"Jesus for President" Comes to Raleigh

Submitted by meredith on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 9:06pm

Photographs by Luke Baker

Shane Clairborne and Chris Haw quoted from their book, as images filled the screen behind them. The Psalters illustrated their words with music that, at times, called to mind the Middle East, and other times, the blues of the South -- Jay's voice growling and Scott's haunting.

They led us in singing Our Lord's Prayer, praying a Litany of Resistance and a march with bagpipes and drums to celebrate our faith's heros (and she-ros). They shared with us historical accounts of the early Church (which stand in sharp constrast to most of Us Christians today). They encouraged us to consider what it might mean to choose the Third Way.

Psalters

On their blog, which documents their experiences at each stop on the tour, they said that the Raleigh crowd was "slow to warm up", but that they weren't discouraged by this because someone told them that Mennonites will listen quietly, then contemplate something, and then will decide to carry it out to the fullest extent.

The Jesus for President book profoundly affected me and sparked a lot of conversation between myself and friends. I'm sure that for most people who attended the event on Tuesday night, the questions linger: "What does this mean for me? What does this mean for all of the Church? What do I do now?". I hope the conversation and contemplation is just beginning.

Patrick O'Neill's review

Submitted by isaac villegas on Thu, 08/07/2008 - 12:28pm.

Patrick O'Neill wrote a review of the Jesus for President event that is worth checking out. It appears in the August 6th, 2008 issue of the Independent. Here's a link to the article:

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A262033

Nicely Done

Submitted by jeff on Thu, 08/07/2008 - 8:42pm.
I liked it. I especially enjoyed this tidbit:
It's encouraging and energizing to be around people who want to imagine different possibilities for political action. We need to exercise our imaginations.
;-) So, how do we exercise our imagination?

exercise our imaginations

Submitted by isaac villegas on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 3:05pm.
Jeff, that's a good question. I think there are a lot of ways to exercise our political imaginations. For Christians, I'd say that worship reforms our imagination and tunes us to the creative work of the Holy Spirit. So, we gather to worship the risen Jesus, and that should mess with our heads. We worship a guy who was executed and then was raised. If that's possible, anything is possible. Our worship of Jesus is how we give ourselves to that impossibility and see how our whole world is now different. What different does this make for politics? Well, for one thing, our worship of Jesus exposes how our presidential candidates talk of health care is quite provincial. Sure, what they call "universal health care" is a good idea and needed in our country. But they deceive us when they call it "universal." It's not universal, it's provincial. When they think of a political body they think of the territory of the United States. But when we Christians talk about our political body we mean the body of Christ which crosses oceans and borders. And our neighbors include the whole world. So, when we talk about the need for "universal" health care, we mean it. Our political imaginations are usually much to small.