Jesus Christ Superstar. A Rock Opera

An iconoclastic film. Incredible in vision.
Disturbing to listen to. A true throwback to the 60s.
And, an all time fav...

It was my pleasure to have known several cast members of the original New York Broadway play many years after leaving its production. They were casted for the play like many others unawares of the dramatic spiritual affect their selection would place upon them after re-creating Christ's passion night-after-night before live audiences. Ron and Eileen Jacobs were part of this experience, and if memory serves, Ron helped in its staging while Eileen sang and played the part of Mary. Like so many others would experience during this time, they came to know the power of God's salvation in their lives. And where each cast member came with their own stories of disinterest in God, distance from the Gospel, or ignorance of Jesus, each by-and-by came to a rich, living faith in the Messiah Jesus they came to know as their own Lord and Savior. Today, as testimony to their message to Christ as risen Savior many others, like myself, have been blessed to hear again the Gospel of Jesus reproduced in its poignancy, spiritual depth, and disturbing questions that would plague our souls. Questions asking, "What will you do with this day with Jesus of Nazareth?" Even as they were asked of men and women 2000 years ago in their day. May the holy Father, our Redeemer God Creator, be praised for His provision of atonement this day in Jesus Christ His Son, our Mediator Priest, eternal Sacrifice, and Risen Lord. Amen

R.E. Slater

Easter 2013

1970s Audio Version (23 CD Titles) + Full 1970s Movie Version (2 hr 1 min)
+ 1996 Audio Version (1 hr 23 min) are listed further below

DISC ONE

1

Overture - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

2

Heaven on Their Minds - Jesus Christ Superstar Track 2 Official Soundtrack 1970

3

What's The Buzz/Strange Thing Mystifying - JCS -1970 version

4

Everything's Alright - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

5

This Jesus Must Die - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

6

Hosanna - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

7

Simon Zealotes - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

8

Pilate's Dream - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version) 

9

The Temple - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

10

Everything's Alright (Reprise) - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

11

I Don't Know How To Love Him - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

12

Damned For All Time/Blood Money - Jesus Christ Superstar (1970 Version)

DISC TWO

1

The last supper - Jesus Christ Superstar 1996

2

Jesus Christ Superstar Gethsemane (I only want to say) 1970 version

3

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR - Gethsemane / The Arrest part 1

3b

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR - The Arrest part 2

4

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR - Peter's Denial

5

Pilate and Christ - Jesus Christ Superstar

6

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR - King Herod's Song

7

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) (18HQ) Judas Death (((Stereo))) {HQ} (Repost)

8

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR - Trial Before Pilate / Superstar

9

Jesus Christ Superstar - Superstar

10

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) (21HQ) The Crucifixion (((Stereo))) {HQ} (Repost)

11

John Nineteen: Forty-One

Please Note:

1970 & 1996 Audio Versions + Full 1970s Movie Version

are listed further below

THE NAMES OF GOD -

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/08/names-of-god-in-scripture.html

Matthew 27

Pilate Delivers Jesus to Be Crucified

²⁴ So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man's blood;^[b] see to it yourselves.” ²⁵ And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” ²⁶ Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged^[c] Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.

Jesus Is Mocked

²⁷ Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters,^[d] and they gathered the whole battalion^[e] before him. ²⁸ And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, ²⁹ and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” ³⁰ And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. ³¹ And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him.

The Crucifixion

³² As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. ³³ And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), ³⁴ they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. ³⁵ And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. ³⁶ Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. ³⁷ And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” ³⁸ Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. ³⁹ And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads ⁴⁰ and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” ⁴¹ So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, ⁴² “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. ⁴³ He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” ⁴⁴ And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.

The Death of Jesus

⁴⁵ Now from the sixth hour^[f] there was darkness over all the land^[g] until the ninth hour.^{[h] 46} And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ⁴⁷ And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” ⁴⁸ And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. ⁴⁹ But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” ⁵⁰ And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

⁵¹ And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. ⁵² The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, ⁵³ and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. ⁵⁴ When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son^[i] of God!”

