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Those kind people at Zondervan sent me a copy of Jesus for President to review, so here goes…
I regard this as one of the best, most challenging and thought provoking books around at the moment. Despite it’s American target audience (we don’t have a president here – yet) this makes great reading for any reader, as its themes are universal.
This is unlikely to look like any book you have ever read before, it’s got nearly as much in common with a graphic novel as it has with a standard text book. The best comparison I can give, and it is quite inappropriate really given the anti consumerist approach of the authors, is with a Howies clothing catalogue. It has that same earthy, lived in, thoughtful, artistic and engaging feel, but thankfully without the pictures of models wearing expensive clothes.
Put simply, this has got to be one of the most beautifully designed books on the market – working with the writing, the design emphasises the creative, radical spirit of the text, and the provocative joy of the authors. Quite rightly the designers, Holly and Ryan Sharp, are credited at the end of the book along with the writers. The colour is full throughout the book, with design elements interacting with the text throughout, which adds immensely to the value of the content. If you liked the look of ‘Irresistible Revolution’ then this is a quantum leap forward, like as if the publishers suddenly realised what this thing was all about…
In some ways it reminds me of an illuminated manuscript, from back in the day of monkishness, when religious texts were coloured and illustrated by devoted scholars. This fits with the fact that the authors are part of the new monastic movement – and perhaps this could be seen as the contemporary equivalent.
But aside from a fantastic design job – what does the latest offering from our dreadlocked brother actually contain? Well first point to make, there are very clearly two voices audible in this book. Claiborne and Haw have coinciding views, but different emphases, or perhaps just different experiences, which while bringing occasional difficulties to the academic niceties of the text, actually helps lend weight to this book. Actually – if you count the design, then add in one or two more voices as well.
Written throughout in easily digestible chunks, the book begins as a dissection of a theme of radical God politics which the authors show running through the bible. It sidetracks through stories of friends, writings of early Christians and reflections on current affairs.
It’s a book of stories, parables, and prophecy, it is not supposed to be a tome, or a text book, or a prize winning essay – this is a work of love, an object of discussion, a catalyst (for want of a less clichéd term) for renewed engagement with the themes, and an encouragement to live a different way.
Rather than taking an easy option, such as a single standpoint, of a Christian anarchy for example, or an anti war vote, Claiborne and Haw manage to turn the whole idea around, arguing for a radical Christian engagement with politics and society in a way that is at once submissive and subversive. American voters wanting to know who the writers say they should vote for, will find themselves left with the same choices, but hopefully looking at them through new, or perhaps ancient lenses. I suspect also that this will help many bring a new creativity to their decision making.
Pacifism and anti (or non) consumerism are key themes, but they each form only part of the overall principal argument, which is to see God’s people as a people set apart by God, called to live another way, and to follow only one leader. It critiques the philosophy that one can serve God, and walk in the way of the world.
This clarion call to a subversive and renewed people of God is a creative and stimulating read – it’s not without its problems, one cant help thinking that if Claiborne authors another book, he will have come close to being part of the system which he so clearly wants to work against, but at the same time, I like many others would be happy to read anything he writes. One might also question how the authors can happily work with others such as Jim Wallis who argue for a more conventional approach to politics… clearly McLaren is not the only one with a generous orthodoxy these days.
Some readers may find biblical references to apocryphal books troubling or confusing, I don’t, in fact I like it. Some factual discrepancies may exist within the text, (numbers of dead in Iraq, or etc) but these are minor when looked at in context, and can be put down to the issue of dual authorship.
It’s a beautiful, peaceful, challenging, affirming, prophetic, subversive and creative book, well worth reading, sharing, mulling over… likely to become a classic.
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| What’s your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com |
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| You scored as Emergent/Postmodern
You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don’t think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.
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I took this entertaining quiz, what is your theological worldview?
Pretty funny stuff, as probably the two spheres I operate most in are the charismatic/pentecostal and the reformed evangelical… ho hum.
ht: hamo
I enjoyed the conference on New Monasticism, jointly organised by the Anabaptist network, and the Northumbria community.
