becoming

What will it be like if you were to hear Jesus proclaiming that “The Kingdom of God is here!”, in your world? Consider this:

Some of us have worked on Wall Street, and some of us have slept on Wall Street. We are a community of struggle. Some of us are rich people trying to escape out loneliness. Some of us are poor folks trying to escape the cold. Some of us are addicted to drugs and others are addicted to money. We are a broken people who need each other and God, for we have come to recognize the mess that we have created of our world and how deeply we suffer from the mess. Now we are working to give birth to a new society within the shell of the old. Another world is possible. Another world is necessary. Another world is already here.

Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, p.188. Quoted by Tom Sine in The New Conspirators, p.25.

Charles Kiser wrote about The Political Nature of Christianity based on ideas taken from Shane Claiborne’s book Jesus for President. Adapted from JFP, 67-69:

1. Basilea (“empire” or “kingdom”): a term used for the Roman Empire, ruled by Caesar. It was also Jesus’ most common subject of preaching—the kingdom of God, ruled by Yahweh, the one who delivered Israel from Egypt.
2. Gospel (evangelion: “good news”): in the Empire, “an imperial pronouncement, usually accompanied by flags and political ceremony, that an heir to the empire’s throne had been born or that a distant battle had been won”; for Jesus, this was the good news of the kingdom of God.
3. Son of God: A common title for kings and emperors, like Alexander the Great and Octavian (or Augustus, in the lineage of Julius Caesar); also a name given to Jesus in the New Testament.
4. Ekklesia: “A local public assembly within the greater Roman Empire, much like a town meeting. These assemblies bestowed citizenship, discussed local political concerns, assigned ‘elders,’ and offered prayer and worship to Caesar. There was no separation of religion (cultic sacrifices, etc.) and secular political business”; also the word used for the early church (translated “church”). The early church “bestowed alternative citizenship and assigned elders. Though it discussed its own political and religious concerns, it was understood as separate from, and in contrast to, the state and the other ekklesiai, their politics, and their religion.”
5. Savior: “Caesar Augustus, as Savior, was seen as the one who healed the chaos of Rome and brought it into a new golden age”; also a common title for Jesus in the New Testament.
6. Faith: “A term used for trust in, allegiance to, and hope in the Pax Romana”; also “a term used for trust in, allegiance to, and hope in Jesus.”

Read them all here.

And for a list of books on Christianity as sociopolitical rebuttal to Caesar’s system, click here.