⁵⁵ There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, ⁵⁶ among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Jesus Is Buried

⁵⁷ When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. ⁵⁸ He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. ⁵⁹ And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud ⁶⁰ and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. ⁶¹ Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

The Guard at the Tomb

⁶² The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate ⁶³ and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ ⁶⁴ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” ⁶⁵ Pilate said to them, “You have a guard^[j] of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” ⁶⁶ So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.

Matthew 28

The Resurrection

28 Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. ² And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. ⁴ And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. ⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he^[a] lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” ⁸ So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”

The Report of the Guard

¹¹ While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. ¹² And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers ¹³ and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ ¹⁴ And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” ¹⁵ So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

The Great Commission

¹⁶ Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in^[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) full cd

Full Movie

Film version of the musical stage play,

presenting the last few weeks of Christ's life,

told in an anachronistic manner.

Director:
Norman Jewison

Writers:
Melvyn Bragg (screenplay),

Norman Jewison (screenplay),

and 1 more credit »

Stars:
Ted Neeley,

Carl Anderson,

and

Yvonne Elliman

Additional Resources:

Full 1970s Movie by CD audio (23)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9FDA0AF06C742719

Full 1996 Audio - Jesus Christ Superstar (1996 London Studio Cast)

Easter Passion Resurrection Videos

Revelation Song - Kari Jobe

 

I'll Rise Again

The Passion of the Christ - Crucifixion

The Passion of the Christ - Last Scene

Jackie Evancho Video - To Believe with Lyrics HD

Everything Glorious

Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity. One that is Postmodern. Part 2/3

From Leonard Sweet's book, So Beautiful -


There was once a broken-down old mainline/sideline/offline church
traveling on the road from yesterday to tomorrow when it fell among
postmodern culture. It was stripped of its place in society, leaving it beat up,
left behind, and more than half dead.

Now by chance there was a doctoral student going down the road who passed by
on the other side. “I’ve got papers due, and besides, that dead old denomination
hasn’t got any life left in it.”

In the same way a prophetic pastor came to the place, saw the broken-down church,
and whispered to himself, “O Lord, let me retire before it finally dies.”

But then a complete nobody, who didn’t know enough not to get involved,
and who had failed the Jesus course, found the church and had compassion on it.

S/he bound up its wounds, pouring on the oil of hope and the wine of Christ’s blood,
poured out the oil of forgiveness of sin; then set it on her/his own beast
 and took it to a place where it could reflect and refresh and find healing.

S/he said to the keeper,

“This poor old church is almost dead.
It may or may not have anything to say to a new world;
but make it as comfortable as you can ,
spend whatever you have to, until I come back…”

* * * * * * * * * * * *


Continued from:

Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.
Part 1

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity.html

I am beginning with Leonard Sweet's quote from a Drew University student that had written an adaption to the Parable of the Good Samaritan in his class. I find it apropos to the other day's discussion on the postmodern church (see link above) and the state of affairs that the church is encountering and must choose between. However, I would make one small adjustment to the prose/poem above by substituting the word "modern" in place of "postmodern" to give it a better reflection of truism for today.

For postmodernism has not been the cause of death to the modernistic church. Firstly because it is too new to the church to be understood or incorporated even though it has been around since the 1990s (its roots have been around for far longer). Secondly because most of today's evangelical churches actively reject postmodernism and disparage its call to "discriminate and rebuild" itself in God's grace and redemption. To deconstruct and purge itself of all its earthly possessions held in its traditions and dogmas; and to reconstruct and renew itself into the spirit and principles that those same traditions and dogmas had once so faithfully declared. The truth of the matter is that postmodernism is the church's salvation as well as its death through revival from its antiquated past.

In actuality, it has been modernism that is causing the church's death plagued by society's standards of success through wealth, structure, building, programs, organization, marketing, publicity, power, popularity, and so forth. Not that these are bad things in-and-of themselves but because it can feed upon itself and eclipse the simple good news of the gospel though the church proclaims its devotion to Jesus' gospel daily. Still this gospel can soon be forgotten when bound up with preserving the "works of our hands."