Not being part of either of these networks, but interested in both, we went along without much of an idea of what the event would be like. We found it both encouraging and inspiring.
The morning sessions included a time of worship led by the Northumbrians who took us through their morning office. Then Pete Askew of the community introduced Stuart Murray Williams of the Anabaptist network, and Roy Searle of the Northumbria Community. Roy plays cricket with my old P.E. teacher!
There followed two talks - one about Anabaptism, which I went to, and one about the Northumbrian community which Kel went to. I found the explanation of the history of Anabaptism very interesting, and was able to corner Murray Williams at lunch time to quiz him on whether Anabaptists, with their adherence to non violence and peace making, can take an active part in politics outside of anarchism. His answer boiled down to: “there are a number of different opinions about that!”
I also bumped into Mark Berry, the emerging church leader from Telford, who I recognised from his dodgy hair do. It was nice to have a chat, after having commented on his blog occasionally and read a lot about what he’s doing over there.
Other emerging church types knocking about included Ian Mobsby from Moot in London, and Ian Adams from Maybe in Oxford among others.
Brother Samuel from the Aglican order of Franciscans added a touch of gravitas and extra dollops of wisdom. Although he’s not a ‘new monastic’ it is fair to say that his order is less than ancient itself! I really agreed with his remark that one of the key things for a committed ‘monastic’ type community is that they work together manually. His comment ‘there is some very deep spiritual wisdom in making bread’ is so true.
After lunch there was a choice of workshops - I went to a discussion between Ian Mobsby and Brother Samuel - conparing and contrasting the old monastics and the new. Just how monastic are the new monastics? Good question. One of the main themes coming out, and well made by Mobsby and others, was that its more about being frianrs than being monks.
The distinction being that Monks tended to seclude themselves, while friars went out into the community to live out their faith. This is true to a degree, but of course only really applies to certain streams of monkism. Anyhow, I liked the concpet of ‘re-friaring’ the church, but it’s easier to say re-monking!
This session allowed more of a discourse between those in the meeting and the speakers than the first session had - which was very valuable.
More conversations and question and answer sessions followed, with a final session of worship in an Anabaptist style, which included a lovely way of singing the Shema Yisrael among other things.
In all, Kel and I were both really encouraged by what we saw, and the people we met. There were a lot of different types of people there, from the rather posh, to the decidedly not posh - from the emerging church smoothies to the Jesus Army. I’d have liked to have seen some more of the missionary community there, and perhaps some of the 24/7 folk, but that would have just been more icing on an already rich cake.
Well done to all the organisers, I thought it provided a good platform for those who are interested in finding out what others are doing in this area, but arent perhaps able to make all of the connections themselves! Looking forward to more.
So this weekend I had the delight of celebrating my old pal Kyb’s 30th, and meeting his wife and some of his other friends.
We had a great time, it was good to see the old boy again, although he is looking pretty old and wizened, its all that city living 
Anyhow, I was kind of intrigued by the job title of Roo Reynolds, one of Kyb’s other friends, he works for IBM as a ‘Metaverse Evangelist’. I dont think I have knowingly met a metaverse evangelist before, so it was quite a thrill… well you know.
Anyhow, Roo’s site is worth a poke around, although his extraordinary collection of lego leaves me a little worried. At the party I almost got drawn into a potentially troublesome discussion on the nature of consumption and the importance of efficiency, but felt that it might ruin the mood, besides there was really nice cake to eat.
Anyhow, the whole metaverse thing got me interested. I first came across the notion of a metaverse in Neal Stephenson’s novel ‘Snow Crash‘ which was one of the many pieces of Cyberpunk literature that I devoured during my student days. Stephenson and his more famous counterpart William Gibson formed an important part of my higher education, and informed some of my later writings. Notably of course Gibson is credited with the invention of the notion of cyberspace, which is considerably better known than metaverse.
