Claiborne: Final chapter: Get crazy to make sense

In the final chapter of The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne quotes Catholic Worker movement cofounder Peter Maurin: "If we are crazy, then it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy." Then Claiborne tells Nietzsche's story of the madman who is mocked by his fellow townsmen for seeking God. The madman decides God is dead and says "'We have killed him, you and I.'" The madman sees a world growing colder and darker without God and likens churches to tombs.

Claiborne remembers a sermon he once preached, "a clever little talk about how the world is filled with the walking dead, people who breathe air but who are not truly alive. I compared the deadness to vampires and said that vampires can't stand light. They can not stand the cross." He sees the sermon as a little silly now, but still with a hint of truth ...

Claiborne finds hope everywhere that "ordinary radicals" all around him are quietly building a new world. He also makes a plea for these radicals to stay part of the traditional Christian church or at least traditional Christianity: "So we mustn't allow ourselves to detach from the church in self-righteous cynicism. That's too easy and too empty. To those communities who have severed themselves from the established church, please build a bridge, for the church needs your prophetic voice. We can do more together than we can do alone." He also quotes Augustine: "'The church is a whore, but she's my mother.'"

Claiborne makes several good points. I would agree that the kingdom is being built all about us, under our noses, in ways that are invisible unless you have eyes to see. One of the joys of a transformed heart is the ability to discern the work. It reminds me of Harry Potter: suddenly you can perceive a hidden world right next to the prosaic muggles world you've been living in: you see platform 9 3/4s and Diagonal Alley, hidden, to use the cliche, in plain sight. And it becomes less about you as an individual saving the world or doing something grand and more about becoming part of something bigger than yourself. I'm reminded of an interview with N.T. Wright that I recently read. Wright says it's a mistake to think of God as "out there" in outer space, somewhere so far away that you'd need to take a spaceship to reach it. That makes God remote, he said, and not part of our reality. Instead, we need to recognize that God is all around us, in the air we breath, but separated from us by invisible (and yet penetrable) walls.

I think liberal Quakers could take heed of Claiborne's warning that it can be self-destructive to remove one's group from the Christian world, flawed as the church might be. I also agree with Claiborne that, perhaps unwittingly, the secular world will do everything it can to paint participation in this alternative world as crazy. And I wonder what it takes to "tip" us into taking the small steps that get us into that other world. I know the pat answer is "grace," but what, concretely, gets us where we need to be?

Claiborne: to activism, add love, mustard seeds

In chapter 11 of The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne urges political activists to temper their actions with a sense of humor and add a strong dose of love. It's not enough to help other people through supporting causes: you need to love the people you are helping. Ideally, you get to know the people you are helping. Likewise, don't feel superior to those who are less active; instead, laugh at yourself and try to spread some joy.

He writes on an old theme: fair wages for college campus employees, such as janitors. In his case, he and his friends got to know a janitor and his family trying to live on $6 a hour. They were able to introduce this man to the president of Eastern University, part of a process that led to the university paying a living wage and benefits to its workers.

In chapter 12, Shane expands on the argument that small is better and small is kingdom. We find God in the little people, express God's love through small actions and see God in the everyday. It's not growing church numbers and budgets that builds the kingdom of God, it's growing strong relationships.

"We have a God who values the little offering of a couple of coins from a widow over the megacharity of millionaires."

"The pervasive myth is that as we grow larger, we can do more good. But there is little evidence that this is ever realized."

He condemns churches that build big complexes while people are hungry and homeless, saying God prefers a tent. Small is beautiful.

"And the contagion of God's love is spreading across the land like a little mustard plant, growing smaller and smaller until it takes over the world."

It's hard to argue with putting people ahead of programs and infusing our social and political actions with love and joy. None of these are new ideas; all of them are good ideas.

