“Red Letter Christianity” is the name of a nonpartisan political/religious movement that aims to see the red letters of the Bible (the words attributed to Jesus) translated into social policy. Red Letter Christians align themselves with Jesus’s platform, committing themselves to the causes he advocated for, and even though they are theologically evangelical, they resist the term “evangelical” because of the negative stereotype it conjures of anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-environmentalist, pro-war, pro-capital punishment Republicans.
At the forefront of this movement is Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University and founder of redletterchristians.org. Representing the younger generation is Shane Claiborne, founder and creative director of The Simple Way, a “new monastic” community in inner-city Philadelphia that practices renewal in a variety of imaginative ways. Together these two guys wrote a book called Red Letter Revolution: What If Jesus Really Meant What He Said?, released this Tuesday by Thomas Nelson. The subtitle’s provocation is this: to compel us to imagine what the world would look like if Christians would only take Jesus more seriously—that is, more literally, and embracing all of what he had to say, not just the easy or convenient parts. Red Letter Revolution challenges us to consider the breadth of Jesus’s concern for his world, and especially for “the least of these,” and the ways his teachings might inform the way we engage with the individuals and institutions that surround us.
Here’s a short promotional video for the book:
The Jesus Question 