Quite correctly Len Sweet speaks to the implications of practicing APC churches (attractional, propositional, and colonial churches) which are good at creating a growing numbers-based membership; producing catechised believers in pre-packaged confessionals; and provisioning a consumerist mindset amongst its many "safe" in-house, community-based programs. However, he urges that churches think again about becoming MRI churches (missional, relational, and incarnational churches) that focus on a missional, transformative message of Jesus; making disciples focused on relationships and revelation; and practicing Christ's daily incarnation through rich, vibrant connections into their community to provide context to Jesus' message of love and redemption, both to themselves as well as to those they would serve. In his estimation, as it is mine as well, "It is the only theology (or theological message) worth knowing and following." Jesus said it best when he said to live out the love of God through good works.

The Great Commandment

³⁴ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducee's, they gathered together. ³⁵ And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Below is Newsweek's annual Easter weekend tribute to Christianity that reflects the good and the bad of the church's cultural image to society at-large. Many of these same themes have been reflected within this web journal describing the heart-felt mandate of the Emerging/Emergent church to the more popular cultural idioms of Evangelicalism, and how each may help the other towards apprehending postmodernism's fundamental themes of reform, authenticity, and participation. Themes of personal worth and value; social justice and equality; practice of corporate ethics; preservation of ecology; integration with community; pursuit of global citizenship; practice of humanity without condemnation nor judgment; these are but to name a few. Yet each of these social qualities speak to dynamic areas revolutionizing the church to adjust its belief structures and practices to better reflect the demands of the gospel throughout its fellowship, goals, purposes, practices and intents. To accede to one is to accede to all by the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit of God.

R.E. Slater

April 5, 2012

The Full Series:

Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.
Part 1/3

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity.html


Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.

Part 2/3

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity_05.html


Thinking About a New Kind of Christianity.

One that is Postmodern.
Part 3/3
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinking-about-new-kind-of-christianity_07.html



Related Articles:

What Wikipedia Has to Say About the Emerging/Emergent Church.

An Introduction.
Part 1/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-wikipedia-has-to-say-about.html


What Wikipedia Has to Say About the Emerging/Emergent Church.

My Personal Observations.
Part 2/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-wikipedia-has-to-say-about_26.html

* * * * * * * * * * * *


Christianity in Crisis

Newsweek Magazine

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/01/andrew-sullivan-christianity-in-crisis.html

by Andrew Sullivan

Apr 2, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich evangelists.

Ignore them, writes Andrew Sullivan, and embrace Him.

If you go to the second floor of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., you’ll find a small room containing an 18th-century Bible whose pages are full of holes. They are carefully razor-cut empty spaces, so this was not an act of vandalism. It was, rather, a project begun by Thomas Jefferson when he was a mere 27 years old. Painstakingly removing those passages he thought reflected the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, Jefferson literally cut and pasted them into a slimmer, different New Testament, and left behind the remnants (all on display until July 15). What did he edit out? He told us: “We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus.” He removed what he felt were the “misconceptions” of Jesus’ followers, “expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.” And it wasn’t hard for him. He described the difference between the real Jesus and the evangelists’ embellishments as “diamonds” in a “dunghill,” glittering as “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” Yes, he was calling vast parts of the Bible religious manure.

When we think of Jefferson as the great architect of the separation of church and state, this, perhaps, was what he meant by “church”: the purest, simplest, apolitical Christianity, purged of the agendas of those who had sought to use Jesus to advance their own power decades and centuries after Jesus’ death. If Jefferson’s greatest political legacy was the Declaration of Independence, this pure, precious moral teaching was his religious legacy. “I am a real Christian,” Jefferson insisted against the fundamentalists and clerics of his time. “That is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.”

