Customer Reviews
a call to reckless generosity and selfless love - By: Jeremy Williams, 03 Oct 2008 
Shane Claiborne has found a different Jesusin the gospels than the mainstream church. He's found a Jesus who is homeless, a friend of the poor, who rails against authority & undermines the empire, who tells a rich man to sell everything he owns & give the money away. This is Claiborne's model, & he has done his best to find it, live it & prove such a life is possible.
The book follows his journey, from the disillusionment with the church of his youth, & the ambitious & wealthy `megachurches' where he trained. He talks about how he came to bond with the poorin Philadelphia, & then travelled to Calcutta to see if Mother Theresa offered a better demonstration of Christ than the ones around him. He visits Iraqin the middle of the war, testing Jesus' call to be a peacemaker. He helps stage a `re-distribution' on Wall Street & heckles George W Bush at the Republican conference. He is,in his own words, an `ordinary radical' - radically different, but rootedin real people & real situations.
Claiborne rejects the idea that Christianity has nothing more to offer than some distant & otherworldly heaven. It's a great reminder that the church is a missionary agency: we're meant to go to the poor & the hungry, not wait for them to come to us. There's loads of good stuff about power, simplicity, & community, that's worth coming back to. It's a call to reckless generosity & selfless lovein a world of "big beasts & little prophets." It is hopeful, expectant, uncompromising.
'The Irresistable Revolution'is a provocative book, raising more issues than it answers. That's not an approach that everyone will appreciate, but for those ready to ask difficult questions of themselves & their faith, this is a challenge you'll want to take seriously.
An absolutely essential read - By: i wrote this, 17 Sep 2008 
If Shane Claiborne keeps writing books like this he is going to get himself assasinated. I can think of no greater accolade then that.
refreshing - By: Joanne, 07 Sep 2008 I found this book really encouraging. It gave me a lot to think about & reminded me of lots of things I believe are importantin terms of the two principle commandments of the Bible "Love God with all your heart, mind & soul. Love your neighbour as yourself" 15 to 20 years ago I had read books by Jim Wallis, Ron Sider & Tony Campolo which seemed to call many Western Christians to thinking about justice & a simpler lifestyle.
Shane Claiborne starts to understand what God says about the poor & loving others almost by accident when he is studying theology at a US Bible school - one that I guess would be described as liberal rather than conservativein US terms. Some friends invite him to come & hang out with some of their friends who happen to be homeless.
The book is SC's story & the story of some of the people he meets along the way with whom he shares part of his life. It includes much of his struggles as he evaluates Scripture trying to see it afresh & not within all the confines of his backgroundin church culture. He works a few months with Mother Theresa, was involvedin living with the homeless, livesin a poor communityin Philadelphia, went to Iraq with a group promoting peace & is astonished by the love & risks that Iraqi Christians would take to protect their American brothers.
It reminded me of the community that followers of Christ should be developing & not just with one another. It made me go back & read Matt 25 when Jesus talks about God's judgement involving the way we treat the poor, the sick, the foreigner, the criminal etc. It is uncomfortable.
I did not think SC was proposing everyone do what he does. He is not trying to recruit followers. He is prompting us to think about how we live as followers of Christ an to be more open to those marginalisedin society, accepting people unlike usin our homes & lives.
There were parts of the book which annoyed me & I felt that he perhaps did some things just to provoke a reaction. I felt it possibly could have
been 100 pages shorter & still got the same message over. The style with frequent asidesin parenthesis, which work if you are giving a speech, but are irritating when used over & overin a written work got a bit wearing. The style seemed written for students & early twenties, although the content should actually be for all ages.
However overall I found it deeply encouraging & challenging. I am reminded of how community with the poor is not just about justice or improving their situation, it is also about the rich getting the opportunity to know God morein profound ways through individuals who come into our lives. That seemed to be the way Mother Theresa saw it & I remember one incidentin my own life of seeing God's image more clearly through a severly disabled, poor beggar who sat patiently waiting for gifts. He apalled me at first, until I saw the loving way some other interacted with him & despite the fact he could not speek his openess to others.
Communityin the love of God is not a duty, it is a gift for all, but requires a lot of work.
Serious about being the change you want to see ? - By: Jeremy Bevan, 08 Jul 2008 One of the most powerful & engaging autobiographical works from a `frontline' Christian activist I've readin a long time. It's impossible not to like Shane Claiborne, whose infectious love for Jesus & total commitment to bringing his love to all, whether North Philadelphia's poor or the bombed citizens of Iraq, is plain to see. Claiborne is someone all Christians (and others) could learn from for sheer breadth of sympathy across the Christian traditions, sense of vocation, & depth of theological understanding blended with sassy political commitment to bringing about change. A must-read.
Where is the gospel? - By: Jon Mason, 23 Feb 2008 
I should say at the outset, I think I'm out on a limb here. Everyone else seems to raving about this book. But I'm not so sure.
