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
The time has come for a new kind of conversation, a new kind of Christianity, a new kind of revolution.
I don't know if you've read the Bible, and if you haven't, I think you may be in a better place than those of us who have read it so much that it has become stale.
There are folks who burn the Koran and hold signs saying, "God hates fags" and all sorts of sick things - and they often hijack the headlines with hatred. We know that is not what Christ was like.
Too often we just do what makes sense to us and ask God to bless it.
I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me.
To refer to the Church as a building is to call people 2 x 4's.
Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.
But what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus' love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but eventually caught some other disease. He fed the ten thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers.
When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.
I wondered if there were other restless people asking the question with me: What if Jesus meant the stuff he said?.
The love that makes community is the willingness to do someone else's dirty work.
Karl Barth said it well: "We have to read the Bible in one hand... and the newspaper in the other." Our faith should not cause us to escape this world but to engage it.
Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.
No one has seen God, but as we love one another, God lives in us.