The Irresistible Revolution, Updated and Expanded: Living as an Ordinary Radical

by Shane Claiborne

Praying Like Jesus by James Mulholland (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001) is a decent one.

The words of the prophets, like in Amos 5:21–24, even declare that God hates our worship and singing if they are devoid of justice, and God demands that they cease until we practice justice for the poor and oppressed.

The story of Minucius is a beautiful glimpse of irresistible revolution. As a lawyer who was persecuting Christians, Minucius understood the empire and the religious establishment well. But he soon caught the contagion of love. Here’s what he had to say about Christians before his conversion in AD 200: “They despise temples as if they were tombs. They despise titles of honor and the purple robe of high government office though hardly able themselves to cover their nakedness. . . . They love one another before being acquainted. They practice a cult of lust, calling one another brother and sister indiscriminately.”

And here’s what he said after his conversion: “Why do they have no altars, no temples, no images? . . . What temple shall I build him [God] when the whole world, the work of his hands, cannot contain him? Should we not rather make a sanctuary for him in our souls? The whole heaven and the whole earth and all things beyond the confines of the world are filled with God. . . . I would almost say: we live with him. What a beautiful sight it is for God when a Christian mocks the clatter of the tools of death and the horror of the executioner; when he defends and upholds his liberty in the face of kings and princes, obeying God alone to whom he belongs. Among us, boys and frail women laugh to scorn torture and the gallows cross and all the other horrors of execution”

There’s a book, website, and even an app for your phone: www.commonprayer.net.

Do you all have a worship service? We have chosen not to start a church but rather to join the church in our neighborhood. We saw that what most inner cities need is not more churches but a unified, revitalized church. Rather than do our own worship services, we join congregations in our area. That may mean going to the storefront Pentecostal service or heading to Mass with the Catholics down the street. I saw a T-shirt that said, “Don’t go to church . . . be the church.”

What we can say with confidence is that Jesus would not ignore them. “Give to everyone who asks” means “do not ignore people.” We can always give dignity, attention, time, a listening ear. Sometimes we give money, sometimes not. But we can always give love.

Ironically, giving money can be a cheap way to love someone. Many folks give money because they don’t want to have an interaction; they just want to get someone off their back. There are times when giving money can even be a way to avoid the responsibility that a real relationship might demand. So I want to suggest, sure, give money, but give more than money . . . give yourself.

When Jesus speaks in Matthew 25 about caring for “the least of these,” the actions he speaks of are not distant acts of charity but personal actions of compassion—visiting the prisoners, caring for the sick, welcoming the strangers, sharing food with th...

I like keeping my phone on airplane mode most of the time and checking it on occasion, but on my terms, not its terms.

I grew up thinking of prayer mainly as bringing our requests before God. It could feel a little like the old story of the kid going up to bed who said, “I’m going to pray now. Does anybody want anything?” As if God were Santa Claus. That may be part of prayer—I think God wants to hear the desires of our hearts, our anxieties and hopes—but I’ve also come to see that prayer is not just about trying to get God to do what we want God to do. It is just as much about getting ourselves to do what God wants us to do, and training ourselves to be the kind of people God wants us to be.

There’s a story in the Gospels where the disciples come to Jesus and say, “There’s a guy down the street doing miracles and prophesying, but he’s not one of us. Should we tell him to stop?” Jesus says absolutely not. “If he is not against us, he is for us.” Sadly, we Christians have often said, “If we don’t have the same religion or political beliefs, we can’t work together.” That’s a shame. We should be the best collaborators in the world.

There are certainly times I am scared, but they aren’t always when I expect to be scared. One of the scariest moments in our community was when the police raided our house (on “accident”) and the SWAT team threw everyone on the floor and ripped one of the women’s shirts. Those are moments when you think, “Who do we call now?!”

I find it helpful instead to ask what God’s will is and how my life might fit into that. Maybe that’s what it means to seek first the kingdom of God—the world does not revolve around us, but rather we are revolving around God.

The question then becomes how we can contribute to the redemptive work God is doing. Instead of asking God to bless what we’re doing, we can align ourselves with what God has already promised to bless—the poor, the merciful, the peacemakers—and know with confidence that God is blessing us, or more important, that we are blessing God.

My wife always gets frustrated that people don’t ask her what she would do if someone attacked me. And apparently—according to my sources—she would kick them in the nuts—or ovaries—and we’d run like crazy. And she is fast.

We live in a nation where gun violence kills more than ten thousand people a year, and we are one of the only industrialized countries that still executes its own citizens. The US has 5 percent of the world’s population, and 25 percent of the world’s prison population. That makes us the world’s largest jailor. Military spending is about $20,000 a second, and we have the capacity of 100,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs in our arsenal. So it is time for a revolution. Pro-life doesn’t just mean anti-abortion. Let’s be pro-life from the womb to the tomb, from the cradle to the grave. To be for life means standing against death in all of its ugly forms, and against everything that dehumanizes and suffocates the good in us.

This contemporary school for conversion, which we have called a “new monasticism,” is producing a grassroots ecumenism and a prophetic witness within the North American church that is diverse in form but characterized by the following marks: 1. Relocation to the abandoned places of empire. 2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us. 3. Hospitality to the stranger.

4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities, combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation. 5. Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church. 6. Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community, along the lines of the old novitiate. 7. Nurturing common life among members of an intentional community. 8. Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children. 9. Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life. 10. Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us, along with support of our local economies. 11. Peacemaking in the midst of violence, and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18:15–20. 12. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.