Product Description

Amid all the buzz of politics and elections, Jesus for President is a refreshing reminder that our ultimate hope lies not in partisan political options but in the Jesus who gave his life for us. Politics for ordinary radicals who want to love the world into the kingdom of God.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8940 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 348 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780310278429
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From 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. (Mar.)
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Review
"Here is the must-read election-year book for Christian Americans. ...entertaining yet provocative. Compelling writing enhanced by lavish, eye-popping layout." -- Publisher's Weekly

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." — Publishers Weekly Starred Review

(Publishers Weekly Starred Review )

Customer Reviews

I had such high hopes for it
Bellicose nationalism and deregulated capitalism versus nonviolence and sharing of belongings: these are two stark differences between the gospel as lived out by contemporary and early Christians. If we contemporaries are to be honest men and women, let alone faithful followers of Jesus, we must demand some answers of ourselves. Can we and the early church both be right? And if not, which of us bears the burden of proof? Is it the early Christians, who had as their guide the living example of the apostles, or even of Jesus Himself? Or is it more likely to be we contemporaries?

I think that's an accurate summary of one of the main themes of Jesus for President. I had high hopes for this book after reading its first few pages, and planned to distribute it to English speakers where I serve as a missionary in Mexico. Those English speakers tend to be either affluent investors or activists who are hostile toward Christianity, and I expected that Jesus for President would have much to say to both groups.

It does indeed, but it also has grave flaws for which there are no easy remedies.

Because of those flaws, I have to give the book a one-star rating. Here are my reasons, in brief and then in detail. I realize that many activists believe it's scandalously bad manners to give an extensive unfavorable review of any "politically correct" book, but activist Christians need to be aware of the flaws in books like this one if they ever hope to win over the "affluent investor" crowd.

In brief, my criticisms are as follows:

(1) The authors both invoke Jesus' example and ignore it, as suits their purposes of the moment.

(2) The book suffers from factual inaccuracy combined with disregard for logical argument.

(3) The authors warn fellow activists, quite commendably, against falling into the mindset of "WE are intelligent nice people, and THEY are stupid, evil people". However, the spirit of their book is relentless in-your-face confrontation and unfairness toward their political opponents. This spirit probably has a synergistic relationship with the first two defects on this list.

(4) Rather than acknowledge the difficulties of issues that they raise, the authors simply dodge them.


Here are some details and examples:

(1) The authors both invoke Jesus' example and ignore it, as suits their purposes of the moment.
A simple example is their Litany of Resistance, which they propose for use at public gatherings. It includes the line "Let us resist evil wherever we find it." (p. 351) Only a few pages before, in explaining their concept of revolutionary subordination, the authors had stated that "The act of resisting evil is what Paul and Jesus explicitly prohibited for Christians (Romans 12; Matthew 5)." (p. 246).

In other places, the authors emphasize that Jesus is our example for what to do about immigration, for example (p. 317). They also take swipes at churches for doing things that He didn't do, such as formulating evangelization plans (p. 245). But in their protests, the authors and their friends do many things that Jesus is not known to have done, despite having had every opportunity. For example, they make a public spectacle of almsgiving (pp. 310ff and 332), and enter military installations to pour blood over instruments of war (p. 306). They also applaud Christians who bear false witness in court (p. 297).

Another case of ignoring Jesus' example concerns paying taxes (pp. 256-257). The authors begin by stating that "it's hard to know what Jesus would do about paying taxes if he were a citizen in the ole US of A, where nearly half of every tax dollar ... goes to the war machine" (p. 256).

To give us some idea of what He might do, the authors then take pains to show that the aggressively expansionist Roman Empire, too, spent half of its budget on war. Somehow, this observation convinces the authors that Christians should resist paying war taxes to America, even though the authors recognize that Jesus didn't tell the Jews to resist paying war taxes to Rome (p. 117).

(2) The book suffers from factual inaccuracy combined with disregard for logical argument.
Previous reviewers have noted the authors' flawed logic and factual inaccuracies. Here a few more examples of inaccuracies.

