Shane Claiborne
Shane Claiborne
Shane Claiborneis a Christian activist and author who is a leading figure in the New Monasticism movement and one of the founding members of the intentional community, the Simple Way, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Claiborne is also a social activist, advocating for nonviolence and service to the poor. He is the author of the book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth11 July 1975
CountryUnited States of America
It is the church's responsibility, the government's responsibility, and the personal responsibility of every one of us to love.
God can use anything, and anyone - even a king or a president, even a tax collector or a businessman, a priest or a prostitute, a Republican or a Democrat.
In the Bible, God uses brothel owners, pagan kings, murderers and mercenaries as instruments of good; at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey.
I do believe that the Church is God's primary instrument for ushering in the Kingdom (God's dream) on earth as it is in heaven, but God is not limited to use only the Church, or only Christians for that matter.
Every 70-year-old needs a young person in their lives to mentor, and every 20-year-old needs a senior.
The dreams get anchored in aged wisdom not some utopian fantasy.
Whenever folks say radical Christianity is "a phase" of youth, I tell them they need to meet our 80-year-old nun or my friend Tony Campolo.
There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.
Rather than finding the devil "out there," we battle the devil within us. The revolution starts inside each of us.
We have a relational problem with those who are suffering or who are different from us. All of us are most comfortable around people who are like us culturally and economically.
Jesus is challenging that when addressing "who is your neighbor" and he has a lot of hard things to say about family, "unless you hate your own family you are not going to be a disciple." He is challenging the limits of our compassion and our love as if someone's kid suffers it should be as devastating to us as if it were our own kid. That is what the early church said.
Sometimes our tunnel vision is limited to what we see outside our window. Until racial injustice becomes personal then I don't think it moves us in our gut.
To be nonpartisan doesn't mean we're nonpolitical.
The early Christians felt a deep collision with the empire in which they lived, and with politics as usual. They carelessly crossed party lines and built subversive friendships. And we should do that too.