BOOK REVIEW: Claiborne, Shane. The Irresistible Revolution. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan. 2006.

Shane Claiborne prefers not to be labeled by contemporary culture because he feels that he does not fit any of the boxes that people attempt to put him. However, due to his lifestyle and beliefs, labels are inevitable. He accepts that he is “an ordinary radical” (20, 130). Radical because he is returning to the root of Christianity, and ordinary because many people during Jesus’ time lived in this same way (130). Therefore, the term ordinary must assist the term radical in defining his lifestyle. Why does contemporary culture consider Claiborne’s life radical?

Claiborne attempts to live out Christ’s command to love your neighbor as yourself. In order to do this, he and some friends started an experiment in Philadelphia called Simple Way. Simple Way is an incarnational ministry in which participants live with the poor and oppressed of Philadelphia, attempting to “love God, love people, and follow Jesus” (121).

Drawing from his experiences at Simple Way and around the world, Claiborne has written The Irresistible Revolution. In this book, he illuminates some problems of Christianity, and articulates a solution for them. Claiborne argues that we begin taking seriously Christ’s commands through little acts of love and grace on a relational level, and through this bottom-up revolution we set “the oppressed and…oppressors free” (266) with a counter-cultural way of life. Claiborne supports this thesis through three major themes throughout his book: the rescue of Christianity from culture, the purpose of the church, and living a kingdom life.

Claiborne maintains that the Christian community needs to confess its sins of “getting drunk on the cocktails of culture” (357). The line “where Christianity ends and America begins” (193) has become thin. To thicken this line, Claiborne has begun loving, forgiving, and showing grace to marginalized people—foreign ideas to Americans who keep a safe distance from people who are unlike themselves. By rescuing the church from culture, Claiborne defines a new purpose for the church.

The church should be a community of activists and lovers who “love God, love people, and follow Jesus” (296, 121), talk about orthodoxy and orthopraxy (147-148), and support people above issues (293). The church is the model for living a kingdom life.

Claiborne believes that Christians play a monumental part in bringing the kingdom of God to earth because we are the “flesh and blood of Jesus alive in the world” (79). He believes invoking the kingdom of God on earth demands a holistic lifestyle that involves service, love, grace, finances, and politics.

Claiborne presents a convicting argument for Christians to live a holistic, sacrificial, and kingdom life. Additionally, his missiological approach to ministry is innovative for the power hungry society we embody. However, he does leave things open ended. The emerging church focuses its energy on finding God in areas of culture that people in the past labeled Godless. This focus brings the kingdom of God to places it has never been. However, Claiborne asserts that Christianity is counter-cultural, and does not address this pertinent issue.

Additionally, Claiborne gives little advice for people who are enmeshed in our affluent society. If Christians play a role entreating the kingdom of God to earth, then the affluent areas of society need a contextual, prophetic voice in order to initiate this new kind of life, right? Claiborne’s answer is unclear.