The research of Dr. Richard Horsley, author of "Jesus and Empire", strongly suggests Jesus was as much a political as a religious figure, more a promoter and defender of community than a personal savior.
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Check the 10 Commandments. Four of them deal with the exclusivity of God and the other six are clearly political and/or economic in their essential thrust. Richard Horsley's talk, originally titled "Jesus: Buttress or Challenge to Empire?" is based on a life-long study of the Bible "as literature". He dispells the fallacy that church and state have ever been separate. He covers the ambivalent situation faced by the U.S. as it emerged from Europe both as the new Promised Land and the new Rome. He puts a worldly spin on the teaching of Jesus based on original sources and the perspective gained by reading entire chapters of the Bible at once rather than one line at a time.
Some of Dr. Horsley's numerous publications include Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder; Religion and Empire: People, Power and the Life of the Spirit; and Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine.
"Jesus and Empire" at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080063490X/002-9353453-8306433?v=glance&n=283155
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