Shane Claiborne - The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Shane Claiborne is a living experimentevangelical zeal mixed with grassroots activism; passion for Jesus mixed with prison time for feeding the poor. This is a rant for love, aimed at cowards seeking courage.

Aiden Enns, publisher, Geez magazine; former managing editor, Adbusters

Sometimes I think there is really only one Christian denomination in America: American Civil Religiona consumerist, militarist, therapeutic, colonial, nationalist chaplaincy that baptizes and blesses whatever the richest and most powerful nation on the planet wants to do. But then I hear a voice like Shanes, and I know that at least a few follow another leader on a less-traveled road. Read this book and let it make you uncomfortable, as it did me. We need this kind of discomfort more than we know.

Brian McLaren, author, A Generous Orthodoxy

Desperately urgent. Profoundly biblical. If even one in ten contemporary Christians dared to truly follow the one we claim to worship with half of Shanes unconditional surrender to Christ, our evangelism would acquire an awesome power and our actions would transform our broken world.

Ronald J. Sider, president, Evangelicals for Social Action

Shane expresses the kind of authentic Christianity that most of us are trying to avoid because the cost is too great. He proposes a lifestyle that prophetically proclaims what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the twenty-first century.

Tony Campolo, author, Revolution and Renewal

Written with endearing humor and astonishing courage, The Irresistible Revolution describes a young mans embrace of uncompromising commitment to Jesus teachings.

Kathy Kelly, author, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness

If you know Shane, read this book to hear his irresistible voice on every page. If you dont know Shane (or even if you do), read this book to hear the irresistible voice of Jesus on every page.

Leonard Sweet, author, Summoned to Lead

This book will challenge you to sell all you have and follow Jesus to the margins.

Rob Moll, editor, Christianity Today

Like the author, the book is rich and rare, fresh, memorable and challenging, even to seasoned resisters. It is a gift to all who long to midwife the kingdom of God here and now, who want to impact the future, who would be the Church for which we long.

Elizabeth McAlister, cofounder, Jonah House Community

If you embark on this journey, you will not only meet a tall, skinny lad named Shane, but you will also meet his homeless friends in Philly, the dying that he cared for in Calcutta, and the children he played with in Baghdad as the bombs fellall of which raise uncomfortable questions about what it means to follow Jesus. Read this book at your own peril. Shane will challenge you to join the ranks of ordinary radicals.

Tom Sine, founder, Mustard Seed Associates

Dedicated to
all the hypocrites, cowards, and foolslike me.

May we find the Way, the Truth, and the Life
in a world of shortcuts, deception, and death.

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world.

Ammon Hennacy (Catholic activist, 1893-1970)

S hane Claiborne is a good example of the old adage, Be careful what you pray for. Evangelicals like to pray that Christian young people will learn to love Jesus and follow in his steps. Well, thats exactly what this young Christian activist is talking about in his remarkable new book, The Irresistible Revolution. But the places that following Jesus has led Shane are not exactly the comfortable suburban environs that many evangelical Christians inhabit today. And his journey of discipleship has taken him away from the cultural habits that many middle-class believers have become conformed to. Worst of all, his notions of fidelity to the gospel seem to directly counter the political loyalties that many conservatives on the religious right have made into an almost doctrinal litmus test of faith.

For several years now, Shane has been experimenting with the gospel in the streets of Philadelphia and Calcutta, in the intensity of Christian community, and even in the war zones of Iraq. In this book, he takes us on pilgrimage with himsharing his passions while admitting his uncertainties, critiquing his society and his church while admitting his own human frailties and contradictions, revealing his hopes for changing the world while embracing the smallness of the efforts and initiatives he holds most dear.

As you read, you will soon discover that Shanes disaffection from Americas cultural and patriotic Christianity came not from going secular or liberal but by plunging deeper into what the earliest Christians called the Waythe way of Jesus, the way of the kingdom, and the way of the cross. He is the first to admit that what he and his spiritual cohorts are doing seems quite radical, even crazy, and maybe insane. But he also has come to question the sanity of the consumer culture, the distorted priorities of the global economy, and the methodology of the warfare state, while, at the same time, rediscovering the biblical reversal of our social logicthat the foolishness of God has always seemed a little nuts to the world. They call their little community in Philadelphia the Simple Way and believe experiments like theirs hold the key to the future.

I am finding the reading of this book a delight, as I also find the author. I must admit that the young Shane reminds me a little of a young radical Christian about three decades ago when we were founding Sojourners magazine and community. We were also young evangelicals who found that neither our churches nor our society were measuring up to the way of Jesusnot even close. Our battle then was against a private piety that limited religion to only personal matters, then compromised faith in a tragic capitulation to the economic, political, and military powers that be.

We desperately wanted to see our faith go public and offer a prophetic vision with the power to change both our personal lives and political directions. I remember writing the draft of a new and very hopeful manifesto back in 1973 called the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, which was signed by leaders from both an older and a younger generation of evangelicals and destined, we hoped, to really change things.

But then came the religious right with evangelical faith going public, but not in the ways we had hoped. Christian concerns were reduced to only a few moral issues (most having to do with sex and the dominance of Christian language in the public square), and pacts were soon made with the economic and political agenda of Americas far right. After thirty years, America became convinced that God was a Republican, and the enduring image of Christianity became the televangelist preacher.

But now all that is changing, and the landscape of religion, society, and politics in America is being transformed. As I crisscross the country, I can feel a new momentum and movement. Many who have felt left out of the faith and politics conversation have now begun to make their voice heard. The monologue of the religious right is finally over, and a fresh dialogue has begun; its a conversation about how to apply faith to social justice, and it is springing up across the land. A new convergence, across the theological spectrum, is coming together over issues like overcoming poverty, both in the forgotten places of our own country that Hurricane Katrina has revealed, and in the destitution and disease of the global economy that is awakening the world. Christians are naming the environment as Gods creation and insisting on its care. Church leaders and evangelical seminary professors are challenging the theology of war and the religion of empire now emanating from the highest places of political power.