Jesus in 2008 could have been the worst idea for a website ever, but thanks to the restraint of the people running it, it kind of works. I’m sure the admins do plenty of filtering behind the scenes to keep discussion on the middle road. And the result seems a little bland and dispassionate at times (doesn’t help that there’s little visual interest to the site). But there are little snippets of dialogue happening there that often don’t get the chance to develop on other sites that mix politics with religion.

From the front page:

Just as Democrats and Republicans meet every four years to choose candidates for President and Vice President, and to build political platforms declaring where they stand on important issues, we are here to do the same – and to invite Americans to join us.

We have convened our gathering with a Presidential nominee already in place: Jesus – but not Jesus the deity. This is a political convention, after all, not a religious one. Our candidate is Jesus the man, the revolutionary individual who comes to us through history as a model for ethical and moral human behavior – the exemplar whose first instinct in any situation was, simply, to do the right thing.

Now, we bring Jesus forward 2,000 years into contemporary America, place him in a leadership role, and ask Americans to decide what his political platform should be in a campaign for the White House.

Is it enough, for example, to just “turn the other cheek” on matters of national defense? If not, what then? It is the job of convention delegates to answer these questions in a practical fashion, while remaining as true as possible to the spirit that we imagine Jesus might bring to the task.