Book Review: “Jesus for President”

Looking for a great read that will take you on a journey through Christ’s life, and inspire you with practical examples of how to apply His teaching to our modern world?  Then this is the book for you.

(Official Press Release – Grand Rapids, Michigan, Jan. 17 2009)

In highly politicized times, prominent activist Shane Claiborne and artist and theologian Chris Haw are awakening the political imagination of Christians with Jesus for President, redefining “political” as “simply how we relate to the world.” “Amid all the buzz, we’re ready to turn off our TVs, pick up our Bibles, and reimagine the world,” Claiborne says.

“The church has fallen in love with the state and this love affair is killing the church’s imagination. Too often the patriotic values of pride and strength triumph over the spiritual virtues of humility, gentleness and sacrificial love,” Claiborne says. Christian discipleship is politically and social engaged, but in a way that confounds and transcends parties. “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.”

Publishers Weekly awarded Jesus for President a starred review, calling it “the must-read election-year book for Christian Americans. 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.”

Weaving Claiborne’s stories with Haw’s thorough research, Jesus for President encourages a new kind of campaign, a different kind of party, and a different kind of commander in chief, casting a vision for what the Christian Church could look like if it placed its faith in Jesus, instead of American institutions.

Claiborne, a well-known leader in the “New Monastic” movement, who inspired thousands through his first book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (February 2006), teamed with Haw and designers SharpSeven on Jesus for President, which features a creative four-color art and design.

Besides its provocative essays, the comprehensive retelling of biblical stories examines the political realities of God’s people in Jesus’ time and in the “Hebrew Scriptures” (The Old Testament)—followed by creative ideas on modern-day living that makes an impact in the world at large. “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,” Claiborne says.