Jesus for President!
All at once, gathering on my desk of books, is a four-volume collection about public issues -- and I could call this post the four evangelical horsemen riding into the American scene with ideas about how Jesus can help our politics. Here they are:
Shane Claiborne, along with Chris Haw, have written a brand new book called Jesus for President
. When Publisher's Weekly calls this the "must-read election-year book for Christian Americans," it is worth getting some attention on the blog. The subtitle is politics for ordinary radicals and it's got all kinds of cool things ... too many to name, but I have to mention one: instead of a normal listed bibliography, they've got pictures of books on a shelf with the titles and authors on the spines of the books. It's cool. Jesus is the Ultimate Radical and the authors push back against Constantinianism. Classic anabaptist, community life, be an alternative community ... Shane Claiborne kind of stuff. I predict this will be a potent book for the next few months or longer.
Ronald J. Sider's newest book is called The Scandal of Evangelical Politics. His subtitle: Why are Christians missing the chance to really change the world? Sider's complaint is that evangelicals have not constructed a biblical framework for social engagement. This veteran counter-cultural evangelical statesman brings it all together in this book, and once again I think this book will make a big impact. What is the problem? Christians have compromised when entering the political fray. Everything we've ever had from Sider is found here: an even-handed vision of how Christians can engage society, politics and cultural in a way that is true to Jesus.
Tony Campolo has now brought out a citizen's guide to faith and politics: Red Letter Christians. 20 chapters; global issues and hot-button issues and economic issues and government issues. Once again, all addressed through the lens -- and one is here reminded of McLaren's book Everything Must Change -- of Jesus' teachings, those red letter verses in the Bible. Full of stories; aware of sociological studies; engaged with culture; this book is vintage Campolo. Tony tells his own story in this book about how he himself changed from being a nationalist to a Red Letter Christian.
Finally, Jim Wallis' new book, The Great Awakening, needs to be mentioned here to round off our four apocalyptic evangelical democrat horsemen. I didn't like Jim's last book, God's Politics, because it was too much of a scrapbook of where he'd been and what he'd said. The Great Awakening is a true book, in vintage Wallis line, but this one is about the revival of people with moral courage seek common ground to speak into the Western world with biblical prophetic courage. Like Campolo, he's addressing the serious issues of our day.
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I’m guessing that there’s still an orthodoxy of sorts involved here, and it’s a conception of the Kingdom of God. Presumably you could spell this out in a concrete way so that I could understand what your definition of progressive, is, and how it transcends political party platforms."
I said "party orthodoxy". I wasn't talking about Christian doctrine.
But in terms of what I think the values of the Kingdom of God are, I think it's pretty well summed up in Jesus' mission statement in Luke 4 (and this is how Wallis defined it last night too):
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Any political agenda that prioritizes these gospel concerns is a "progressive" Christian agenda IMHO.
#30: I said “party orthodoxy”. I wasn’t talking about Christian doctrine.
Right...but you're substituting one agenda or program for another, right?
Any political agenda that prioritizes these gospel concerns is a “progressive” Christian agenda IMHO.
Which I assume means that conservative Republicans or Reagan Democrats could qualify as having that agenda, or is there something in Luke 4 that would allow only political liberals (as currently defined) qualify?
Ben #25
Funny that you mentioned the Christian Democratic party because I didn't know anything about them before last week when I was reading up on Abraham Kuyper and an article mentioned the role he played in the foundations of the party. From what I have read it does sound like they are the closest thing I have seen to a kingdom based third way. Too bad there is no representation in the U.S. Here is the wiki link if anyone is interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_democracy
Also, if you have not read the Kuyper lectures from Princeton you owe it to yourself to do so.
Sure, why not?
For instance, one of the questioners at the Wallis event last night asked "what if I agree that we should help the poor, but I think that the best way to do that is to cut taxes for the rich?" Wallis' basically replied that as long as we first agree that helping the poor ought to be a primary concern, then we can sit down and have a conversation about what are the best methods for doing that. But it's the first part, the agreement that it ougt to be a major goal in the first place, that's most important.
In fact, Wallis said that one of Sojourner's goals is to get people from the left and right to sit down and give their best ideas for reducing poverty, and then use those ideas (and new ones not thought of yet by either side) to come up with, in his words, "a new nonpartisan plan with bipartisan support".
Is there any way to subscribe to your site via email? OR are you a member of blogcatalog or something like that?
God Bless,
ThirstyJon
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