From page 178: The power of the explosion in the Oklahoma City bombing was approximately one kiloton.
My response: A one-kiloton explosion is hundreds of times more powerful than the Oklahoma City bomb. This is because a one-kiloton explosion (as the authors correctly note) is equivalent to that of 1000 tons of TNT. In contrast, the explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing were equivalent to approximately 2.5 tons (not kilotons). (On the subject of the OK Cit bombing, readers can check Wikipedia as a convenient compilation of information that comes from more-trustworthy sources.)

From page 214: Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City in the hope that complacent Americans would see what "collateral damage" looks like and cry out against bloodshed everywhere.
My response: The authors' portrayal of McVeigh as a misguided peace activist is laughable. Can they really be unaware that he was a sympathizer of the militia movement, and that his motive was retaliation for the government's handling of the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents?

The authors cite no source for the motives they attribute to McVeigh, unless it would be the one given in footnote 46 on p. 214. That footnote reads simply, "Timothy McVeigh, `Essay on Hypocrisy'". There's no mention of where that essay appeared, and most importantly, no date. If McVeigh did write such an essay, he may have done so in prison as an after-the-fact justification for the massacre he'd committed with quite different motives.

From page 244: The authors state that 1.2 billion people are "dying of thirst". About two paragraphs later, the authors state that 2 billion people are "dying of thirst".
My response: The inconsistency and the exaggeration are obvious.

(3) The book is relentlessly political, to the point of being bloody-mindedly confrontational, and even blasphemous.
A few quotes:
(1) "[Come to the feast] patriots, you can bring your flags; We're washing feet, and we'll need some rags." (A line from the worship song that they propose [p. 324])
(2) "[H]opefully Jesus and the biblical narrative have given us some good tools for political mischief." (p. 235)
(3) "[C]onsider the holy day of Epiphany, when the church celebrates the civil disobedience of the magi". (p. 330)
(4) "The practice of the Eucharist or communion is a radically political act." (p. 316) In the same passage, the authors advocate using communion in precisely that way.

(4) Rather than acknowledge the difficulties of issues that they raise, the authors simply dodge them.
Two examples of tough issues either ignored, or breezily dismissed:
(1) The authors speak in favor of both excommunication and tolerance, without discussing which is appropriate to a given situation. Specifically, the authors quote, approvingly, Christians who say that soldiers must be excommunicated (e.g., p. 145). And on p. 345, they appear to recommend excommunication (tacitly) when they ask, "Why have congregations [that condemn the Iraq War] allowed their members to go off to war?"

In contrast, one of the authors says (regarding homosexuality), "If we truly had a church in which people could love and be loved, we would transcend so many divisive issues and be free to become the people God has created us to be. ...The church [must be] a place where we can grapple with difficult issues with grace and humility. [E]ven more importantly than thinking identically on every issue, we must learn to disagree well." (p. 234)

(2) On pp. 333-335, the authors raise the issue of whether Christians should vote. A genuine puzzle, since the Bible gives us no example of Christians living under a democratic secular government. The clincher for the authors appears to be that many people "fought and went to jail for the right to vote". But what is the relevance of that? People have fought and gone to jail for all sorts of causes, including ignoble ones.

This is only one of many cases where the authors would have been better off confessing what's so obvious to Christianity's detractors: that there's often no clear biblical support for what seems to be the right thing to do.

In summary
I share many of the authors' views. I was deeply impressed with their dedication. I wish I could say that Jesus for President would be a good book if the authors just corrected its factual errors. Unfortunately, its flaws run deeper than that.

The root cause of those flaws may be that the authors are in the habit of listening to their flatterers. That's a common trap for activist authors because of the activist community's taboo against criticizing politically correct books. For that reason, activist authors would benefit from C. S. Lewis' example of running his ideas past groups of "friendly enemies" before publication, in order to avoid the sorts of flaws we see in Jesus for President.

