Shane Claiborne urges us to stop being the church we complain about and start being the church we dream of.

With tears and laughter, Shane Claiborne is an author, activist and peacemaker who unveils the tragic messes we’ve made of our world and the tangible hope that another world is possible.
Claiborne is a founding partner of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner-city Philadelphia that has helped connect radical faith communities around the world, many of whom have become known as a “new monasticism.” These communities seek to follow Jesus, to rediscover the spirit of the early Church, and to incarnate the “Kingdom of God.” At The Simple Way, their revolution is lived out locally, as days are spent feeding the hungry, doing collaborative arts with children, running a community store, hanging out with neighbours and reclaiming trash-strewn lots by planting gardens.

Claiborne graduated from Eastern University and did graduate work at Princeton Seminary. His ministry experience is varied, from a 10-week stint working alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta to a year spent serving at Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago. During the most recent war in Iraq, Claiborne spent three weeks in Baghdad with the Iraq Peace Team.

At The Salvation Army’s Urban Forum in Atlanta last January, Claiborne was a guest speaker on the topic of “scandalous grace.” In an interview for Salvationist, Major Geoff Ryan sat down with him to discuss his ministry.

Ryan: Did The Simple Way come about because you felt something lacking in your faith and at your home church?

Claiborne: There’s a danger that older, religious forms of Christianity can inoculate us against the real thing. The experience I had with Christianity growing up was so belief-based. I thought that was all there is to Christianity and so I wasn’t really interested in it. When I met people in Philadelphia who were more than just “believers,” but actually disciples and followers, I was drawn to it. And that’s what gave birth to The Simple Way, this sense that we wanted to be the church that we dreamed about. When we started, we had a lot of pretension-somehow we had this idea that we were the first people to do this in hundreds of years-and then we saw people doing it everywhere, which was really refreshing.

Ryan: The Simple Way pulls together elements of Roman Catholicism and Catholic orders, yet remains Evangelical and very biblically Protestant. In some ways you have created a hybrid, a sort of reconciliation movement between different Christian tribes. Was that intentional?

Claiborne: Yes, that is very intentional. People used to ask me if I was Protestant or Catholic and I would say no. Yet now I would say yes, because the more I look at the traditions of our faith and all the different streams, there exists a continuity-they come together and I can see both of them in our community.

Catholics feel that what we are doing is refreshing, sort of humble renewal, and that makes it different from most of the “emerging church” stuff that tends to split off. We are very parish-minded, for example-we go to mass in our neighbourhood. I actually like going to mass in the morning and then attending the Baptist service at night so that I get the best of both worlds. It feels pretty good!

Ryan: Would you say categorically that Christians should be pacifists?

Claibourne: I’m careful about the words we use, whether “pacifist,” “evangelical” or any label. I would like to make sure what we mean by that. I would say, along with theologian Walter Wink, that Jesus abhors passivity and violence, and that he teaches us a third way that is neither fight nor flight and that is able to deal with evil in a way that does not mirror it. For me, when I look at Jesus it is impossible to hold both the cross and a sword.
Most of the time we lack imagination in how to deal with violence and we aren’t willing to face it. It’s not that we’ve tried non-violence and it’s failed, but we haven’t tried non-violence with the same willingness to die and risk it and put resources forth for non-violent alternatives. I would say I’m a peacemaker because Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) This means that I’m actively non-violent and I try to interrupt violence wherever I see it and be consistently pro-life from conception to the grave.

Ryan: Much of your way of doing ministry also describes The Salvation Army, certainly the early Salvation Army. We sign a Soldiers’ Covenant that contains our doctrines and beliefs. This, in turn, leads to a certain lifestyle. In many ways The Salvation Army is a Protestant order, yet our main metaphor is one of war and violence. Now that I live in an area where violence is common, I’m finding the dichotomy increasingly difficult to resolve. So many things that you do are so similar to The Salvation Army, except in form. How do you handle the militarism of The Salvation Army?

Claiborne: The thing I love about The Salvation Army is that it is peculiar. There is something about it that is set apart so that it becomes a “contrast culture.” I’m not familiar with the exact theology around peacemaking within The Salvation Army and how it gets worked out. The first time I came to a Salvation Army event, my friend and I were looking around and there were uniforms everywhere. We thought it was awesome-as long as everyone understands the reasons why!

Jesus and Paul were always doing this, using military language and spinning it on its head. Jesus regularly drew images from the imperial lexicon. Even words we use commonly today-such as evangelical, evangelion or gospel-come from the idiom of the Roman Empire. So I love it! The word we use for the Kingdom of God-basilica-is the same word that was used for the empire and its realms. So in this sense I get it.

The tricky thing is that rather than transforming culture, language can become infected by culture again. For example, Constantine and others have used that same language to do horrific things in the name of Christianity, so we need to be careful. I don’t know how this has worked itself out within the denominational tradition of The Salvation Army, but we are writing a book right now with a chapter called “A New Kind of Commander-in-Chief,” referring to Jesus. It provokes the imagination with language that we identify with, but it also doesn’t compromise the peculiarity and absurdity of that notion-like the image of the Amish running America’s department of homeland security or the war on terror. We see the integrity within that paradox and its inherent possibility to make a safer, more sustainable world.

Ryan: Is there a parable or Gospel snapshot that is seminal to your ministry?

Claiborne: I like the Sermon on the Mount. I read and reflect on it all the time. This was Jesus’ “State of The Union” address, his proclamation. If we can get that down, we will be in pretty good shape. I love the prophet Hosea because of his image of a romance with God, which I think is what we were created for. And I enjoy Isaiah 58, which speaks about the kind of fast we have chosen and how we are to spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry, as well as using imagery of rebuilding the ancient ruins.

As far as a specific parable or story, I love the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee. I can see myself in the Pharisee, first as a conservative Christian that used to say, “Thank God, I’m not like those people,” and more recently as one with a more “progressive” self-righteousness that says, “Thank you that I only eat organic food, unlike this chemical-consuming carnivore!” I’m still very self-righteous, and I love that image that we are to beat our chest and join the groaning of other people and of creation, not separating ourselves from people who are struggling.

Ryan: Have you projected much into the future? What will you be doing 10 years from now? Will The Simple Way still exist in the same way?

Claiborne: I hope that 10 years from now we are still hanging out with homeless people, playing with kids and doing all the things that sparked that energy and passion within us. I hope we are still clinging to our first love. Revelation is beautiful when it talks about not forgetting our first love and the innocence of our faith (see Revelation 2:4). I hope we don’t fall in love with anything big to the point that we forget the small things.

There is a lot of shifting happening within the Church, the culture and Evangelicalism. It’s a gift to be alive and be one voice in a harmony of voices that are creating a healthier dialogue in the Church. I hope that we are still doing stuff in our neighbourhood and that we are able to connect the dots between other faith communities. I think we are getting better at that and at reminding each other that we are not alone. That’s what we are spending a lot of energy doing right now. I see more and more fruit coming out of those connections.

Shane Claiborne writes and travels extensively, speaking about peacemaking, social justice and Jesus. He is featured in the DVD series Another World Is Possible and is the author of the book The Irresistible Revolution. Visit www.thesimpleway.org.

Reprinted from Salvationist June 2007