Quotes from Shane Claiborne

You may have lost hope in Christianity or Christendom or all the institutions, but you have not lost hope in the church. This is the church." At that moment, we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of.

Beyond miracles, what has lasting significance is love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper, but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers.

Irish rock star Bono has said, "Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.

It's hard to hear the gentle whisper of the Spirit amid the noise of Christendom.

So there goes Jesus spinning power on its head again. His power was not in crushing but in being crushed, triumphing over the empire's sword with his cross. Mustard must be crushed, ground, broken for its power to be released.

We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back and he's coming back for a bride, not a harem.

The danger is that we can begin to read the Bible through the eyes of America rather than read America through the eyes of the Bible. We just want Jesus to be a good American.

But we are not just called to be candles. We are called to be fire. Candles can be snuffed out by the slightest wind or by the smallest child on their birthday. But it's harder to put out a fire. We are to be fire, to weave our lives together so that the Spirit's inferno of love spreads across the earth.

In their pursuit of "making disciples of every nation" and baptizing all those within the empire, they stumbled into baptizing the empire itself, thus turning sacrament into sacrilege[...]

Dom Helder Camara, a twentieth-century bishop in Brazil, said, "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a Communist.

Something mystical can happen in the course of acting together that transcends words and ideologies—people who do not agree on ideas can create common ground in the act of loving.

But Jesus answered me with these words and said: Sin is necessary, but all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.

Erasmus of Rotterdam, a sixteenth-century priest who was committed to reforming the church from within, said, "When faith came to be in writings rather than in hearts, contention grew hot and love grew cold. That which is forced cannot be sincere, and that which is not voluntary cannot please Christ.

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God.

Jesus lives the challenge to our gender stereotypes and prejudices, but he is also wonderfully subversive in the ways he legitimates and empowers women.

When we begin enacting the new world, the nations will follow. Nations will not lead us to peace; it is people who will lead the nation to peace as they begin to humanize the nations.

After all, what is crazier: one person owning the same amount of money as the combined economies of twenty-three countries, or suggesting that if we shared, there would be enough for everyone?

Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.

Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, wrote, "Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion is to look out to the world; yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which God is to bless people now.

Lord, show us that reconciling with those we imagine are different from us is not only for peace, but also to train us more deeply in the faith that honors everything created by your hand. Help us see that reconciliation leads to deeper knowledge of you. Amen.

began in a garden, but it ends in a city — a beautiful restored city the Scriptures describe as the New Jerusalem, coming on earth as it is in heaven. Christianity is not just about going up when we die; it's about bringing God's kingdom down, all the way to the dirt in our gardens.

I am convinced that if we lose kids to the culture of drugs and materialism, of violence and war, it's because we don't dare them, not because we don't entertain them. It's because we make the gospel too easy, not because we make it too difficult. Kids want to do something heroic with their lives, which is why they play video games and join the army. But what are they to do with a church that teaches them to tiptoe through life so they can arrive safely at death?

Little people with big dreams are reimagining the world.

few years ago, the Barna Group, a prominent research company, went to every state in the US and asked young non-Christians what their perceptions of Christians were. What they found was heartbreaking. The top three answers were: (1) anti-gay, (2) judgmental, (3) hypocritical. And they did not say the number one thing Jesus said we should be known for: loving.