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
I moved to Philadelphia to go to school at Eastern partly because I wanted to study the Bible and I also went to study sociology. I like how Karl Barth said we have to read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other so that our faith doesn't just become a ticket into heaven and a license to ignore the world around us.
Mother Theresa said it is not how much we give that is important but how much love you put into doing it. So it is not just how many units of housing we create or how good our health care system is, it is that people have someone to eat dinner with and that people have someone to hold their hand when they die. That is what we are called to do and it is the love of Christ. It is relationships.
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.
We don't actually have rich and poor together instead we have a family. What does it mean? If you have resources, you hold them with open hands. The mark of the early church was that they began sharing and it said there were no needy persons among them. They ended poverty as they created this new loving community.
Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.
Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.
Faith is believing in the impossible because we have a God who is master of impossible.
When we were starting our community a bunch of older Benedictine nuns said to us, "If you have any questions or want to pick our brains, please do - we've been doing community for about 1,500 years together so we've learned a few things."
There's something beautiful about that Scripture that says, "Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams" (Acts 2:17). We need each other. There is power when the old and young dream together.
Tony Campolo and I both speak a lot, and we began to notice that there were some crowds of old folks that desperately needed some youthful energy, and there were other crowds of young folks that desperately needed some aged wisdom.
I say let's be idealists. "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not yet see" (Hebrews 11:1).
Somehow Jesus's reputation has survived all the embarrassing things that Christians have done in his name.
Jesus still has a really great reputation and the Spirit is still moving. I've got a lot of hope for a generation that takes Jesus seriously, once again.
There is a difference between feeding someone and eating dinner with them. If every Christian at home just made room for the stranger we would end homelessness overnight.