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

Claiborne, Shane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310343704 ISBN 13: 9780310343707

Publisher: Zondervan, 2016

Synopsis

Join Shane Claiborne as he invites you to rediscover the biblical practice of loving your neighbor, using unconventional examples from his own life to stir up questions about the church and the world while challenging you to truly live out your faith.

In this updated and expanded edition of The Irresistible Revolution, bestselling author and activist Shane Claiborne challenges us to remember that the Great Commission sends us into the world not just to make believers but to form disciples who know how to love the way God calls us to.

In The Irresistible Revolution, Shane describes an authentic faith rooted in belief, action, and love, inviting us into a movement of the Spirit that begins inside each of us and extends into a broken world. He asks and answers key questions like:

• How can I sustain my faith and combat burnout?
• Should Christians be involved in politics?
• How does God want me to spend my life?

With new material throughout the book, Shane adds new stories, shares what his community looks like now, and brings you fresh inspiration to live out this message in practical ways. Come join the revolution.

Praise for The Irresistible Revolution:

"Shane Claiborne is a living experiment--evangelical zeal mixed with grassroots activism; passion for Jesus mixed with prison time for feeding the poor. This is a rant for love, aimed at cowards seeking courage."

--Aiden Enns, publisher, Geez Magazine

"Written with endearing humor and astonishing courage, The Irresistible Revolution describes a young man's embrace of uncompromising commitment to Jesus' teachings."

--Kathy Kelly, author; cofounder of Voices in the Wilderness

About this title

About the Author

Shane Claiborne is a prominent speaker, activist, and bestselling author. Shane worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and founded The Simple Way in Philadelphia. He heads up Red Letter Christians, a movement of folks who are committed to living “as if Jesus meant the things he said.” Shane is a champion for grace, which has led him to jail advocating for the homeless, and to places like Iraq and Afghanistan to stand against war. Now, grace fuels his passion to end the death penalty.

Shane’s books include Jesus for President, Red Letter Revolution, Common Prayer, Follow Me to Freedom, Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, his classic The Irresistible Revolution, Executing Grace, and Beating Guns. He has been featured in a number of films, including Another World Is Possible and Ordinary Radicals. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Shane speaks over one hundred times a year, nationally and internationally. His work has appeared in Esquire, SPIN, Christianity Today, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and he has been on everything from Fox News and Al Jazeera to CNN and NPR. He’s given academic lectures at Harvard, Princeton, Liberty, Duke, and Notre Dame. 

Shane speaks regularly at denominational gatherings, festivals, and conferences around the globe.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Irresistible Revolution

Living as an Ordinary Radical

By Shane Claiborne

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2016 The Simple Way
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-310-34370-7

Contents

Foreword by Jim Wallis, 13, 
Introduction, 17, 
Author's Note, 29, 
1. When Christianity Was Still Safe, 35, 
2. Resurrecting Church, 51, 
3. In Search of a Christian, 63, 
4. When Comfort Becomes Uncomfortable, 81, 
5. Another Way of Doing Life, 101, 
6. Economics of Rebirth, 147, 
7. Pledging Allegiance When Kingdoms Collide, 181, 
8. Jesus Made Me Do It!, 215, 
9. Jesus Is for Losers, 235, 
10. Extremists for Love, 257, 
11. Making Revolution Irresistible, 277, 
12. Growing Smaller and Smaller ... Until We Take Over the World, 301, 
13. Crazy but Not Alone, 327, 
14. Scrap Notes from the Revolution: Frequently Asked Questions from the Past Decade, 341, 
Appendix 1: Local Revolutions and Ordinary Radicals, 369, 
Appendix 2: Marks of a New Monasticism, 379, 
Appendix 3: To Iraq, 381, 
Appendix 4: Holy Mischief, 385, 

CHAPTER 1

WHEN CHRISTIANITY WAS STILL SAFE

It's what always happens to the saints and prophets who are dangerous: we bronze them, we drain them of their passion and life and trap them in stained-glass windows and icons, confining them safely in memories of the past. St. Francis becomes a birdbath, Malcolm X is put on a stamp, and Martin Luther King gets a holiday. And Jesus gets commercialized, whether it's the plastic night-lights or the golden crucifixes. (And now there is a bobbing-head "Buddy Jesus" for your car and the "Jesus is my homeboy" T-shirt.) It becomes hard to know who Jesus really is, much less to imagine that Jesus ever laughed, cried, or had poop that smelled.

I can remember when Christianity was still safe, comfortable, trendy. I grew up in the Bible Belt, in East Tennessee, where there's a church building on nearly every corner. I can't remember meeting anyone Jewish or Muslim, and I distinctly remember being dissuaded from dating a Catholic girl because she "prayed to Mary." I attended two or three different youth groups, whichever had the best entertainment and drew the largest crowd. Church was a place where there were cute girls, free junk food, and cheap snowboarding trips. I discovered a Christianity that entertained me with quirky songs and velcro walls.

In middle school, I had a sincere "conversion" experience. We took a trip to a large Christian festival with bands, speakers, and late-night pranks. One night a short, bald preacherman named Duffy Robbins gave an invitation to "accept Jesus," and nearly our whole youth group went forward (a new concept for most of us), crying and snotting, hugging people we didn't know. I was born again. The next year, we went to that same festival, and most of us went forward again (it was so good the first time) and got born again, again. In fact, we looked forward to it every year. I must have gotten born again six or eight times, and it was great every time. (I highly recommend it.)

But then you start to think there must be more to Christianity, more than just laying your life and sins at the foot of the cross. I came to realize that preachers were telling me to lay my life at the foot of the cross and weren't giving me anything to pick up. A lot of us were hearing "don't smoke, don't drink, don't sleep around" and naturally started asking, "Okay, well, that was pretty much my life, so what do I do now?" Where were the do's? And nobody seemed to have much to offer us. Handing out tracts at the mall just didn't seem lik

Edition details

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0310343704
• ISBN 13: 9780310343707
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400