Jesus for President author to visit on Election Day

this article in our local paper today...here's the first part:

"We've found the hope of the planet ... and it's not Obama or McCain or even America, but Christ in the body of the church." — Shane Claiborne, co-author of Jesus for President.

Shane Claiborne believes in change, but he doesn't endorse Barack Obama. He's not a John McCain man, either.

Claiborne also is not big on America's military-industrial complex, conspicuous consumption or the suburbs. He doesn't care for the intertwining of church and state: Christians should be Christians across borders, he thinks, not Christian-Americans who think that respect for God intersects with their respect for the country's ability to push around others.

Claiborne, raised in East Tennessee and now living in Philadelphia, has a different idea for Christians: His latest book, written with Chris Haw, is called Jesus for President. He'll discuss the book at Asbury College in Wilmore on Election Day.

Either you find the book witty, or you're a more earnest type of churchgoer who says that of course Jesus for president is a swell idea, but then who's going to fret about economic meltdown and universal health care? The man from Galilee wasn't exactly a policy wonk.

Claiborne, a dreadlocked inner-city resident who also wrote 2006's The Irresistible Revolution: Living Life as an Ordinary Radical, is an adherent of New Monasticism, which is more about how Christianity walks the walk and less about suburban churches in which worship is an isolated, once-a-week affair like getting an eternal-life shopper's card punched. The movement includes the Communality group in Lexington.