Jesus Goes to Washington

Book excerpt: "This book explores how Christian spirituality and the political ethic of Christianity's founder, Jesus of Nazareth, might contribute to the most looming emergency of our day--ending human misery while reducing the planet's woes. It advances the new ethical paradigm of sustainability that bespeaks the longings of this remarkable Jewish peasant who elbowed his way into a world filled with social misery, shame, and land exploitation. Donning the mantle of a prophet/lawgiver, he disgraced the justifying ethic of the prevailing Roman oligarchies that finds its active counterpart in today's political landscape. He offered a different political path--a Progressive one--that led to respecting Creation and all its inhabitants. Jesus helps us to cherish humane values and he urges us all--Democrats and Republicans, Independents and Greens, religious and nonreligious--to be united in fulfilling them. Jesus Goes to Washington celebrates the international Earth Charter, the most significant moral document of our generation. Given the urgency of world calamity, the charter implores us to muster every spiritual force at our disposal for immediate action. Being history's most influential moral authority, Jesus provides the needed impetus for achieving a just and sustainable global society. "