All about: Shane Claiborne

Shane Claiborne is one of the founders of The Simple Way. This 36 year old ‘Ordinary Radical’ is a lay preacher for the simple way of Jesus Christ. An educated theologian, he is constantly poking fun at the government and getting arrested to highlight arcane laws and to get them repealed. The Simple Way is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Civil disobedience

He is a prolific writer and interprets the Bible in a simple way. He uses civil disobedience as a method to highlight his objections to the various ailments that plague civil society in America and the world. He has had himself arrested on Good Friday for praying on the private property of Lockheed Martin. He was arrested for trespassing, but the protest was against gun laws and arms proliferation by big companies and the government.

Mama T and IPT

Shane Claiborne has graduated from Eastern University in sociology. He has been an intern at Willow Creek Community Church and worked with the Princeton Theological Seminary. He has worked with Mother Teresa and his followers call her Mama T. He has also worked with the Iraq Peace Team (IPT) and seen the implications of the conflict in Iraq first hand. He is an active member for the Christian Community Development Association.

Jesus for President

In his book Jesus for President, he highlights the undesirable trend of the Church associating itself with the State. He is against the pomp and ceremony of the established Church and wants it to be more in tune with the common people and the poor. His other popular book is ‘The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.’ He advocates a simple lifestyle like Jesus and a rejection of materialism.

The Irresistible Revolution

In this book, he describes his years working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, his experiences in Iraq and his life in The Simple Way commune. He promotes the Christian tenet of ‘Love thy neighbour’ but he does it in an idiosyncratic way. He quotes the Bible liberally together with Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., the Gospels and St. Francis. He has a way with words and is often quoted by other people. One of his famous quotes is, ‘There are some things to die for but none to kill for.” Another popular one is, ‘When we truly discover how to love our neighbour as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.’ There have been ups and downs in his life. In 2007, everything he owned got lost in a fire. Shane Claiborne got married in 2010 to Katie Jo Brotherton. Whether up or down, Shane Claiborne shows Christian patience and people listen when he speaks.