What were those doctrines? Not the supernatural claims that, fused with politics and power, gave successive generations wars, inquisitions, pogroms, reformations, and counterreformations. Jesus’ doctrines were the practical commandments, the truly radical ideas that immediately leap out in the simple stories he told and which he exemplified in everything he did. Not simply love one another, but love your enemy and forgive those who harm you; give up all material wealth; love the ineffable Being behind all things, and know that this Being is actually your truest Father, in whose image you were made. Above all: give up power over others, because power, if it is to be effective, ultimately requires the threat of violence, and violence is incompatible with the total acceptance and love of all other human beings that is at the sacred heart of Jesus’ teaching. That’s why, in his final apolitical act, Jesus never defended his innocence at trial, never resisted his crucifixion, and even turned to those nailing his hands to the wood on the cross and forgave them, and loved them.

Politicized Faith

Whether or not you believe, as I do, in Jesus’ divinity and resurrection—and in the importance of celebrating both on Easter Sunday—Jefferson’s point is crucially important. Because it was Jesus’ point. What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand? What is politics if not a dangerous temptation toward controlling others rather than reforming oneself? If we return to what Jesus actually asked us to do and to be—rather than the unknowable intricacies of what we believe he was—he actually emerges more powerfully and more purely.

And more intensely relevant to our times. Jefferson’s vision of a simpler, purer, apolitical Christianity couldn’t be further from the 21st-century American reality. We inhabit a polity now saturated with religion. On one side, the Republican base is made up of evangelical Protestants who believe that religion must consume and influence every aspect of public life. On the other side, the last Democratic primary had candidates profess their faith in public forums, and more recently President Obama appeared at the National Prayer Breakfast, invoking Jesus to defend his plan for universal health care. The crisis of Christianity is perhaps best captured in the new meaning of the word “secular.” It once meant belief in separating the spheres of faith and politics; it now means, for many, simply atheism. The ability to be faithful in a religious space and reasonable in a political one has atrophied before our eyes.

Organized Religion in Decline

Meanwhile, organized religion itself is in trouble. The Catholic Church’s hierarchy lost much of its authority over the American flock with the unilateral prohibition of the pill in 1968 by Pope Paul VI. But in the last decade, whatever shred of moral authority that remained has evaporated. The hierarchy was exposed as enabling, and then covering up, an international conspiracy to abuse and rape countless youths and children. I don’t know what greater indictment of a church’s authority there can be—except the refusal, even now, of the entire leadership to face their responsibility and resign. Instead, they obsess about others’ sex lives, about who is entitled to civil marriage, and about who pays for birth control in health insurance. Inequality, poverty, even the torture institutionalized by the government after 9/11: these issues attract far less of their public attention.

For their part, the mainline Protestant churches, which long promoted religious moderation, have rapidly declined in the past 50 years. Evangelical Protestantism has stepped into the vacuum, but it has serious defects of its own. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explores in his unsparing new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, many suburban evangelicals embrace a gospel of prosperity, which teaches that living a Christian life will make you successful and rich. Others defend a rigid biblical literalism, adamantly wishing away a century and a half of scholarship that has clearly shown that the canonized Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry, and are copies of copies of stories told by those with fallible memory. Still others insist that the earth is merely 6,000 years old—something we now know by the light of reason and science is simply untrue. And what group of Americans have pollsters found to be most supportive of torturing terror suspects? Evangelical Christians. Something has gone very wrong. These are impulses born of panic in the face of modernity, and fear before an amorphous “other.” This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: “Be not afraid.” It would make Jefferson shudder.

It would also, one imagines, baffle Jesus of Nazareth. The issues that Christianity obsesses over today simply do not appear in either Jefferson’s or the original New Testament. Jesus never spoke of homosexuality or abortion, and his only remarks on marriage were a condemnation of divorce (now commonplace among American Christians) and forgiveness for adultery. The family? He disowned his parents in public as a teen, and told his followers to abandon theirs if they wanted to follow him. Sex? He was a celibate who, along with his followers, anticipated an imminent End of the World where reproduction was completely irrelevant.

The Crisis of Our Time

All of which is to say something so obvious it is almost taboo: Christianity itself is in crisis. It seems no accident to me that so many Christians now embrace materialist self-help rather than ascetic self-denial—or that most Catholics, even regular churchgoers, have tuned out the hierarchy in embarrassment or disgust. Given this crisis, it is no surprise that the fastest-growing segment of belief among the young is atheism, which has leapt in popularity in the new millennium. Nor is it a shock that so many have turned away from organized Christianity and toward “spirituality,” co-opting or adapting the practices of meditation or yoga, or wandering as lapsed Catholics in an inquisitive spiritual desert. The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the profoundest human questions—Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?—remain as pressing and mysterious as they’ve always been?

