Shane Claiborne on Campus

On Monday, October 24 self-described "ordinary radical" Shane Claiborne spoke before a packed house in Greene Chapel about the walls people build, and the Christian responsibility to tear them down.

"I love that old saying that the gospel should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable," Claiborne said.

Claiborne, a native of Tennessee, co-founded a community called the Simple Way in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Philadelphia when he was 21.

"I like to say I was drafted by injustice," Claiborne said. "I met Jesus and he just messed everything up."

He has written numerous books and spoken across the country and the world. He went to Iraq in 2003 with the Iraq Peace Team, an experience he has since written about.

He was the keynote speaker for the Steel-Hendrix Awards Banquet on Monday. The Steel-Hendrix awards recognize people who have significantly contributed to religious education and social awareness.

After the banquet Claiborne delivered his lecture to the public during the communion and worship service in Greene Chapel.

Claiborne told stories of his own Christian activism and other movements that work to tear down walls.

Claiborne said of a group of Christians along the U.S.-Mexican border, "They sing each other songs over the wall, and they serve each other communion by throwing the bread."

"We're not going to wait for politicians to tell us how to treat immigrants," Claiborne said. "We're going to read Deuteronomy and we're going to read the book of James."

"We're all trespassers in the Kingdom of God," Claiborne said at a breakfast on Tuesday, October 25, explaining an idea from the book Reading the Bible with the Damned by Bob Ekblad. "We're all illegals. But God reached over the border to us and Jesus tore down the wall."

"They're not just ideologies to be debated, they're real people." Claiborne said of addressing injustice. "There's such a human story, so don't think it's just ideology we're here talking about."

In his Monday night talk, he spoke of his own experiences fighting anti-homelessness laws in Philadelphia, how he and others served communion (in the form of pizza) and slept outside with the homeless in Love Park. Distributing food and sleeping outside were both made illegal under the new laws.

For several weeks they were allowed to protest undisturbed but eventually they were arrested.

"We were handcuffed and taken to jail and that's how I learned what justice was," Claiborne said. "I never got arrested before I was a Christian, only after."

The judge was sympathetic to their cause, particularly after Claiborne explained the shirt he wore into the courtroom, "Jesus was homeless," by quoting a line from the gospel.

"That's why it's good to know your Scripture," Claiborne said.

They were eventually declared not guilty, on the grounds that the laws were unjust.

Claiborne explained that he thought one of the biggest questions Christians should ask is "What if Jesus really meant all that stuff he said?"

"It should cause us to ask deep questions," Claiborne said. Some of these questions will, in Claiborne's view, lead Christians into peaceful conflict with "principalities and powers."

"When we read the Bible, it doesn't say, for God so loved America, but for God so loved the world, doesn't it?" Claiborne said.

Claiborne spoke about knowing people who suffer personally in his work with the Simple Way.

"We get to know the names and faces of the people who are the faces of suffering," Claiborne said. "Compassion always leads to justice."

At the breakfast on Tuesday Claiborne spoke with interested students about being Christian.

"There are a lot of reasons that we Christians have a bad image crisis," Claiborne said. He referred to the book UnChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. The book explores modern perceptions of Christianity and has found that the top three things people think of when they think of Christianity are "Anti-Gay," "Judgmental," and "Hypocritical."