The Most Important Christian Book Published in the Last 50 Years
I'm a writer. Yet, I'm at a loss for words to describe Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw's new book Jesus for President. Let me break this review down into two sections: (1) Design, and (2) Content.

DESIGN

Put simply, Jesus for President is a wonder to behold. I've never seen a book designed with as much attention to detail and visual impact -- not on the outside, mind you; on the INSIDE. The only thing comparable is House of Leaves, the debut novel by American author Mark Z. Danielewski...and Sandman graphic novels designed by the incomparable British artist Dave McKean. Sure, Jesus for President contains regular text just as you'd expect to find in a book. But, in addition, this groundbreaking new book also sports hand-written margin notes, little doodles and drawings, photos with typewritten descriptions, pieces of fabric, pressed flowers, varying type-faces and -sizes, arrows drawn in ink pointing to important passages, circled words, underlines, pages that look as though somehow took a pink highlighter to them, and a bibliography so clever that it, alone, is worth the price of admission.

In other words, everything about this book screams "I HAVE BEEN CRAFTED WITH LOVE." You can pick up this book, turn to a page at random and simply enjoy what your eyes behold. If Jesus for President doesn't win an award for its design, attention to detail (recycled paper, printed in America), and its ability to grab -- and hold -- one's attention from the very first page, there is no God.

CONTENT

Studies show that Americans today are changing their religious faiths almost as quickly as they change their underwear. They jump from church to church, from religion to religion, and hover -- at any given moment -- somewhere between a creeping agnosticism and a growing, bitter, atheism. And I haven't even mentioned the rampant pessimism that's coloring everyone's outlook, especially in the area of politics.

Once-committed Christians are not immune to this modern-day spiritual malady. In fact, many of them lead the exodus away from churches. Or, they remain in church out of a sense of duty to parents, spouses, or friends (or simply out of fear of reprisal from God), and become burned out and depressed, growing ever more frustrated that their Christian faith doesn't seem to mean anything, do anything, or change anything.

Like Neo in The Matrix, Christians everywhere have begun to ask questions about the nature of reality. They want answers because what they're getting now -- from the media, from Hollywood, even from their own churches -- doesn't ring true.

In that now-famous scene in The Matrix, Morpheus offers Neo two pills: one red and one blue. "You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." As Neo reaches for the red pill, Morpheus suddenly says, "Remember. All I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."

Jesus for President is like taking the red pill.

And, like Morpheus, all Shane and Chris offer is the truth. Nothing more.

And, baby, that rabbit hole goes pretty deep.

At the heart of Jesus for President is the answer to the question, "Why does the Bible seem so dynamic, yet my church seems so bland, spineless, and ineffectual?" Or, to put it another way, "Why does America -- one of the most heavily-churched countries in the world -- seem to continue going down the drain...economically, politically, morally, and spiritually?"

The answer is found in the first few pages of Jesus for President:

"Too often the patriotic values of pride and strength triumph over the spiritual values of humility, gentleness, and sacrificial love."

"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."

"Rather than placing our hope in a transitional church that embodies God's kingdom, we assume America is God's hope for the world, even when it doesn't look like Christ."

Jesus for President is nothing less than reality-shaking, butt-kicking, rock-solid TRUTH. It presents a Jesus -- and a Christianity -- wholly foreign to today's pew-warmers. It presents a Jesus who is strong in his humility, bold in his compassion, and more concerned with feeding the poor among us than taking up arms to fight those on the other side of the world.

Yes, Jesus for President is heavily critical of American politics. Yes, Jesus for President is a slap in the fat face of mega-church dilettantes who cruise to Sunday school in their Hummers...and leave without dirtying their Manolo Blahnik shoes, scuffing their Hermes handbags, or smudging their Armani suits.

Jesus for President is for those who are sick to death of political lies, bloated lifestyles, and a Christian faith so far removed from the one found in the Bible that they teeter on the brink between pitching it all and...pitching it all. This is a get-off-your-butt-and-roll-up-your-sleeves Christianity. If you don't want to get down and dirty with the world, forget about Jesus for President.

But...

