Jesus for President

In the midst of one of the nation’s most gripping presidential elections, a maverick evangelist is campaigning for a candidate whose name isn’t even on the ballot.

Through his Jesus for President tour, which began last month, author Shane Claiborne said he hopes “to provoke the Christian political imagination” and cause churchgoers to think about how their faith engages the world around them.

“It’s very confusing in the recent history here in the U.S. to understand what is America and what is Christianity because people see this as a Christian nation and yet it doesn’t always look a lot like Jesus,” explained Claiborne, co-author of Jesus for President with theologian Chris Haw. “We say ‘In God We Trust,’ and yet our economy often looks a lot like the seven deadly sins.”

Claiborne, a founding member of The Simple Way (thesimpleway.org), a Philadelphia-based community that develops and connects radical faith communities around the world, is known for his support of social justice. But he said his goal is not to endorse a particular political party or ideology. “We’re asking readers to endorse the values in the gospel of Jesus, and that gospel is good news to the poor,” he said. “Jesus wasn’t offering the world a better empire, but a different kingdom altogether.”

The Jesus for President tour will take Claiborne and Haw to 23 cities between June 23 and July 23 in a bus powered solely by used vegetable oil. The tour will comprise teachings, live performances, storytelling and worship.

Claiborne said the inspiration for the message was sparked during the 2004 presidential election. “We were asking ‘How do we engage in this?’ and clearly what we began to see is that the central question is not ‘How do we vote on November 4?’ but it’s, ‘How do we live on November 3 and November 5?”

“Voting is something we do with our lives,” he added. “We don’t just wait for every four years to vote for the person who we think is going to ultimately change the world into what God wants it to be.”

Claiborne said that mentality has caused many Christians to lose focus. “We are seeing more and more that the church has fallen in love with the state and that this love affair is killing the church’s imagination,” Claiborne wrote in Jesus for President. “The powerful benefits and temptations of running the world’s largest superpower have bent the church’s identity.”

“The cross was not a politically triumphant …prideful assertion of Israel’s privilege in the world,” Claiborne wrote. “Rather the cross is the sign of God’s humble way in the world: instead of ruling the world through a sword, God would wash its feet with a towel.”--Suzy Richardson