That’s why polls show a huge majority of Americans still believing in a Higher Power. But the need for new questioning—of Christian institutions as well as ideas and priorities—is as real as the crisis is deep.

Back to Jesus

Where to start? Jefferson’s act of cutting out those parts of the Bible that offended his moral and scientific imagination is one approach. But another can be found in the life of a well-to-do son of a fabric trader in 12th-century Italy who went off to fight a war with a neighboring city, saw his friends killed in battle in front of him, lived a year as a prisoner of war, and then experienced a clarifying vision that changed the world. In Francis of Assisi: A New Biography, Augustine Thompson cuts through the legends and apocryphal prayers to describe Saint Francis as he truly lived. Gone are the fashionable stories of an erstwhile hippie, communing with flowers and animals. Instead we have this typical young secular figure who suddenly found peace in service to those he previously shrank from: lepers, whose sores and lesions he tended to and whose company he sought—as much as for himself as for them.

The religious order that goes by his name began quite simply with a couple of friends who were captured by the sheer spiritual intensity of how Francis lived. His inspiration was even purer than Jefferson’s. He did not cut out passages of the Gospels to render them more reasonable than they appear to the modern mind. He simply opened the Gospels at random—as was often the custom at the time—and found three passages. They told him to “sell what you have and give to the poor,” to “take nothing for your journey,” not even a second tunic, and to “deny himself” and follow the path of Jesus. That was it. So Francis renounced his inheritance, becoming homeless and earning food by manual labor. When that wouldn’t feed him, he begged, just for food—with the indignity of begging part of his spiritual humbling.

Jefferson cut the “diamonds” of Christ’s teaching out of the “dunghill”
of the New Testament
Hugh Talman / Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Francis insisted on living utterly without power over others. As stories of his strangeness and holiness spread, more joined him and he faced a real dilemma: how to lead a group of men, and also some women, in an organization. Suddenly, faith met politics. And it tormented, wracked, and almost killed him. He had to be last, not first. He wanted to be always the “lesser brother,” not the founder of an order. And so he would often go on pilgrimages and ask others to run things. Or he would sit at the feet of his brothers at communal meetings and if an issue could not be resolved without his say-so, he would whisper in the leader’s ear.

A Vision of Holiness

As Jesus was without politics, so was Francis. As Jesus fled from crowds, so did Francis—often to bare shacks in woodlands, to pray and be with God and nature. It’s critical to recall that he did not do this in rebellion against orthodoxy or even church authority. He obeyed orders from bishops and even the pope himself. His main obsession wasn’t nature, which came to sublime fruition in his final “Canticle of the Sun,” but the cleanliness of the cloths, chalices, and ornaments surrounding the holy eucharist.

His revulsion at even the hint of comfort or wealth could be extreme. As he lay dying and was offered a pillow to rest on, he slept through the night only to wake the next day in a rage, hitting the monk who had given him the pillow and recoiling in disgust at his own weakness in accepting its balm. One of his few commands was that his brothers never ride a horse; they had to walk or ride a donkey. What inspired his fellow Christians to rebuild and reform the church in his day was simply his own example of humility, service, and sanctity.

A modern person would see such a man as crazy, and there were many at the time who thought so too. He sang sermons in the streets, sometimes just miming them. He suffered intense bouts of doubt, self-loathing, and depression. He had visions. You could have diagnosed his postwar conversion as an outgrowth of posttraumatic-stress disorder. Or you can simply observe what those around him testified to: something special, unique, mysterious, holy. To reduce one’s life to essentials, to ask merely for daily bread, forgiveness of others, and denial of self is, in many ways, a form of madness. It is also a form of liberation. It lets go of complexity and focuses on simplicity. Francis did not found an order designed to think or control. He insisted on the simplicity of manual labor, prayer, and the sacraments. That was enough for him.

