This is the first section of a four part review of Shane Claiborne’s new book Jesus for President.  I will be reviewing each section of Shane Claiborne and Christopher Haw's new book, the first section being "Before There Were Kings and Presidents."

With a bumper-sticker title like Jesus For President, the first reaction to this book might be a collective groan.  Not another one!  Just like in McLaren’s book, the subtitle is equally important with Claiborne’s new tome, for it reads: Politics for Ordinary Radicals.  Ordinary Radicals?  Sounds like an oxymoron.  Yet what Claiborne means by ordinary and by radicals becomes apparent in the opening paragraph:

Once up on a time there were no kings or presidents. Only God was king.  The Bible is a story of a God who is continually rescuing humanity from the messes we make of the world.  God is bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth.  God is leading humans on an exodus adventure out of the land of emperors and kings and into the Promised Land.  Out of Egypt, God first saves a group of slaves from the tyranny of Pharaoh.  God is their deliverer, the one who saves them from their tears and sweat and points them toward something better than the empire they have known.  Out of the nations, God is forming a new kind of people---a “holy nation” that will light up the world. (25)

To be radical is to disown the system of empires, democracies, and monarchies established on this earth.  What is ordinary about that is that as Christians we are supposed to be “set apart,” like Israel was.  Therefore, an ordinary radical is a Christian who considers himself to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God and not a citizen of earth.

            Claiborne does a good job fleshing out the narrative of anti-establishment rhetoric from Genesis to the Prophets.  The set-apart nature of Israel, and thus Christianity, is to have no king but God himself.   The first section, Before There Were Kings and Presidents, acts as a commentary on the Hebrew Bible from what in American terminology today are either reactionary (Amish) or radical (anarchists).  For the Christian, there is a third way in-between the reactionary and the radical, which is what Claiborne describes as ordinary radical, ordinary as in plain, simple, Amish if you will, and radical as in against the establishment, for a country other than your own.  The foundation is laid in the first section for a world that existed before kings and presidents, a world that God has been seeking to make happen on this fallen earth through Israel and the hope found in the coming King (which is discussed in the next section).  In this commentary on the Old Testament narrative is woven hints of pacifism, social justice, and prophetic witness.  The prophets are held in great respect within Claiborne’s commentary as a group of witnesses who stand firm against the empire, even if the empire is Israel itself.  The prophets are the ordinary radicals model for religious anti-establishment thinking.  In the prophets one finds the message of God’s sovereignty and supremacy, something Samuel lamentingly preached to the Israelites the very first time they asked for a king.  In the kings are found men after God’s own heart, as well as plenty of bad kings that are more reminiscent of Pharaoh, but even the good kings were unjust in the way they treated the people.  A cursory reading of Samuel and Kings shows just how much wealth the kings had.  And under the kings Israel never practiced such social justice laws such as jubilee and the setting aside of fallow land.  Israel was a bustling, vibrant, consuming society---an ancient version of America, or England, or India, or anywhere.  That is why no matter what great foundations a worldly kingdom is based on, it is made in the image of fallen man, and falls into the traps that plague humanity and create such inequality and havoc.  That is why to be “set apart” means the ordinary radical, the Christian, is not a part of these countries, not in an allegiant sort of way.  We are called into something more, the kingdom of heaven on earth, and that is what the narrative points us towards, a time when there is only one true King, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess his name.