The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the true revolutionary nature of Jesus' teachings and how they have been corrupted.

The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the true revolutionary nature of Jesus' teachings and how they have been corrupted WRITTEN BY Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. PUBLISHED BY Doubleday, New York, 2006 ISBN: 0-385-51664-9, Softcover, pp. 370, $35.00 CAD

AS I write this, I have just read a news item that the U.S. Senate has refused to declare it a crime for anyone other than a parent to take a minor across a state line in order to have an abortion. This, of course, is just one more example of the relation of religion, morality and politics in our day, and that is what Obery M. Hendricks' new book is about, even if it is not what the title led me to expect.

I must admit that, at first glance, the notion of "the politics of Jesus" rather puzzled me. If politics is the art of the possible in human affairs, how does it fit into the reality of Jesus as God? Nothing is impossible to him; what need, then, does he have of politics? But to ask such questions leads one at once to recognize that here we are coming into the paradox of the Incarnation. Jesus is both divine and human. As God, he has no need of politics or, for that matter, of any purely human or material things. He who fed thousands with just a few loaves and fish did not need food for himself; yet he ate and he left his disciples a meal as his memorial. As man, he shared all our human needs, our sufferings and our joys--and our politics. Hendricks stresses that Jesus was very much involved in his people's plight under Roman oppression and the various lesser tyrannies within Jewish society.

Then Hendricks attacks what he calls "Christians' political docetism." Docetism was the teaching that Jesus was not really human, but only appeared to be so. It was a very early heresy, which could not accept the fact of Jesus' death. He seemed to die, but in reality, the Docetist would say, did not die. Docetism was utterly denied by the Church, which always affirmed the human as well as the divine reality of Jesus. Hendricks, however, sees political docetism as rife in the Church and as springing first from Paul's teaching. Where Jesus' background was rural, Paul's was urban; where Jesus was an oppressed colonial subject of Rome, Paul had the security of a Roman citizen. "Paul transformed Jesus' concern for collective social, economic and political deliverance for his entire people into an obsession with the personal piety of individuals."

I must say that I have difficulty in fully recognizing either Jesus or Paul in Hendricks' presentation. Jesus came to bring us eternal life, which is not just a political goal. An understanding of the New Testament which depends on a basic divergence between Jesus and Paul cannot be true. I find Hendricks' notion of the politics of Jesus unsatisfactory.

Hendricks, however, is not primarily concerned with a theology of the politics of Jesus. Most of all, he is thinking and writing about the politics of American Christians today. In particular he examines the cases of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. "These presidents," he says, "flagrantly violated the teachings of Jesus Christ in the name of Jesus Christ, yet to this day the Christian leaders who were closest to Reagan and Bush ... have said virtually nothing against their unjust policies." He goes on to examine both liberal and conservative traditions in the United States and, while there is no doubt that he comes down more favourably on the liberal side than on the conservative, his main point is that followers of Jesus must transcend such divisions. He expresses his point as "encapsulated in this one animating principle: Treat the people and their needs as holy."

Thus, while I find Hendricks' theology and exegesis questionable, his politics seems to me to be admirable.

Obery Hendricks is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at the New York Theological Seminary, an Ordained Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the author of Living, Water. He lives in New Jersey.

REVIEWED BY FATHER JAMES HANRAHAN, C.S.B.

Father Jim Hanrahan, C.S.B., is a member of the priests of the Congregation of St. Basil. He is an historian by profession. He lives in Toronto.