, and that another empire has already interrupted time and space – and is taking over this earth with the dreams of God.

April 2008