Learning How to Live

It wouldn’t be enough for most of us. And yet, there can be wisdom in the acceptance of mystery. I’ve pondered the Incarnation my whole life. I’ve read theology and history. I think I grasp what it means to be both God and human—but I don’t think my understanding is any richer than my Irish grandmother’s. Barely literate, she would lose herself in the rosary at mass. In her simplicity, beneath her veil in front of a cascade of flickering candles, she seemed to know God more deeply than I, with all my education and privilege, ever will.

This doesn’t imply, as some claim, the privatization of faith, or its relegation to a subordinate sphere. There are times when great injustices—slavery, imperialism, totalitarianism, segregation—require spiritual mobilization and public witness. But from Gandhi to King, the greatest examples of these movements renounce power as well. They embrace nonviolence as a moral example, and that paradox changes the world more than politics or violence ever can or will. When politics is necessary, as it is, the kind of Christianity I am describing seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all. But it also means, at times, renouncing Caesar in favor of the Christ to whom Jefferson, Francis, my grandmother, and countless generations of believers have selflessly devoted themselves.

The saints, after all, became known as saints not because of their success in fighting political battles, or winning a few news cycles, or funding an anti-abortion super PAC. They were saints purely and simply because of the way they lived. And this, of course, was Jefferson’s deeply American insight: “No man can conform his faith to the dictates of another. The life and essence of religion consists in the internal persuasion or belief of the mind.”

The Faces of Christian Politics
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Jefferson feared that the alternative to a Christianity founded on “internal persuasion” was a revival of the brutal, bloody wars of religion that America was founded to escape. And what he grasped in his sacrilegious mutilation of a sacred text was the core simplicity of Jesus’ message of renunciation. He believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle. And that it was radically simple. It was explained in stories, parables, and metaphors—not theological doctrines of immense complexity. It was proven by his willingness to submit himself to an unjustified execution. The cross itself was not the point; nor was the intense physical suffering he endured. The point was how he conducted himself through it all—calm, loving, accepting, radically surrendering even the basic control of his own body and telling us that this was what it means to truly transcend our world and be with God. Jesus, like Francis, was a homeless person, as were his closest followers. He possessed nothing—and thereby everything.

Christianity Resurrected

I have no concrete idea how Christianity will wrestle free of its current crisis, of its distractions and temptations, and above all its enmeshment with the things of this world. But I do know it won’t happen by even more furious denunciations of others, by focusing on politics rather than prayer, by concerning ourselves with the sex lives and heretical thoughts of others rather than with the constant struggle to liberate ourselves from what keeps us from God. What Jefferson saw in Jesus of Nazareth was utterly compatible with reason and with the future; what Saint Francis trusted in was the simple, terrifying love of God for Creation itself. That never ends.

This Christianity comes not from the head or the gut, but from the soul. It is as meek as it is quietly liberating. It does not seize the moment; it lets it be. It doesn’t seek worldly recognition, or success, and it flees from power and wealth. It is the religion of unachievement. And it is not afraid. In the anxious, crammed lives of our modern twittering souls, in the materialist obsessions we cling to for security in recession, in a world where sectarian extremism threatens to unleash mass destruction, this sheer Christianity, seeking truth without the expectation of resolution, simply living each day doing what we can to fulfill God’s will, is more vital than ever. It may, in fact, be the only spiritual transformation that can in the end transcend the nagging emptiness of our late-capitalist lives, or the cult of distracting contemporaneity, or the threat of apocalyptic war where Jesus once walked. You see attempts to find this everywhere—from experimental spirituality to resurgent fundamentalism. Something inside is telling us we need radical spiritual change.

But the essence of this change has been with us, and defining our own civilization, for two millennia. And one day soon, when politics and doctrine and pride recede, it will rise again.


Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic, weekly columnist for the Sunday Times of London, brought his hugely popular blog, The Dish, to the Daily Beast in 2011. He's the author of several books, including "Virtually Normal," "Love Undetectable," and "The Conservative Soul."