Shane Claiborne Quotes

#1. We say it is idealistic to think we can continue to live the way we live - with 5% of the world using half the world's resources, with $20,000 a second being spent on war.

Shane Claiborne

#2. Violence is for those who have lost their imagination.

Shane Claiborne

#3. Mother Theresa always said, Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta.

Shane Claiborne

#4. Victimization is about powerlessness, and justice is about amplifying the voices of those who have been silenced. Healing

Shane Claiborne

#5. The best critique of what is wrong is the practice of something better. So let's stop complaining about the church we've experienced and work on becoming the church we dream of.

Shane Claiborne

#6. We can also cling to the treasures of our faith and get rid of the things that are cluttering that. It is a time we are seeing some trending away from the things that were cluttering our faith.

Shane Claiborne

#7. Jesus still has a really great reputation and the Spirit is still moving. I've got a lot of hope for a generation that takes Jesus seriously, once again.

Shane Claiborne

#8. Few people are interested in a religion that has nothing to say to the world and offers them only life after death, when what people are really wondering is whether there is life before death.

Shane Claiborne

#9. God, you alone are the judge of humankind, yet you call us to work toward justice. Help us make the judgments necessary for faithful living without becoming judgmental, that we may celebrate the mystery by which your justice is your mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Shane Claiborne

#10. We can ignore suffering no matter where we live. There are people who live a few miles from me who never see much poverty or the injustices that live on our doorstep.

Shane Claiborne

#11. There are financial bankruptcies in many parts of the church. No question about that. But we see the possibility of reimagining and revitalizing the church.

Shane Claiborne

#12. Christians are meant to be God's holy counterculture, showing the world what a society of love can look like. It is about political imagination and what it means to be the peculiar people of God. As

Shane Claiborne

#13. We are faithful not to the triumphant golden eagle (ironically, also an imperial symbol of power in Rome) but to the slaughtered Lamb.

Shane Claiborne

#14. The question becomes not just how to accumulate more, but how to covet less.

Shane Claiborne

#15. In an age of million-dollar mansions for God, it's hard to imagine that our God prefers tents.

Shane Claiborne

#16. What if evangelical mega churches became known around the world for things like providing water access for entire countries or fighting to end the AIDS pandemic? Imagine what integrity that would give to the good news we preach, especially the gospel that Jesus declares is good news to the poor.

Shane Claiborne

#17. I think of the Catholic worker movement and Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin and others.

Shane Claiborne

#18. Of all people, we Christians should be building friendships and protecting the dignity of human beings, even those of other faiths. I loved seeing Christians in Iraq stand guard as peacekeepers outside the mosques while Muslims gathered for prayer, and Muslims doing the same for Christians.

Shane Claiborne

#19. It is the church's job, as Dr.[Martin Luther] King says, to be the conscience of the state, not the chaplain of the state.

Shane Claiborne

#20. The more recent effort to encourage everyone to pray in common involves so many people.

Shane Claiborne

#21. 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.

Shane Claiborne

#22. I began to wonder if anyone still believed Jesus meant thos things He said. I thought if we just stopped and asked 'what if He really meant it?' it could turn the world upside down. It is a shame christians have become so normal.

Shane Claiborne

#23. We often miss the irony that the same Paul who writes "submit to the authorities" goes to jail and is condemned for subverting the authorities! He

Shane Claiborne

#24. If every Christian family brought in a child who needed a family we would put the foster care system out of business.

Shane Claiborne

#25. The world of efficiency and anonymity dehumanises us. We have to ask who the invisible people are. Who makes our clothes? Who picks our vegetables? And how are they treated?

Shane Claiborne

#26. The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.

Shane Claiborne

#27. The greatest sin of political imagination: Thinking there is no other way except the filthy rotten system we have today.

Shane Claiborne

#28. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.

Shane Claiborne

#29. Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.

Shane Claiborne

#30. We have been mentored from the very beginning by Catholic folks who are invigorating the best of the monastic spirit.

Shane Claiborne

#31. Karl Barth said it well: "We have to read the Bible in one hand ... and the newspaper in the other." Our faith should not cause us to escape this world but to engage it.

Shane Claiborne

#32. We need good laws, but no law can change a human heart - only God can do that.

