The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical [Paperback]

Shane Claiborne (Author), Jim Wallis (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: January 31, 2006

Living as an Ordinary Radical Many of us find ourselves caught somewhere between unbelieving activists and inactive believers. We can write a check to feed starving children or hold signs in the streets and feel like we've made a difference without ever encountering the faces of the suffering masses. In this book, Shane Claiborne describes an authentic faith rooted in belief, action, and love, inviting us into a movement of the Spirit that begins inside each of us and extends into a broken world. Shane's faith led him to dress the wounds of lepers with Mother Teresa, visit families in Iraq amidst bombings, and dump $10,000 in coins and bills on Wall Street to redistribute wealth. Shane lives out this revolution each day in his local neighborhood, an impoverished community in North Philadelphia, by living among the homeless, helping local kids with homework, and 'practicing resurrection' in the forgotten places of our world. Shane's message will comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable . . . but will also invite us into an irresistible revolution. His is a vision for ordinary radicals ready to change the world with little acts of love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. If there is such a thing as a disarming radical, 30-year-old Claiborne is it. A former Tennessee Methodist and born-again, high school prom king, Claiborne is now a founding member of one of a growing number of radical faith communities. His is called the Simple Way, located in a destitute neighborhood of Philadelphia. It is a house of young believers, some single, some married, who live among the poor and homeless. They call themselves "ordinary radicals" because they attempt to live like Christ and the earliest converts to Christianity, ignoring social status and unencumbered by material comforts. Claiborne's chatty and compelling narrative is magnetic—his stories (from galvanizing a student movement that saved a group of homeless families from eviction to reaching Mother Teresa herself from a dorm phone at 2 a.m.) draw the reader in with humor and intimacy, only to turn the most common ways of practicing religion upside down. He somehow skewers the insulation of suburban living and the hypocrisy of wealthy churches without any self-righteous finger pointing. "The world," he says, "cannot afford the American dream." Claiborne's conviction, personal experience and description of others like him are a clarion call to rethink the meaning of church, conversion and Christianity; no reader will go away unshaken. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* From dressing the wounds of lepers in Calcutta to living among the homeless in Philadelphia to visiting families in Iraq, social activist Claiborne strives to live an authentic Christian life. In his view, he is a radical in the truest sense of the word, returning to the roots of Christianity by living as Jesus did and doing "small things with great love." A partner-founder of the Philadelphia-based faith community Simple Way, he presents an evangelical Christianity gentler and more inclusive than is usually seen, especially in the mass media. He describes Simple Way as a new culture that relies on radical interdependence and consists of grassroots organizations, intentional communities, and hospitality houses. Although the book isn't an autobiography, in it Claiborne reports much about his life: growing up in the Bible Belt, becoming a Jesus freak, moving to Philadelphia despite his family's misgivings, and helping the homeless there. Then he boldly requested an internship with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. She simply responded, "Come." Besides illuminating his own faith journey, Claiborne is insightful on the huge U.S. cultural and economic divide: the problem isn't that wealthy Christians don't care about the poor, he says, it's that they simply don't know the poor. A moving, often humorous account of a life of faith lived to the fullest. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan; Soft Cover edition (January 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310266300
• ISBN-13: 978-0310266303
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 7.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (241 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines

More About the Author

With tears and laughter, Shane Claiborne unveils the tragic messes we've made of our world and the tangible hope that another world is possible. Shane graduated from Eastern University, and did graduate work at Princeton Seminary. His ministry experience is varied, from a 10-week stint working alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta, to a year spent serving a wealthy mega-congregation at Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago. During the recent war in Iraq, Shane spent three weeks in Baghdad with the Iraq Peace Team. Shane is also a founding partner of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped to birth and connect radical faith communities around the world.

Shane writes and travels extensively speaking about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus. He is featured in the DVD series "Another World Is Possible" and is the author of the several books including The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus for President, and Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers. Shane speaks over 100 times a year in a dozen or so countries and nearly every state in the US. Shane has given academic seminars at Vanderbilt University, Duke University Pepperdine University, Wheaton College, Princeton University, Goshen College and Harvard University. Shane also speaks at various denominational gatherings, festivals, and conferences around the globe. Shane's work has been featured in everything from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to CNN and National Public Radio.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

128 of 141 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars I want to wait a few years August 29, 2009

By J. NELSON

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I really enjoyed this book. I won't touch Shane's theology. I know next to nothing about the evangelical church. I am a blue collar liberal "cradle" Episcopalian. What I noticed and want to comment on, is that Shane makes a lot of young man's errors. He tends toward self righteousness. He is glib. He thinks he discovered any number of problems that no one else ever noticed. He confuses lifestylism with social change.

