I’ve seen a newer edition of this book on the shelves of my local indie bookstore and been curious about it for a while. So, I decided to look it up when searching for a new hoopla audiobook.

It’s a breathtakingly radical book in its aspirations, and I loved that. It captures the kind of nonviolent radicalism that I want to explore more in this period of personal faith and world politics. It also expresses the kind of commitment I wish I had but know I am still too cowardly to adopt.

The only reasons it doesn’t get full marks are the following: First, for such a radical book, it is sometimes dressed in the trappings of conservative evangelicalism, mostly through a somewhat literalist approach to the Bible. That may be a function of trying to speak to a certain audience, but it still threw me off. Second, this edition is very much a product of the mid-2000s, and while that’s not a bad thing, it’s odd to read critiques of the Iraq War in the era of Trump 2.0. I wonder what the newer version of the book looks like from that perspective.

• Jesus for President
• Iraq War
• Shane Claiborne
• non-violence
• Christian anarchism
• anarchism
• Chris Haw