Quotes from Shane Claiborne

The Latin word for the wafer of the Eucharist (often referred to as "the host") is hostia, which literally means "the victim." All

There are two ways to submit to authority, then. One is by obeying the good laws; the other is by openly suffering the consequences of disobeying the bad laws—that is

God hates sin, because God loves people and sin destroys us. So divorce is bad because it breaks people's hearts and rips families apart—not just because we broke a law. God hurts when we hurt. God cannot stand to watch us hurt ourselves and others. Sin leads to death—it eats away our bodies and our souls like a cancer.

for he would have betrayed the gospel. Then I watched as one of the Methodist congregations I attended built a $120,000 stained-glass window. Wesley would not have been happy. I stared at that window. I longed for Jesus to break out of it, to free himself, to come to rise from the dead… again.

now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us by the Father through the crucified one. . . . [T]he more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers.3 (Arnold, 81)

I must say I am still passionately pro-life, I just have a much more holistic sense of what it means to be for life, knowing that life does not just begin at conception and end at birth, and that if I am going to discourage abortion, I had better be ready to adopt some babies and care for some mothers. I like to say that I am pro-life from the "womb to the tomb

W. E. B. DuBois, a co-founder of the NAACP, wrote, "Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the Republic shall justice and right triumph.

Repair my church which is in ruins.

I felt so thirsty for God, so embarrassed by Christianity, and so ready for something more.

Our communities should be places where people can detox, whether that be from alcohol, tobacco, gluttony, shopping, or gossip. We long for a space that tips us toward goodness rather than away from it, where we can pick up new habits — holy habits — as we are formed into a new creation, transformed by God.

Second-century Bible scholar Origen of Alexandria wrote, "We do not arm ourselves against any nation; we do not learn the art of war; because, through Jesus Christ, we have become the children of peace.

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked will I return. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

us assemble ourselves before you today through our acts of peace and reconciliation with neighbors near and far. Help us to teach the children in our communities what it means to be children of a God who loves us like a mother. Amen.

The sins we confess are not just drinking too much beer but also getting drunk on the cocktails of culture. We are not just laying our lives at the altar with nothing to pick up but we are also picking up an irresistible revolution that the world is waiting for.

As I've heard my old mentor Tony Campolo say, "If we were to set out to establish a religion in polar opposition to the Beatitudes Jesus taught, it would look strikingly similar to the pop Christianity that has taken over the airwaves of North America.

In our cultural value system, we have divided up human traits between the sexes and consequently have denied each sex a part of its humanity.

In court, as the judge considered the sentence of the police officer, the woman spoke boldly: "He took my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give, and he needs to know what love and grace feel like—so I think he should have to come to visit my home in the slums, twice a month, and spend time with me, so that I can be a mother to him, so that I can embrace him, and he can know that my forgiveness is real." We

The tears we shed are not just for ourselves but for our world.

God of the living and the dead, let our lives sing your praise. Make us the fragrance of your love. Rise in us, and awaken us from our slumber that we might live in your light. Amen.

There are so many people who are longing to be brought to life, who know all too well that they have done evil and long to hear not only of a God who embraces evildoers but also of a church that does the same.

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community [even if their intentions are ever so earnest], but the person who loves those around them will create community.

It is an altar call to the world, an invitation to see a new kind of Christianity and to hear the confession of a church on its knees asking your forgiveness for the mess we have helped create. And it is an "alter" call to the church, to alter our vision from the patterns of this world and create new ways of living.

The world is thirsty. All creation is groaning. Christianity as it is has not satisfied the souls of those who hunger for another way of life.

It is here that we see a Jesus who abhors both passivity and violence, who carves out a third way that is neither submission nor assault, neither fight nor flight. It is this third way, Wink writes, that teaches that "evil can be opposed without being mirrored . . . oppressors can be resisted without being emulated . . . enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed."7