If you're tired of living an anemic version of the faith Jesus espoused in the Bible, you're ready to take the red pill.

I've been reading Christian books for 20 years. Not just books published within the last two decades; rather, books published within the past 150 years or more. I've never seen anything like Jesus for President. I can honestly say, without hyperbole, that Jesus for President is the most important Christian book published in the last half century. Follow it, and you WILL see a change in your life. You will also see a change in your community, and in your country.

Could have been half as long
"Jesus For President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals" by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw is an accessible yet slightly-revisionist history/review of the Hebrew Scriptures, the world at the time of Christ, and the rest of Christian history. The fourth section of the book consists of jumping-off points and testimonies of people, groups, and situations where the kind of politic and economy described throughout the rest of the book is "fleshed out".

Claiborne is radical. To some, 'radical' is bad, to others, refreshing. But there is no denying that his ideas and his lifestyle are counter-cultural and challenge the status quo. I do not believe this is always a bad thing (more on this later). We can all agree that something is wrong with politics in America today, especially Christians in politics today.

My biggest take-away was the "Third Way" idea he espouses throughout the book, the "prophetic imagination" that should be our primary posture in responding to the needs and challenges of our world today. I think a lot of people my age (18-24), especially Christians, feel torn between blind nationalism ("God bless America") and the angst-ridden anti-establishment attitude we see in the picket lines at anti-war demonstrations. There *has* to be another choice, right? Thankfully Claiborne lays this out pretty clearly, yet with enough room for imagination and creativity.

A note on design: this is one of the most beautiful and interesting books to read. Every page is unique and striking. Some of the text material would honestly be rather dull without all the artwork. This book gets 10 stars out of 5 for creativity in design.

Back to radicalism. I see Claiborne as a modern-day prophet: someone with the eyes to see what's really going on and the balls to do something about it. Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures (a term I adopted from him in place of 'Old Testament') were hated, persecuted, and even killed, or at least misunderstood. They shook up the establishment. I don't believe he is a "rebel" just for the sake of rebellion. I believe he and his community (and the hundreds of communities like the Simple Way) truly live and breathe the creative nonviolence they preach, much like the Amish (I loved his recommendation of putting the Amish in charge of the Department of Homeland Security).

The reason I gave this book four stars instead of five is because I personally think it could have been 3/4 as long. At times, it seems like he is going in circles, making the same points in different ways. The artwork distracts from this fact: as a standard book it would be much more noticeable.

Another reason it recieved only 4 stars is because I got the impression that there is little or no middle-ground between becoming an "extraordinary radical" - making your own clothes, dumpster-diving for scrap food and parts, killing your TV, living communally, etc. - and incorporating elements of this way of life into a more mainstream lifestyle. For example, in response to the valid question, "What do you do about taxes if you are so concerned about how they are used?" One solution of theirs was to write a letter to the IRS with the amount they were liable for minus 37% (the amount spent on the military) and a note stating they donated that 37% to a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting peace, and that they could not in good conscience finance war. Or else, they make sure to earn so little that their tax liability is zero.

So many things pop into my head: what about health insurance? Retirement? What if God's miraculous provision for your health and welfare are in fact a good job with benefits and a 401(k)? Are those things any less holy than earning nothing and living on "faith"? Can you earn $80,000 a year and drive a nice used car and enjoy vacations (and give generously to your church and community) and not be considered an "ordinary radical"? There has to be some kind of middle ground, and I don't think the authors recognized or acknowledged this, nor did they expressly recognize those "ordinary" middle-class families that fund missionaries and their community foundations and love their neighbors while still enjoying some of the comforts of the "empire". Is it really one or the other? I digress.

Overall - an important read for every Christian, especially in these politically-heated times. Great artwork and design and (as one reviewer pointed out), the most creative and innovative bibliography you will ever see. Read it with a grain of salt (no human author is infallible), let it challenge you (I'm still churning inside) but most importantly - ACT on your convictions. If your heart is stirred by reading this book, don't stifle it - let it work its way through and change your life, however that looks.