Product Description

Using unconventional examples from his own life, Shane Claiborne stirs up questions about the church and the world, and challenges readers to truly live out their Christian faith.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1111 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

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

Review
"Shane dares readers to evaluate their lives and reimagine a first-century posture to following Jesus in the 21st century….If you want a comfy Christian life, this book is not for you. But if you want to be challenged, uncomfortable, and even changed, it is a must read." — YouthWorker Journal

(YouthWorker Journal )

"Editor's Pick!…Inspiring. Fascinating. Challenging. Convicting. Loving. These are just a few of the words that describe the extraordinary story of Claiborne's journey from middle-class Christianity in east Tennessee to radical incarnational faith among the poor in inner-city Philadelphia." — ePistle (Evangelicals for Social Action)

(ePistle (Evangelicals for Social Action) )

"This is the book that will not let me go….this book has called me, and many others, to action, to a different kind of life….if you read it seriously, it may mess with your mind, heart and even your life." — Youthworker Journal

(Youthworker Journal )

Customer Reviews

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

The American evangelical church has in many ways become 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. Christians read the Bible, but there is much in it that they don't really believe, or at least don't follow. 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 characterize 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, although I think it sometimes gets out of hand.

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 is the kind of book that 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 in San Francisco, 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 on 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, humans, 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 the 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.

Don't go by the reviews, read it for yourself
Yes, by my rating you can see that I love this book, however that's not what I intend to write about. I simply want to say that you should not rely on the reviews to form your opinion of this book.

I have repeatedly recommended this book to my friends, Christian or not, and whether they liked it, or agreed with it etc, it made them think, it created dialog. For those reasons alone I recommend this book. I do not believe that simply because one reviewer claims it to be biblically grounded, or not biblically grounded should change your decision to read it you need to read it and make your own decisions because whether you agree with him or not there are some important concepts that need to be considered even those who rated it poorly have said this. If you feel like you won't agree and don't want to lend money to the cause then go to a library, buy a cheap used copy, or borrow one. It would be irresponsible to make a judgment about the author based on someone else's review.

Rated 5-stars by The Spiritual Reviewer
"Christianity," says author Shane Claiborne, "often has offered little to the world, other than the hope that things will be better in heaven." This statement appears on the first page of the book, and it's a big clue that Shane isn't spinning a newer, fresher version of the same old predictable Christian party line that everyone else repeats. In fact, the whole purpose of The Irresistible Revolution is to present a radical idea of what it means to be a Christian. Even more importantly, it's about how one man, without aggrandizing himself, chose to do something daring, heroic and good with his life. Instead of buying into the prescribed formula for Christian living, Shane challenges us to break free of the empty roles and rituals "the living dead" pledge allegiance to, and take the path of Love. He talks about how he was "suffocated by Christianity, but thirsty for God."

Say good-bye to Jesus message t-shirts, big expensive churches, and tele-evangelical pleas for followers and cash. Say hello to a man who speaks in love, acts in love, serves humanity in love. This book is a collection of Shane's autobiographical stories about his transformation from a cookie-cutter evangelical youth to a disciple who thinks outside the box and who isn't afraid to shine his light for the world. We are fortunate to be on the planet at the same time with one so aware and one so willing to walk the talk. If you only read one book this year, make it Irresistible Revolution, and allow the passion from Shane's mega big heart to move you to loving action.

Message of Love:
"People always want to define you by what you do. I started saying "I'm not too concerned with what I'm going to do. I am more interested in who I am becoming. I want to be a lover of God and people."

What does it mean to love and how is love of God demonstrated? This is the fundamental question Shane explores and answers. Is it by passing out God-flyers on street corners, or is it by passing out bread to the homeless and poor and then teaching them how to make bread for themselves? In January 1997 Shane and five other like-minded cohorts moved into a little row house in Kensington, a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia, and formed The Simple Way. The Simple way is not just about managing poverty, but completely ending it.

"There are plenty of liberals who talk about poverty and injustice but rarely encounter the poor, living detached lives of socially responsible but comfortable consumption." To eradicate poverty it's essential to redefine the meaning of family and to become radically inclusive. There should be no difference between your relationship to someone who's connected to you by marriage, blood, religion or nationality and to someone who lives in the street or another country. Violence and disregard is born out of a narrow, rigid belief about family. Shane asks us to consider "what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines?" There is nothing worth killing for, but there's something worth dying for -- and that is the love in our hearts that we have for each other.

Did you know that each day 35,000 children in the world starve to death? It's like a 911 event every single day or a tsunami that never ends. Poverty is not created by God. It's created by you and me because we don't see our brothers and sisters as ourselves. What's needed are concrete acts of love. No one can see God, but we can see each other, and God can live in and through us. Shane recommends "instead of waiting for God's special plan for your life, go find where God is doing work, and join in."