I don't think his mistakes invalidate his ministry. He is a young man. He has a young man's energy and God knows Christianity needs that. I just wonder, as he matures, will he find himself slipping into an old man's errors? Can he avoid cynicism? World weariness? If life turns ugly, as it sometimes does, will he be able to resist bitterness?

I'm sure any number of theologians can criticize me for this, but I've found the way to God is through an open heart. Your haircut, even if it's dreadlocks, your address, even if it's the ghetto and your friends, even if they're radical, can't help you. If you remain open to God, sooner or later he will break you. I am curious to see how young Shane grows through that. I will certainly give him credit for acknowledging that eventuality.

If you're planning on reading this book to find a new leader and a new set of rules, don't bother. If you're willing to read this book to learn from a young man's earnest attempt to love God and his neighbor you will be rewarded.

570 of 663 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Many Good Observations, But Many Problems August 31, 2008

By Carl

Format:Paperback

Shane Claiborne has written a highly personal account of his journey as a follower of Christ and the call he feels to live radically for Christ. Much of The Irresistible Revolution is inspirational. Shane writes primarily to American evangelicals, who he calls out of their depressingly normal lives. Along the way, he levels numerous criticisms at the church, many of which seem on target.

The American evangelical church is in many ways indistinguishable from secular culture -- by its materialism, marketing, bigger-is-better mentality, and celebrity adoration. Worship services and youth ministry have almost become forms of entertainment. The church cultivates believers, but not always followers. Shane challenges his readers to take Jesus at his word when he spoke about the poor being blessed; the last being first; loving our enemies; denying ourselves; and serving Christ himself by serving the poor, lonely, sick, and imprisoned. And Shane criticizes the mixture of faith, patriotism, and conservative politics that characterizes parts of the evangelical landscape.

Shane doesn't beat up his readers. He writes with a light, often humorous touch. He teaches almost entirely through stories, mostly his own. One of his appealing qualities is his willingness to take the unconventional route, to take risks for God. He seems to have cultivated an enjoyment of risk-taking, almost like that of a prankster. There is a streak of mischievousness that runs through his stories.

I wanted to like this book. There isn't very much about my walk of faith that I would call radical. Serious and heart-felt, yes. Sacrificial, to a degree. But radical, very little. One line from the book has stayed with me: "We have insulated ourselves from miracles.... We no longer live with such reckless faith that we need them. There is rarely room for the transcendent in our lives."

However, as I read deeper into the book I began to notice many problems. By the end of the book I was pretty tired of these problems, several of which I describe below. Nevertheless, The Irresistible Revolution contains many good observations and will probably inspire and stick with many readers.

Now for the problems:

- I noticed an occasional harshness, even scorn, toward Christians with whom Shane disagrees. I don't know why he thinks this attitude is okay.

- Shane criticizes the mixture of biblical faith and right wing politics that exists in much of the church today. But his own politics are clearly left wing and his own faith and vision for the church are just as tinged by those politics. Nowhere does he acknowledge the truly difficult judgments involved in rightly engaging the culture with the gospel. Nor does he acknowledge the long cultural and moral slide that the Christian right has tried to address or propose alternative ways to address it.

- Shane is anti-war and anti-death penalty. His theology on these issues is anchored in Jesus' teaching to love our enemies and appears to preclude any use of violent force under any circumstances. Does he even believe the fight against the Axis powers in World War II was wrong? One of his heroes is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. Shane approvingly quotes Bonhoeffer and calls him a fellow resister, but nowhere mentions the problem (for a pacifist) that Bonhoeffer tried to assassinate Hitler.

- Shane condemns the Iraq war, but the war he condemns is a straw man. Based on his description, one would think the war is merely an American conquest of Iraq. In fact, it is more complicated, consisting of a war to depose Saddam Hussein, a war against the Jihadists who subsequently poured into Iraq to destabilize the new democracy, and a civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

- At times Shane seems anti-capitalist, but he does not make his position completely clear, nor does he say what economic system would be an improvement over capitalism.

