April 6, 2006

Book Review
Ordinary Resurrection

Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
By Shane Claiborne
Zondervan, 2006
Paperback, 368 pages, $12.95

By KILLIAN NOE
Contributing Writer

When was the last time you drank a tall glass of iced tea with a sprig of mint on a blistering day? O.K., maybe never if you are from the Northwest. But let me tell you, it is refreshing. Much like Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne.

It is the personal account of a young man’s journey that begins in Memphis, Tennessee and through the slums of Calcutta, into Philadelphia’s most forgotten neighborhoods and even to the war zones of Iraq. Claiborne begins his travels with the realization that the world doesn’t need any more churches; what is needed are more people who are willing to follow Jesus’ way of love.

Having grown up in a mainstream denomination in the south, I identified deeply with Claiborne’s journey. Like me, Claiborne had grown tired of Christianity’s emphasis on doctrine and “beliefs” and had become much more interested in “practices.”

What most of us need are practices that keep the doors of our hearts open to transformation. The transformation of a handful of open-hearted people just might lead to the transformation of a blighted neighborhood, a racially, economically segregated city, a warring world.

The Christianity of what Jim Wallis calls “affluent conformity and God Bless America only” is not very compelling. But Claiborne stops short of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

He seeks to reclaim the essence of that earlier movement which began some 2,000 years ago when the hearts of a handful of men and women were captured by an “irresistible revolutionary” who taught us to love our enemies instead of killing them, to share our wealth with the poor instead of stockpiling it, and to side with the most vulnerable instead of ignoring them.

While a college student, Claiborne learned of a community of homeless families who had moved into a dilapidated cathedral in the “badlands” of North Philly and were about to be evicted. Claiborne organized a movement on campus which came to be known as the YACHT Club (Youth Against Complacency and Homelessness), resulting in confrontation with the fire department, the police, and the Catholic bishop. Eventually, the “powers” reneged on the eviction order and granted the families living inside the cathedral the right to make the old church their home. But the real miracle was what happened within and among those families and the students who had started out as their advocates. They became real community.

Claiborne’s quirky sense of humor sprinkled throughout the book is an unexpected treat. But his humor does not obscure the seriousness of his quest. One day the community within the cathedral received a box of donations from one of the wealthy congregations near their college. Someone had written in magic marker on the cardboard box, “for the homeless.” Claiborne recalls excitedly opening the box which was filled with microwave popcorn.

“ My first instinct was to laugh. We barely had electricity, much less a microwave. My second instinct was to cry because of how far the church had become removed from the poor.”

I like to think of communities such as the one Claiborne helped found as part of the “mustard seed conspiracy.” Jesus said that the “kingdom of God is like a mustard seed,” one of the smallest of all seeds, and wherever it takes root it grows and spreads until it transforms the entire landscape. n