However, is all diminution good? We see a move toward a smaller, but more pure and orthodox Roman Catholic church: Is this a way of sweeping issues under the carpet? Often I have heard people in shrinking mainline denominations speak of getting rid of the dead wood or not regretting when the people who don't think like them leave. I do believe that God works and exists in the crevices, under the radar and among the humblest people. But sometimes I fear that groups use the rhetoric of smallness to justify an unwillingness to make needed changes or to exclude people that Jesus would gladly invite to his table. When does embracing the small become an excuse for exclusion or unresponsiveness and when is it evidence of God's kingdom at work? How do we discern?

Shane Claiborne: Christianity is non-violent

Like the Quakers, Claiborne believes that Christianity is a religion of non-violence and that Jesus, in his life and death, modeled non-violence. To Claiborne, there's no room for "just war" theory, only "no war" theory.

A couple of quotes: here Shane is quoting a doctor in a hospital in Iraq: "Violence is for those who have lost their imagination."

From Claiborne: "The only thing harder than hatred is love. The only thing harder than war is peace. The only thing that takes more work, sweat and tears than division is reconciliation."

Claiborne likes "creative" acts of nonviolence that surprise people and get them to think.

I believe these "playful" surprises can be helpful if understood; possibly harmful if misunderstood or seen as frivolous. Cultivating a spirit or mindset in which violence seems unnatural and non-violence natural is more important, I think. (Here, for example, I think of the day-to-day lives of the Amish, who don't need to do performance art for peace because their lives speak peace.) Also I believe it's important to cultivate patience because sometimes we turn to violence in frustration as a way to resolve a problem "once and for all." Patience and peace, now that I think about it, are fruits of the spirit.

Claiborne: demonic suburbs?

In the Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne continues to argue for seeing the entire human family as our family, without national borders or genetic borders. To me, this is the true Christian universalism: not accepting everyone's religion as the "same," but serving others regardless of their faith or ethnicity.

Shane goes to Iraq and witnesses the war first hand. When he comes back, a woman criticizes him for being "careless" with his life and putting his mother through terrible anxiety. She goes on to say that Jesus himself would scold Shane for this.

What Jesus is she talking about? Shane wonders. This becomes a launching point for discussing Christianity as a dangerous faith, not a safe faith. We're asked to take risks, and those risks can include dying or making our families uncomfortable.

He talks about safety as a possibly demonic force: "the suburbs are the home of the more subtle demonic forces -- numbness, complacency, comfort--and it is these things that can eat away at our souls."

Is that true?

Claiborne: Theology of Enough

As we move though the center of The Irresistible Revolution, Claiborne repeats a recurring argument of his book: that to be a Christian means to live in contact with the poor. He critiques the current church as "a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff." This is not the best model, he argues, because until rich and poor come into real contact, neither can be transformed. When Jesus says the poor will always be with us, this is not resignation about poverty. Instead, Claiborne, says, Jesus is pointing to the church's identity as a body of people who live close to the poor and suffering.

Shane goes on to talk about a subject dear to Quaker hearts: simplicity, and he has some interesting things to say. He sees many of the problems with contemporary Christianity rooted in bad theology, not bad people, and sees a life's work in replacing bad theology with good. And he talks about what he calls "theology of enough:" Embracing neither poverty nor wealth but instead embracing and sharing the abundance of God's earth.

"So I would suggest we need a third way, neither the prosperity gospel nor the poverty gospel, but the gospel of abundance rooted in a theology of enough. As Proverbs says, 'Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say "Who is the Lord?"' (Prov. 30:8,9). After seeing plenty of poor folks forced into economic crimes by their poverty and after seeing plenty of rich folks so content in their riches that they forget they need God or anyone else, I think we are all ready for something new."

God's economy relies on mutual interdependence and is exemplified in the miracles of the loaves and the fishes, the creation of abundance through sharing, faith and generosity.

I agree with Shane that much of the fear that leads us to make economic choices that lead to stressed-out lives comes from buying into the secular culture's theology of scarcity. This theology of scarcity is self-fulfilling: as some hoard to stave off scarcity, others starve. I agree that the more we can lean into God's abundance, the more we can make decisions that contribute to that abundance.