Shane Claiborne

#33. Jesus did not send us into the world to make believers but to make disciples.

Shane Claiborne

#34. I don't know if you've read the Bible, and if you haven't, I think you may be in a better place than those of us who have read it so much that it has become stale.

Shane Claiborne

#35. Let's keep refusing to accept the world as it is and insisting on building the world we dream of. Don't let the haters have the last word.

Shane Claiborne

#36. This common prayer project has taken years of energy, but we see it not as a way to leave our individual churches, but as a movement we hope to see permeate the larger Church.

Shane Claiborne

#37. There is real value in these local congregations. For me, a lot of it is the value of the sacraments we share. In neighborhoods like ours, the churches provide stability.

Shane Claiborne

#38. People always want to define you by what you do. I started saying: 'i am 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.

Shane Claiborne

#39. [Jesus] said that they will know we are Christians - not by our bumper stickers and T-shirts - but by our love.

Shane Claiborne

#40. Lord, you have conquered death and triumphed over evil. There is nothing left for us to fear. Put us to work on this earth, striving for the kingdom in everything we do. Let us die to ourselves each day that we might find ourselves made new in you. Amen.

Shane Claiborne

#41. While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness, I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.

Shane Claiborne

#42. We must take a plunge into the darkness before we can fully appreciate the light.

Shane Claiborne

#43. 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.

Shane Claiborne

#44. The early Christians felt a deep collision with the empire in which they lived, and with politics as usual. They carelessly crossed party lines and built subversive friendships. And we should do that too.

Shane Claiborne

#45. Lord, in our work for justice, let us not seek after martyrdom for its own sake, but neither let us turn away from your truth because we fear suffering. Give us grace to live faithfully whatever the cost. Amen.

Shane Claiborne

#46. Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.

Shane Claiborne

#47. I just have a 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.

Shane Claiborne

#48. We should refuse to get sucked into political camps and insist on pulling the best out of all of them. That's what Jesus did - challenge the worst of each camp and pull out the best of each.

Shane Claiborne

#49. I do believe that the Church is God's primary instrument for ushering in the Kingdom (God's dream) on earth as it is in heaven, but God is not limited to use only the Church, or only Christians for that matter.

Shane Claiborne

#50. My goal is to speak the truth in love. There are a lot of people speaking the truth with no love, and there are a lot of people talking about love without much truth.

Shane Claiborne

#51. in one moment, God feels the pain of the victims of unspeakable violence, and God feels the agonizing pain of seeing a beloved child executed at the hands of the state.

Shane Claiborne

#52. The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do.

Shane Claiborne

#53. Lord, remind us that it is not always agitated uprisings and nonstop activity which lead to justice, but that change often comes through the quietcommitment of a small group of people. Help us raise our small body of people to set about quietly becoming the change we want to see in the world. Amen.

Shane Claiborne

#54. There is an innocence or purity that we see in renewals and in the Mennonite church and a new an invigorated civil rights movement.

Shane Claiborne

#55. God doesn't want to change the world without you.

Shane Claiborne

#56. We're remembering each other's heroes, too. We are learning each other's songs. We are reminding ourselves that we are a global family praying together. We're all trying to live in the light of the history that shines through the biblical narrative.

Shane Claiborne

#57. We shall do even greater things because the love that lived in the radical Christ now lives within millions of ordinary radicals all over the planet.

Shane Claiborne

#58. When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.

Shane Claiborne

#59. But as I pursued that dream of upward mobility preparing for college, things just didn't fit together. As I read Scriptures about how the last will be first, I started wondering why I was working so hard to be first.

Shane Claiborne

#60. Jeanne de Chantal, seventeenth-century founder of the Order of the Visitation, said, No matter what happens, be gentle with yourself.

Shane Claiborne

#61. God's people are not to accumulate stuff for tomorrow but to share indiscriminately with the scandalous and holy confidence that God will provide for tomorrow. Then we need not stockpile stuff in barns or a 401(k), especially when there is someone in need.

Shane Claiborne

#62. Perhaps there is no more dangerous place for a Christian to be than in safety and comfort, detached from the suffering of others.

Shane Claiborne

#63. 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[ ... ]

Shane Claiborne

#64. Recognizing that something is wrong is the first step toward changing the world.

