Jesus For President is first of all a very beautifully designed book. The layout and design help the book move along. The pictures are very powerful. The feel of the book is unique. I couldn’t put it down because I kept wanting to see what the next page would hold visually.
But I also really enjoyed reading the book. The basic premise is that as Christians we have allegiance to Jesus first and not America (or the empire). So the authors basically go about setting Jesus up against the systems of empire in his time and our time as well. I have a feeling that super patriotic people will not like this book. But it turns out the super patriotic people didn’t really like Jesus in the first place.
I found myself underlining a lot of great nuggets of wisdom and making quite a few notes in my moleskine. One of the most interesting sections in the book was when the Authors set the Coronation of a Caesar up against the Crucifixion. The Parallels are stunning and they bring a lot more power to the crucifixion narrative.
Shaine Claiborne is probably associated pretty strongly with the emergent church and many people might not want to read this book because of that, but he really does share some compelling arguements and stories about consuming less of the empire’s systems, resisting violence, and trying to be like Jesus.
the Book is a quick read and it’s divided up into 4 Main sections with a lot of little sections throughout. I read it at copper island in about half a day (there wasn’t anything else to do).
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