The Metaverse is easiest to understand as a virtual world, in which you can act and interact with others, the kind of thing that is manifested in stuff like second life. I dont use any kind of metaverse myself, unless you can count what I’m doing now, which I dont think you can strictly. Metaverses require avatars… so perhaps this is a metaverse then. I dunno, but it sure aint cyberpunk!
So there we are, a good ten years or more since I first studied metaverses, I meet a metaverse evangelist. Interesting. Evangelist is often synonymous with missionary…
It’s been great reading the guest blogs on backyard missionary from Jarrod McKenna - who has written eloquently about Ghandi - and the outworkings of what he said. The latest addition to the series is no exception!
McKenna seems an interesting an intelligent guy - and I was able to take a few minutes to read more about the work he does in Australia this morning. Seems like he’s in the same line as Shane Claiborne - the prominent activist from the US, and indeed the two reference one another here and there.
McKenna’s thoughts make inspirational and encouraging reading for anyone who wants to embrace the radical nature of the Christian faith - just as Shane’s book provides a good platform for those who want to learn what it means to live a Jesus following life - rather than just ‘be a Christian’. I did enjoy McKenna’s comment that if he were to write a book, it wouldnt be ‘how to live as an ordinary radical’ but rather “A how [not] to”.
McKenna also quips that: “Maybe our book would be called ‘The Resistible Revolution’ or ‘The Very Resistible Revolution’.”
I particularly like the focuses on peacemaking and community which both of these guys espouse - in my view this is integral to Christianity.
I would encourage anyone interested to read more about what Jarrod has to say in his guest blogs on bym, and to take a closer look at both the Simple Way community and EPYC in Oz.
When a promise is big
trust is small,
when hope is high
you fear the fall.
When the promise is small
trust is big,
belief is easy
when the stakes are low.
Cynical, clinical,
call it what you want
but experience says
a big promise
is usually a big let down.
Kind of sad, but kind of true.
But I’m still a believer in some VERY big promises.
Driving back from the a meeting a few weeks ago (May 10th), I was listening to Material World on BBC radio 4. It’s a great programme, which makes scientific matters interesting and accesible even to dullards like me.
In this particular edition, they were discussing cafe scientifique, which I had never heard of before (shame shame shame).
Cafe Sci, for any as ignorant as me, are informal settings where anyone can go and hear about some scientific topic, and enter into open discussion. There is probably one near you, see the Cafe Sci website.
So there were a few key quotes that made me laugh, because of how they echoed things I have heard about new expressions of Church.
Here’s a couple of great examples:
“… lets get away from the stuffy way of presenting…”
“… its really difficult to get an audience… we put a lot of effort into trying to reach folk… its easy to reach academics and students, but we want people who have never thought of science before… reaching them is the challenge…”
“… people may never cross the threshhold because of prejudices and past experiences…”
“… the japanese government think that cafe scientifique is a way of getting people to like science again, and its very much not that, its not a science establishment attempt to recruit support, its about making science democratic, and letting the citizen contribute…”
“… we have to constantly tweak it…”
“… some scientists are much better than others at talking!”
All good stuff.
a discussion with a friend today got me thinking on the subject of fundamentals.
in a post modern culture, the issue of absolutes is a difficult one, and many of us who are on a journey of re-examination of our beliefs, encounter genuine struggles with what the fundamentals, or essentials, or absolutes are.
For instance - ‘there is only one God’ - is something that we will probably all agree on, but I know people will want to qualify or unwrap statements like ‘the only way to God is through Jesus’.
so I’m going to write to a few people, and see if we can aggregate a number of absolutes - for those of us who might be described as post evangelical, and perhaps use a different language set to others in the Christian family.
I’m never going to manage to get round to writing to everyone who would have something interesting to say on this, so PLEASE think about yourself, and mail me or post a comment, kindly restrict your fundamentals to about three or four if you can. You can always add more later if others dont.
I’ll update this blog with news as this (hopefully) progresses.
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