Yet much of Claiborne's rhetoric in these central chapters focuses on play, on a sort of childlike irreverence towards institutional authority that strongly echoes the "flower power" ethos of the 1960s. It can seem more style than substance. I think there is substance undergirding Shane's more antic-like actions, such as distributing money on Wall Street. But how do we navigate building a culture of enough while not careening into naivete?

Shane Claiborne: Comfort becomes Uncomfortable

In Chapter 4 of The Irresistible Revolution, Shane returns from India to work and study at Wheaton and Willow Creek Church. He experiences culture shock as he makes an abrupt transition from lepers and the dying to wealthy white Americans. In this chapter, he "longs" for more contact between the rich and the poor, and for each to see the face of Christ in the other. He believes more interaction between rich and poor will end poverty.

Certainly many groups, such as the Church of the Savior, have organized, in part, around putting rich and poor together. Claiborne yearns for the peaceable kingdom, a yearning that permeates the Bible.

One "comfort" he discusses is Willow Creek's refusal to hang crosses because crosses are not "seeker sensitive" or comfortable to people who may have been wounded by earlier church experiences.

He writes: "I fear that when we remove the cross, we remove the central symbol of the nonviolence and grace of our Lover. If we remove the cross, we are in danger of promoting a very cheap grace. Perhaps it should make us uncomfortable." In light of the Quakers' shedding of earthly symbols, what do you think of Claiborne's comments?

Shane Claiborne and Mother Teresa

Now that he's helped the women living in the abandoned church of St. Edwards, Shane calls Mother Teresa. He's amazed when she herself answers the phone in Calcutta. She invites him to 'come and see" her work. Shane and a friend head for India, where they help at her Home for the Destitute and Dying, bathing, massaging, bandaging and comforting the people brought in from the streets. Later, Shane visits a leper colony in India.

Shane describes these encounters as transformative but what they seem to be doing is reinforcing a transformation that has already begun. Shane would not have sought out Mother Teresa had his view of Christianity not already changed in radical ways, from consumerism and personal salvation to service and the "upside-down" notion that we find God most alive in the outcast places.

Shane learns from Mother Teresa that we are called "not to be successful but to be faithful." This, he writes, "was the beginning of my years of struggling with the tension between efficiency and faithfulness. I remembered Ghandi's saying that what we do may seem insignificant but it is most important that we do it. So we did."

Some quibbles: I know Shane is the coolest dude in the world, but do we have to call Mother Teresa "Momma T?" Should we be calling Shane "Brother S?"

On a much less trivial note, I looked at the Simple Way website, the site for Shane's intentional Christian community in Philadelphia. There I found a disconnect between Shane's fervent approval of Mother Teresa's radical hospitality, which welcomed him, a stranger, with open arms to join her in her work, and the Web site's warning: Don't hitchhike across the country and drop in us, because we may not welcome you. I can understand the community wanting to have boundaries and wanting to keep from being overwhelmed, but I also believe they need to find ways to embrace physical visitors with same kind of hospitality Mother Teresa showed Shane. This is particularly important in this culture, where, as Mother Teresa said (and Shane alludes to somewhere in his book I believe), the great poverty is loneliness. But more importantly, if you are staking your claim on living the faith, it's important to live the faith, even when it's inconvenient. If it is important to do insignificant things, such as welcoming a hitchhiker or a hundred hitchhikers, shouldn't the community find a way to do them? Not only would this be a practice of integrity, it would show others how hospitality can be enacted. Does not doing so --being standoffish as a community -- throws up a red flag that says the community may be more talk than walk?

I also wondered if Shane, like Mother Teresa, would pick up a ringing phone at his home or if he shields himself from the public. The experiment would be to call and see who answers ... if anyone answers, but I'm not there yet.

What do you think? Am I being too hard on Brother S?

Shane Claiborne and St. Edwards

I think I understand why churches as institutions evict homeless people who have set up housekeeping in their abandoned buildings. The churches run along the same principles as secular institutions, as businesses, so to speak, and the people in charge adhere to business principles, albeit in some cases reluctantly. So churches want to protect their material assets. They don't want a property hurt and moreover, they don't want to be liable for a person being injured on their property and then suing the denomination for a lot of money, They also don't want to be associated with scandal.

