Shane Claiborne Quotes

The church is like Noah's ark. It stinks, but if you get out of it, you'll drown.

Let's keep refusing to accept the world as it is and insisting on building the world we dream of. Don't let the haters have the last word.

Jesus taught us a prayer of community and reconciliation, belonging to a new people who have left the land of 'me'.

We should refuse to get sucked into political camps and insist on pulling the best out of all of them. That's what Jesus did - challenge the worst of each camp and pull out the best of each.

It's not that hard to say slavery is wrong after we've abolished it.

There is a certain power when old and young come together - we can do more together than we can on our own.

If you have two coats you have stolen one. We have no right to have more than we need when someone else has less than they need.

Discontentment is a gift. It's the stuff that changes the world.

No one has seen God, but as we love one another, God lives in us.

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.

People had taught me what Christians believe, but no one had told me how Christians live.

As my friend said that when people say the church is full of hypocrites, he says we always have room for more.

We need good laws, but no law can change a human heart - only God can do that.

We have a relational problem with those who are suffering or who are different from us. All of us are most comfortable around people who are like us culturally and economically.

When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.

Faith is being idealistic, because we have made an idol out of the status quo.

Our churches should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated.

There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.

Faith is believing in the impossible because we have a God who is master of impossible.

To refer to the Church as a building is to call people 2 x 4's.

The love that makes community is the willingness to do someone else's dirty work.

I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me.

Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.

Certainly the institutional church is ill. It's hemorrhaging young people at an astronomical rate.

The best critique of what is wrong is the practice of something better. So let's stop complaining about the church we've experienced and work on becoming the church we dream of.

Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.

God doesn't want to change the world without you.

Love has no limits. Compassion has no party. It is the responsibility of every human being and every institution to end poverty and to interrupt injustice.

Too often we just do what makes sense to us and ask God to bless it.

There are financial bankruptcies in many parts of the church. No question about that. But we see the possibility of reimagining and revitalizing the church.

If every Christian family brought in a child who needed a family we would put the foster care system out of business.

The true atheist is the one who refuses to see God's image in the face of their neighbour.

David, Moses, Saul of Tarsus, these were all people who did terrible terrible things  -  they were murderers. The Bible would be a lot shorter without grace.

I would love to see the Church on the right side of history.

[Jesus] said that they will know we are Christians - not by our bumper stickers and T-shirts - but by our love.

I say let's be idealists. "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not yet see" (Hebrews 11:1).

Jesus did not send us into the world to make believers but to make disciples.

Because you can poke someone's eye out legally doesn't mean you should and that it's right. The Bible teaches us a more perfect justice.

I have this certain reluctance when it comes to this idea that we are spiritual but not religious and we want Jesus but not the church. Why can't we have both?

The question becomes not just how to accumulate more, but how to covet less.

We can ignore suffering no matter where we live. There are people who live a few miles from me who never see much poverty or the injustices that live on our doorstep.

We know the Church wasn't born 200 years ago. It's encouraging to see some of the post-denominational churches actually wanting to reconnect with the story and the prayer life of the larger Church.

In fact, the Gospel shows us change comes from the bottom rather than the top, from an old rugged cross rather than a gold royal throne.

This common prayer project has taken years of energy, but we see it not as a way to leave our individual churches, but as a movement we hope to see permeate the larger Church.

It is the church's responsibility, the government's responsibility, and the personal responsibility of every one of us to love.

There is real value in these local congregations. For me, a lot of it is the value of the sacraments we share. In neighborhoods like ours, the churches provide stability.

We're not church planters. We are community planters and, as we work in our communities, we join local churches.

Somehow Jesus's reputation has survived all the embarrassing things that Christians have done in his name.

When it comes to the big issues like immigration, everyone has a role. The government has a role. The church has a role. Every Christian has a role.

Sometimes our tunnel vision is limited to what we see outside our window. Until racial injustice becomes personal then I don't think it moves us in our gut.