One last take here, this time focusing a bit on Shane Claiborne's side of the discussion. Having read both "The Irresistible Revolution" and his more recent "Jesus for President," my short analysis of Claiborne is that he does a wonderful job of stating what the alternative to a political-centric view of Christian involvement in the world, but that his own political views tend to be a mere counterweight to someone like Colson - where Colson veers right on politics, Claiborne veers left. And whether there's a heartfelt, Christ-driven reason for holding that political view sometimes gets lost.

If nothing else, though, Shane keeps his point simple most of the time and certainly seems to live his life with the integrity that he calls us all toward. His opening statement offers a glimpse of that:

It's not in question whether or not Christians should engage the world that we're living in. I mean, our allegiance to the God of heaven has to affect the way that we live on earth. But Jesus had plenty of political options, you know, to flee society and go into the hills to, you know, fight with the zealots and He was very peculiar in how He was political. And I think that's part of what we are in danger of losing in all of the hunger and drives to be culturally relevant. And, you know, one of the examples that we give is the Amish, who are peculiar, you know? I mean, they're different. They've created a different culture in this world. And I think like the way that they reacted to this act of terror in their school when their kids were shot, you know, it fascinated the world. So we got a section of our book called "The Amish for Homeland Security." (Laughter). Sort of going, you know, I mean, that looks good, you know?

So I think what a beautiful thing it would be if we do have that sense that we're not to conform to the patterns of this world, but we're to have a renewing of our mind, a fresh imagination, that that's part of the call that I see throughout church history. This is nothing new, but over and over, our Christianity gets infected by the world we're living in and so people go to the margins, they go to the deserts, they go to the abandoned places of the empire that they're living in, they rethink what it means to be Christian, not just to be a believer, but to actually be a disciple of Jesus that is transformed and converted in the way we live.

Still, the guy is always entertaining to read, listen to, or watch in action. Here's an additional video snippet of him talking about "Jesus for President." Unfortunately, there's no Houston stop yet on his book tour.

ADD-ON: Oh, and David Swanson has his third part of his review of the book up over at Out of Ur.