- Shane seems to romanticize the poor and credit to them a nobility that I don't see. He even refers to them as his teachers. The poor, at least the poor in America, are not simply victims of economic injustice. In my (limited) experience working with the homeless, I have mostly encountered people with a complex of problems, many being of their own making, and poverty being just one. These people are created by God and deserve practical help and love, but they are not particularly romantic or noble.

- In his anti-war and anti-poverty advocacy, Shane often expresses mushy sentiments about how we're all one big family, regardless of country, race, class, or religion. At times he seems to confuse the Body of Christ with the family of mankind. He sometimes sounds like mainline Protestantism of 50 years ago, with its de-emphasis of orthodox doctrines and its emphasis of the social gospel.

- Early in the book Shane refers to himself as a postmodern: "The things that transform us, especially us 'postmoderns,' are people and experiences. Political ideologies and religious doctrines just aren't very compelling, even if they're true." Perhaps I'm reading too much into these lines, but I found them disturbing. As a philosophical ideology, postmodernism holds that objective truth either does not exist or cannot be known; all one can know are stories, and no story is better than any other story. Reality, truth, and value are held to be arbitrary cultural and linguistic constructions. But Christianity has always claimed that objective truth exists and is knowable -- truth about God, mankind, and the world -- not exhaustive truth, but real truth. I don't know what we're left with if we abandon this philosophical foundation.

- Shane rightly asks what Jesus has to say about this life and this world, but at one point he asks a strange question: "Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy, and fulfillment he gives you right now?" But Paul came very close to answering this question in 1 Corinthians 15: "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men." And: "If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'" If the gospel offers anything, it offers hope -- hope that we are not accidents, that we are loved by a good God, that our lives are going somewhere, and that we don't face personal extinction at death. It is only this hope that gives sufficient impetus to follow Jesus. Read more ›

166 of 193 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, Challenging, at Times Flawed July 1, 2007

By Robert W. Kellemen

Format:Paperback

Claiborne lives what many of us have dreamed of but not dared--a radical life of reaching the "least of these." It's hard to read his narratives without thinking, "How could I live like this?" "What would it take?" "Why don't I start?"

And, in part, that's the concern with this book. It skewers "the American dream" to such an extent that it is hard for the truly "ordinary" American to apply it without giving up trying. Had Claiborne been a tad more inviting and a tad more illustrative of how people living the American dream could at least take baby steps toward his revolutionary lifestyle, then perhaps many more would join the "kingdom movement." However, this tends to be the way with 30-something and younger Christian writers. It is all black and white, all or nothing, no middle ground, "my new way or your old highway." For all the talk of grace, some writing like this comes across judgmental and invents a brand new "holier than thou" attitude that yet a new generation 20 years from now will reject. Again, this is not to say that the book is not valid. It is to say that "with just a spoon full of sugar, the medicine goes down. . ."

Additionally, the application of Scripture at times seems more based on leftist cultural interpretation than contextual scriptural examination. For all the talk in the book about being counter-cultural, what seems to happen is that the book is counter-right-wing-cultural, but quite cozy with left-wing-cultural ideology. Regardless of where one stands on political/social issues, we should acknowledge when our exegesis reflects cultural immersion.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Spiritual Friends, and Soul Physicians.

62 of 77 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Kingdom is a Revolution March 18, 2006

By DocTheology

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Shane has captured the complacency found in western Christianity. Personally I prefer deep books on theology, but this author has given us "street-wise" theology that needs to be read by every teen, collegiate, and adult. Shane has taken the essence of the message of Jesus and given a practical and pastoral theology. That does not mean it has become domesticated, not in the least. Shane Claiborne sees the phrase "Kingdom of God" and exchanged the world "Revolution" for the word "Kingdom." Does that make a difference? Not in what Jesus meant, but it greatly changes how people view the practicaly day to day workings of Jesus' life, ministry, teachings, and words. He freely shows how even the words of Jesus existed in the flesh through the works of Ghandi and Mother Teresa. Whether it is sleeping with the lepers or giving away everything he has to feed an empty stomach, Irresistible Revolution grabs the westernized, domesticated, once-a-week Christian and shakes them to the core with ideas and thoughts that rarely enter most church doors on a given Sunday. Does that mean I agree with it all? No. But reading a good book, like Shane's, is like eating fish...there is a lot of meat and a few bones to spit out. But in the end, I think every reader will be greatly satisfied with the meal after feasting on this book.