All the same, there's something supremely ironic about a church evicting the homeless, when one of the church's main missions is to care for the poor.

When Shane and his friends discovered that the Catholic church was about to evict a group of homeless women and children from St. Edwards, an abandoned church in a poor area of Philadelphia, they jumped into action, alongside the women. They visited daily with the women, stood in unity with the women to prevent their eviction and drew attention to their plight. The irony of a church evicting the homeless was not lost on them.

In the end, the group of women and helpers developed a sense of community that transcended a building, and the women and children eventually all found housing. Shane felt reinvigorated and reborn. He felt that God was on the side of these women.

"The body of Christ was alive, no longer trapped in stained glass windows or books of systemic theology. The body of Christ was literal, living, hungry, thirsting, bleeding."

One thing that interests me -- and Shane is not the first to bring this up -- is the concept that churches are not meant to be buildings. Certainly, the early Quakers believed that the church is the body of believers. Further, God's first home among the early Jews was in a tent. Some scholars contend that Solomon was never meant to build a physical temple in Jerusalem. When David--and later Solomon--received the message from God to build his house, God was talking not about a physical home but a spiritual community devoted to him with all its heart, mind and soul. Centuries and centuries later, Francis of Assisi got a similar call from God, so clear and powerful that he couldn't ignore it: Repair my church. Francis initially thought God meant a particular church at San Damiano. He took money from his wealthy father and restored the church. Only gradually did he realize that God's command was much larger, more difficult and more metaphysical: God wanted him not to repair a physical building but the repair the broken spirit of a body of believers.

What do you think? Should the church build churches? Or are they a diversion?

Shane Claiborne: from saved to unsafe

In the first chapter of The Irresistible Revolution, Claiborne talks about how he went from a safe, "saved" Christianity to a Christianity that, in his words, wrecked his life.

When he converted to Christianity in high school, he was popular, wanted a life of upward mobility and planned to go to medical school. The "pop Christianity" he was exposed to didn't challenge those aspirations. In fact, he says, a lot of his Christianity was about buying: the Jesus t-shirt, bumper sticker, books, movies, candy, etc. He was, he says, a spiritual bulimic, gorging on spirituality but vomiting it all up before it could digest. Really, he says, "all I had was a lot of Christian clutter, in my bedroom and in my soul."

He uses a great image to describe that kind of spirituality: "It's what always happens to the saints and prophets who are dangerous: we bronze them, we drain them of their passion and life and trap them in stained glass windows and icons ..."

Then something happened. He began to take seriously the gospel message, such as that the last will be first. That God blesses the poor more than the rich. That we should love our enemies. As he puts it: "What if [Jesus] really meant it? It could turn the world upside down. It was a shame Christians had become so normal."

He had a true conversion. He started looking at the world through a different set of lenses. He slept out with the homeless and began to experience ordinary miracles: people with nothing feeding each other, people who were abused seeing the good in others. He began to realize the transcendent was all around him, if he only had eyes to see it.

Have you had a similar conversion? What was it like?

Shane Claiborne: Intro to Irresistible Revolution

In his introduction to Irresistible Revolution, Claiborne lays out a familiar dualism or stereotype: on the one hand the Christian who focuses on the afterlife with little interest in addressing the suffering of this world, and, on the other hand, the social activist who is only interested in changing the material world, with little concern for the life of the spirit.

Claiborne identifies himself with what we might call the third or emerging church way: as a deeply faith-filled Christian whose faith motivates him to help build the Kingdom of God in this world.

“Many of us are refusing to allow distorted images of our faith to define us,” he writes. That's a terrific line, I think.

He says he doesn’t fit into old liberal/conservative boxes. He doesn’t like labels. He does, however, identify himself with postmoderns, who are interested in religious experiences and stories, rather than religious doctrine or political ideology.

“The time has come ... for a new kind of Christianity, a new kind of revolution,” he says.

What this might look like gets spelled out in the rest of the book.

