Jesus was a Community Organizer?

That’s a slogan which some Obama supporters ( including one Congressman) have laid claim to. Often added to the slogan is noting that Ponius Pilate was a governor. The subtext there is rather obvious.

It’s the kind slogan people who aren’t Christians and don’t personally know Christians think will somehow be persuasive on Christians. It won’t.

It won’t work because I doubt a single person ever claimed Jesus was a community organizer before Barack Obama started running for president.

It won’t work because people who worship Jesus Christ as their Risen Lord and Savior don’t think of the work he did here on earth as “community organizing.” They think of the work Christ did on such a higher level that they’d actually be insulted when people claim Jesus was a community organizer. It’s not that community organizing is bad work that should be insulted but when you have Jesus changing the history of world by preaching and teaching, performing numerous miraculous feats, asking people to leave their possessions and follow him, dying on the cross to reconcile humanity with God and then rising from the grave and ascending into heaven, community organizing isn’t anywhere near the right label for that work. The only people who would think it is are people so enamored with Obama that they’ve lost their perspective on what Christ was sent to earth to do or individuals who are ignorant about what Jesus’ life and message were actually about.

The slogan is so idiotic, I could only find one attempt to actually make an argument for it. In a blog entry, Daily Kos diarist Spiritual Progressive attempts to take the gospel narrative and make it into a community organizing narrative where Jesus’ main goal was to prevent the Roman empire from ruining the Jewish way of life. I think you might even notice some subtext where President Bush is compared to Herod the Great. Here’s a snippet:

He saw that his people's God-given way of life was slowly being stripped away by King Herod's son Antipas and the Roman Governor Pilate. As well, he knew that those who held religious power were aligned with the government of the day. He knew that it was time for change.

Change we can believe in?