This past Sunday I had the chance to check out Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw on the Jesus for President tour as it landed at Clark Elementary School in Hartford. Right off the bat I could tell this was going to be a different experience – after all, how many nationally known Christian speakers would do a tour stop (and a free one at that) in an inner-city elementary school auditorium? The point of using Clark School, of course, was to bring this message to the level where Claiborne and Haw live (inner city Philadelphia), where their hosts (Hartford City Mission and Hartford Catholic Worker) live and minister, and, they would probably argue, where Jesus Himself would live if He were a Connecticut resident.
Shane Claiborne Jesus for President
The second sign that this would be a different experience was parked outside Clark School: a big veggie oil-powered school bus with “Jesus for President” painted on the side and back, their means of transportation around this land. Having already read Claiborne’s first book, The Irresistible Revolution, I had come away impressed by how he and his community of Christ-followers in Philadelphia, called The Simple Way, had thought through every aspect of their lives, from money to clothes to health insurance to even how they fuel their cars (hence the veggie oil), in order to live as they believed Jesus would. That book, as well as the Jesus for President book and tour, were the sort of experiences where the proper response was not “did I like it?” but “what am I going to do with this?” And I freely admit being overwhelmed with trying to understand how a married father of two living in suburban Windsor could apply the things I had been reading and hearing in an attempt to live more like Jesus would.
The event at Clark School was a two-hour long mix of preaching and music, but definitely unlike your typical preaching and music event. The music, by a duo who called themselves The Psalters, was a hard-to-describe mix of Christ-focused songs influenced by slave spirituals, bedouin music, Orthodox chants, and punk rock. The message, as tag-teamed by Claiborne and Haw, was essentially their take on the Biblical narrative, with the relationship of God and God’s people to the political environment in which they find themselves as the driving theme. From the Israelites in Egypt to Jesus and the early church in the Roman Empire, they shared how God has called His people to be holy, to be different, to embody a different reality than the one being preached by those in power. As the foreword to their book puts it, “Having power at its fingertips, the church often finds ‘guiding the course of history’ a more alluring goal than following the crucified Christ. Too often the patriotic values of pride and strength triumph over the spiritual values of humility, gentleness, and sacrificial love.” One of the last things Claiborne said on Sunday was, “we may live in the best Babylon in the world, but it is still Babylon, and we are called to come out from her and be separate from her.”
The challenge for Claiborne, as well as for any Christian who wants to write or speak about politics, is that for many people there is only one question that matters: Who are you voting for? Are you a Republican or a Democrat? Every time I hear the media try to categorize someone like Shane Claiborne, that always seems to be the question they are most interested in. They love to do stories about how “younger evangelicals are no longer a lock to vote Republican.” The implication heard by the media seems to be that by preaching the Biblical emphasis on the poor, the oppressed, and issues of social justice, Christians such as Claiborne are swinging voters to the Democratic party, even if they never come out and say it. However, having listened to Claiborne and Haw for two hours, the clear message I heard was that “Jesus for President” is not about endorsing a candidate or a political party, but living your life with Jesus Christ as your Lord (or “president”) and putting your hope in the gospel instead of in politics or a nation (for a good example of what I’m talking about, check out this piece that aired Monday on CNN about Jesus for President.
Not everyone will agree with Claiborne’s conclusions regarding non-violence or the relationship of the church to politics, nor the methods by which he gets there. For example, I’m not convinced that the theme of empire is as prominent in the Bible as Claiborne and others seem to think, nor am I so convinced that Christians can not use political power redemptively. But whether or not you agree with Claiborne, he is one of those Christian authors whose views and way of life deserve to be interacted with. While his views on non-violence, the poor, and the call to define ourselves more by Christ than by our country are not new, they are well-articulated and creatively communicated, and may even be considered a prophetic voice in today’s church.
“But the Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” (Acts 17:5-7)
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