First, the good stuff. I think Shane Claiborne (SC) writes boldly & strikingly about various topics. Much of the book is a wake-up call for those who have got used to dull, timid, worldly, 'big', Christianity. He is immensely quotable: "Most of the time when I see Christian superstars like Jerry Falwell or Al Sharpton, I feel I'm watching professional wrestling. There's a lot of shouting & sweating, but the people seem too superhuman, & I'm not convinced all the moves are real." (p27)
He has some excellent material on the value of singleness. (p109-111) That's humbled me, & reminded me that I need to try to promote thatin a Biblical way. Then there's some good stuff about the worthlessness of "cool": "...we must be either hot or cold, because if we are lukewarm (an old-school way of saying "cool"), we will be spit out of God's mouth"! (p230) There are lots of other helpful areas too, mostly only a few pages at a time.
He has lots of great stories, many of which would be excellent sermon-illustration material!
Now the bad stuff:
1) It's *very* Ameri-centric. Big chunks of the book are spent critiquing the Christian Right. Most of that didn't resonate with my experience of the Churchin the UK. We don't do flags on the platform, singing anthems, rallying our troups into war or party politics. All that felt a bit meaningless to me as a Brit - who am I to criticise Christians livingin another country & culture?
2) Because it's the experiences of a single guy, livingin community, doing some wild & crazy things, I just don't see how much of what he says relates to me. I mean, I have a wife & 3 kids. I can't exactly move to Iraq for a while, or open up my house as a homeless shelter (not that I think there's nearly so much need here anyway - see point 1!). What he has effectively done is to abandon his entire culture. Now that's great for him, because he wasin a position to do it. But the huge, vast, majority simply aren't. I'm not prepared to because I don't see that there's anything inherently wrong with having a house, or a car, or a job, or food. Parts of our culture are good (schools, hospitals, homes). If you want to live outside popular culture, fine. But I'd rather live out the Christ-life within it. Which is equally as difficult, & arguably more so. He's advocating a form of monastic asceticism that I'm not convinced is Biblical.
3) He redefines well-established theological terms. What he means by words like "evangelical", "conversion" & "gospel" are simply not the same as orthodox, Biblical, Christianity. For example: "Conversion is not an event but a process, a process of slowly tearing ourselves away from the clutches of the culture." No it isn't. Conversion has nothing to do with releasing oneself from the bonds of culture. It's the act of repentance & faith, when we repond to the gospel. Forgive me if I can't see the link between historic conversion & SC's. I suppose "sanctification" would be a more correct word for what he's talking about.
4) He caricatures the church.
"...if someone had a heart-attack on Sunday morning, the paramedics would have to take the pulse of half the congregation before they would find the dead person" (p43) OK, very funny. But certainly not my experience of good, Biblical, modern church. He gives the impression that churches are all navel-gazing, introverted, holy huddles with no interest or ability to communicate with the outside world. Well, again, there are loads of churches that care for the poor, the lonely, the disposessed. In Ipswich, UK, we have "Street Pastors" who are outin the clubs & pubs at the weekend, looking after the drunks & the dropouts; there is a pregnancy crisis centre, a drug rehab centre is soon to open. There's work amongst prostitutes & the homeless. We do care. Perhaps not enough, perhaps we could do with being better resourced. But we *are* trying to live out a life of faithin our culture, & it hurts a bit to be told we aren't.
5) He minimises the importance of theology:
"I learnt more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than a systematic theology ever taught me" (p51) Now, I know the guy is a firm post-modern & that post-moderns like stories more than facts etc etc. But, that kind of statement calls into question the whole value of theology. What did the tears of homeless mothers *actually* teach him? That sharing is good? That we should care for each other? Great - but not much about God. What can those things *possibly* teach us about God? We are madein his likeness, not hein ours. We don't learn about God by looking at fallen sinners (no matter how vulnerable or holy); we learn about God from the Word. SC has it the wrong way around.
Again, "When people ask me if I am Protestant or Catholic, I just answer 'yes.'. And when people ask me if we are evangelicals, I...say, 'Absolutely, we want to spread the kingdom of God like crazy.'" Well, I'm sorry, but the differences between Protestant & Catholic theology *are* important. They espouse completely different ideas about how to relate to God, the authority of the Bible, the meaning of salvation etc etc. They're not just minor tertiary issues, they affect the central tennets of the faith. Theology matters!
6) I'm not sure what his "gospel" is. Throughout the whole book, I could find barely a mention of sin, salvation, or the cross. What there was a lot of is loving our neighbours. Which of course, is good. But surely it's not the whole picture? He seems to see Jesus as an inspirational figure, who showed us how to live & love well. But that's not the gospel of Paul, or of evangelicalism. One story will serve to illustrate the point: It was the time when a bunch of his friends slept on Wall Street, New York, as an act of solidarity with the poor. (p118-119) Then at a certain time, they unfurled banners which read, "Stop terrorism", "Share", "Love", & a quote from Ghandi about greed. They drew pictures on the pavements & blew bubbles, & hugged & laughed. And SC describes it as "bringing God & Mammon together". Forgive me, but, if you look carefully, where is Godin that? Where is the Biblical gospelin there? Sure, it's a worthwhile enterprise to standin solidarity with the poor, & to stand up against corporate greed. But don't make out that this was some sort of outreach with the gospel.
If the church adopted SC's ideas, then we would probably be more happy, more loving, more radical, & probably bigger. We would be nicer people. But would those things lead to more being saved from an eternity without God? I somehow doubt it. What we really need is to be motivated by the truth of the Jesus-filled, Biblical gospel, & to reach out to people with the saving message of the cross.