Shane Claiborne

#65. Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.

Shane Claiborne

#66. Jesus taught us a prayer of community and reconciliation, belonging to a new people who have left the land of 'me'.

Shane Claiborne

#67. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Shane Claiborne

#68. Every 70-year-old needs a young person in their lives to mentor, and every 20-year-old needs a senior.

Shane Claiborne

#69. If we believe terrorists are past redemption, we should just rip up like 1/2 the New Testament because it was written by one.

Shane Claiborne

#70. I have this certain reluctance when it comes to this idea that we are spiritual but not religious and we want Jesus but not the church. Why can't we have both?

Shane Claiborne

#71. Looking into the eyes of people who love us may be the clearest glimpse of God many of us get in this world.

Shane Claiborne

#72. As my friend said that when people say the church is full of hypocrites, he says we always have room for more.

Shane Claiborne

#73. Look through the prayer books. You'll see lots of dates. You'll see names of Native Americans remembered. This was an open-sourcing project among so many people.

Shane Claiborne

#74. When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.

Shane Claiborne

#75. As Christians, we should be the best collaborators in the world. We should be quick to find unlikely allies and subversive friends, like Jesus did.

Shane Claiborne

#76. Too often we just do what makes sense to us and ask God to bless it.

Shane Claiborne

#77. Money has power. And so withholding money has power too, especially when a bunch of people do it together.

Shane Claiborne

#78. Certainly the institutional church is ill. It's hemorrhaging young people at an astronomical rate.

Shane Claiborne

#79. When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist. Charity

Shane Claiborne

#80. When we were starting our community a bunch of older Benedictine nuns said to us, "If you have any questions or want to pick our brains, please do - we've been doing community for about 1,500 years together so we've learned a few things."

Shane Claiborne

#81. When it comes to the big issues like immigration, everyone has a role. The government has a role. The church has a role. Every Christian has a role.

Shane Claiborne

#82. There are folks who burn the Koran and hold signs saying, "God hates fags" and all sorts of sick things - and they often hijack the headlines with hatred. We know that is not what Christ was like.

Shane Claiborne

#83. How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?

Shane Claiborne

#84. 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.

Shane Claiborne

#85. While the ghettos may have their share of violence and crime, the posh suburbs are home to more subtle demonic forces
numbness, complacency and comfort. These are the powers that can eat away at our souls.

Shane Claiborne

#86. When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way.

Shane Claiborne

#87. Clarence Jordan, co-founder of Koinonia Farm, wrote, The Good News of the resurrection is not that we shall die and go home with him, but that he is risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers with him.

Shane Claiborne

#88. There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.

Shane Claiborne

#89. When i ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, i can feel the Spirit whisper to me, 'you tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.

Shane Claiborne

#90. There are some Christians who totally disengage from politics and set their minds on heaven so much that their faith is so heavenly minded that it is no earthly good.

Shane Claiborne

#91. The more I travel, the more I see how important it is to each population to see that their history of the good and the bad is remembered by others.

Shane Claiborne

#92. I used to think you all were missionaries bringing the gospel to your neighborhood, but now I see that it is in your neighborhood that you have learned the gospel, and that you are actually missionaries to the church.

Shane Claiborne

#93. Dance until they kill you, and then we'll dance some more.

Shane Claiborne

#94. The church is a place where broken people can fall in love with a beautiful God.

Shane Claiborne

#95. I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.

Shane Claiborne

#96. The history of the church has been largely a history of "believers" refusing to believe in the way of the crucified Nazarene and instead giving in to the very temptations he resisted
power, relevancy, spectacle.

Shane Claiborne

#97. Lord, free us from our self-deception and attune our hearts to your Spirit, that we might remember how you humbled yourself, and learn to serve one another, whatever our disagreements. Amen.

Shane Claiborne

#98. The church is like Noah's ark. It stinks, but if you get out of it, you'll drown.

Shane Claiborne

#99. We have a relational problem with those who are suffering or who are different from us. All of us are most comfortable around people who are like us culturally and economically.

Shane Claiborne

#100. We know the Church wasn't born 200 years ago. It's encouraging to see some of the post-denominational churches actually wanting to reconnect with the story and the prayer life of the larger Church.

Shane Claiborne