An aside: In his author’s note he writes that his goal is to speak truth in love. He teases us with his struggle over whether to write this book and why he chose Zondervan as his publisher, but never explains this.

Claiborne understands that he is speaking to an audience for whom the word “Christian” may be tainted. He wants to wrest back the term from the zealots, the rule makers, the heaven-only-after-death crowd.

This interests me. I’ve certainly known people who see how some (not all) Christians behave (narrow-minded, judgmental, and hypocritical) and thus recoil from calling themselves Christians because they don’t want to be identified with that group. Others, like Claiborne, assert: I’m a Christian and I’m not like that. I’m a different kind of Christian, and people like me are out there and growing in numbers.

The question: Should we move away from calling ourselves Christians because over time different groups have hijacked the term and abused it or should we claim the term (and the rich tradition of good behind it that includes Francis of Assisi, John Woolman and other selfless followers of Christ) and try to rightly represent it to the world? Would Claiborne resonate with you more if he didn’t identify himself, boldly, as a Christian? Is he OK because he calls himself not only a Christian but a radical? Would he lose credibility if he tried to deny his Christian heritage?

Irresistible Revolution: Step by Step I

Let's first examine the cover of my paperback copy--actually the library's--of Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution: Living as an ordinary radical. About 80 percent of the cover looks like a brown paper lunchbag with two pieces of duct tape on the left side wrapping around the spine. On the 20 percent of the cover remaining, we see a black and white photograph of almost half of Shane Claiborne's face. We glimpse his kerchief covering all but a few strands of his hair, one lens of his glasses, his wispy goatee and almost half of his Mona Lisa smile.

On the front and back inside covers are montages of black and white photos of Shane and his friends. We see Shane and his cohorts in front of a mural painted on a brick wall, Shane hanging out with his friends in a living room, two children at a table, and a woman doing something I can't figure out in a room where Bible verses seem to be painted on the walls. On the back inside cover, Shane sits around a table eating with friends, tends a city garden and sits on a stoop barefoot and in shorts.

Inside, the brown paper bag motif continues. The first page of each chapter is 80 percent covered by an image of a paper bag, with only the ragged right edge of the words showing. Then the page is reprinted without the bag on top. I suppose the idea is that what Shane is saying is so subversive you have to hide it in a brown paper bag. Cute.

Chapter titles and subtitles are sort of raggy and faded out, as if done on some sort of homemade press. Again cute.

I have to say that these sorts of clever presentations are a pet peeve of mine. I'd rather have the book unadorned, without all the visual reminders of how cool I am to be reading it. How do you feel about this issue? However, I did find the photos straightforward and helpful.

Now that we've entered cool world, what does Shane have to say? That's for tomorrow.

Shane Claiborne: A Quaker

I've finished Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution. Claiborne's Christianity looks almost identical to Christ-centered Quakerism. He embodies the Quaker testimonies of simplicity, peace, equality, community and integrity.

Claiborne lives among the poor in a community called the Simple Way. Part of his mission is to spread an anti-consumerist, anti-materialist message. His is the gospel message that we can live simply because God provides abundantly.

Claiborne was part of a peacekeeping group that went to Iraq. Like the early Quakers, he understands that Jesus modeled peace and forgiveness by not fighting back with physical weapons against his oppressors. Claiborne urges us to beat our swords into ploughshares.

He is passionate to keep the community he is part of equal, and rather than seeing it as having layers, which could be interpreted as hierarchical, he likens it to an onion--you can peel the layers away but no layer is "better" than the others.

He is passionate about community and finds living in community essential. He argues in favor of small communities. He writes about the importance of entering into relationships with people rather than fighting for "issues." Our political actions should, he argues, should arise from our experiences with real people, not from ideas or what the early Quakers might call "airy notions." Above all, he calls for loving people. All people. He keeps a poster of Bush on the ceiling above his bed.

He lives out his beliefs.

He wants to find, live out and promote authentic, early church Christianity, which is what the early Quakers wanted to do.

My question: Why are liberal Quakers so reluctant to claim and proclaim this rich Christian heritage?