Top 180 Shane Claiborne Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.”

— Shane Claiborne

102. “We’ve heard from people all around the world, telling us that this is their reality. People need a way to connect the sometimes really hard reality in which they wake up each morning with the movement of the Spirit.”

— Shane Claiborne

103. “In the Bible, God uses brothel owners, pagan kings, murderers and mercenaries as instruments of good; at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey.”

— Shane Claiborne

104. “We say it is idealistic to think we can continue to live the way we live – with 5% of the world using half the world’s resources, with $20,000 a second being spent on war.”

— Shane Claiborne

105. “This is what Jesus had in mind: folks coming together, forming close-knit communities and meeting each other’s needs – no kings, no major welfare systems, no presidents necessary. His is a theology and practice for the people of God, not a set of suggestions for empire.”

— Shane Claiborne

106. “The monastic folks have the spirit of being in the world but not of the world, sort of peculiar people who have gone to the desert to live on the margins of the empire.”

— Shane Claiborne

107. “Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero said this shortly before his assassination: “I am going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who, together with his people, has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it; the church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The church follows Jesus, who lived, worked, struggled and died in the midst of a city, in the polis.”

— Shane Claiborne

108. “Lord, steady our feet when the world tries to rock and shake our faith. When materialism beckons with coy hands, steady our feet. When lust sashays within us, steady our feet. When fear tugs at our knees, steady our faith. Show us your goodness, and steady our hearts in you. Amen.”

— Shane Claiborne

109. “We’ve got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back and he’s coming back for a bride, not a harem.”

— Shane Claiborne

110. “The early Christians felt a deep collision with the empire in which they lived, and with politics as usual. They carelessly crossed party lines and built subversive friendships. And we should do that too.”

— Shane Claiborne

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

— Shane Claiborne

112. “Dance until they kill you, and then we’ll dance some more.”

— Shane Claiborne

113. “It’s always a good idea to have a nun next to you when you get arrested!”

— Shane Claiborne

114. “So even as we see the horror of death, may we be reminded that in the end, love wins. Mercy triumphs. Life is more powerful than death. And even those who have committed great violence can have the image of God come to life again within them as they hear the whisper of love. May the whisper of love grow louder than the thunder of violence. May we love loudly.”

— Shane Claiborne

115. “The world is looking, not for Christians who are perfect, but for Christians who are honest and who are willing to be honest with some of our contradictions and hypocrisy.”

— Shane Claiborne

116. “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.”

— Shane Claiborne

117. “When one in three Black men are in prison, those larger systemic injustices become a part of what it means to love our neighbor as ourself. We care about dismantling institutional racism. That begins in relationships when you see injustice happen.”

— Shane Claiborne

118. “God can use anything, and anyone – even a king or a president, even a tax collector or a businessman, a priest or a prostitute, a Republican or a Democrat.”

— Shane Claiborne

119. “But as I pursued that dream of upward mobility preparing for college, things just didn’t fit together. As I read Scriptures about how the last will be first, I started wondering why I was working so hard to be first.”

— Shane Claiborne

120. “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.”

— Shane Claiborne

121. “When we were starting our community a bunch of older Benedictine nuns said to us, “If you have any questions or want to pick our brains, please do – we’ve been doing community for about 1,500 years together so we’ve learned a few things.””

— Shane Claiborne

122. “The time has come for a new kind of conversation, a new kind of Christianity, a new kind of revolution.”

— Shane Claiborne

123. “Lord, keep us from following the gods of pride, stubbornness, vanity, sloth, greed, and comfort that beckon for our allegiance every day. You brought us through the night watches, you who neither slumber nor sleep. We pray to follow you along the path of generosity, humility, and love throughout this day. Amen.”

— Shane Claiborne

124. “That’s the beautiful mystery: we have a God who chooses to need us. We have a God who doesn’t want to change the world without us. We have a God who longs to cooperate with us, to allow us to fail and flounder and who promises to make up for our shortcomings, but nonetheless wants us.”

— Shane Claiborne

125. “What is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one’s life – especially one’s politics?”

— Shane Claiborne

126. “I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.”

— Shane Claiborne

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

— Shane Claiborne

128. “Repair my church which is in ruins.”

— Shane Claiborne

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

— Shane Claiborne

130. “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.”

— Shane Claiborne

131. “You can’t really learn God’s hope like you learn the logic of an argument or the details of a story. It’s more like learning to belly laugh. You catch hope from someone who has it down in their gut.”

— Shane Claiborne

132. “God doesn’t want to change the world without you.”

— Shane Claiborne

133. “Every time our government chooses to use military force to bring about change in the world, it once again teaches our children the myth of redemptive violence, the myth that violence can be an instrument for good.”

— Shane Claiborne

134. “But it was hard to stay cynical, as I met more and more beautiful people.”

— Shane Claiborne

135. “The lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like 6 september 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.”

— Shane Claiborne

136. “So if the world hates us, we take courage that it hated Jesus first. If you’re wondering whether you’ll be safe, just look at what they did to Jesus and those who followed him. There are safer ways to live than by being a Christian.”

— Shane Claiborne

137. “Liturgy and worship were never meant to be confined to the cathedrals and sanctuaries. Liturgy at its best can be performed like a circus or theater – making the Gospel visible as a witness to the world around us.”

— Shane Claiborne

138. “Whenever folks say radical Christianity is “a phase” of youth, I tell them they need to meet our 80-year-old nun or my friend Tony Campolo.”

— Shane Claiborne

139. “We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. Jesus and the early Christians had a marvelous political imagination. They turned all the presumptions and ideas of power and blessing upside down.”

— Shane Claiborne

140. “There are some things to die for but none to kill for.”

— Shane Claiborne

141. “The more I get to know Jesus, the more trouble he seems to get me into.”

— Shane Claiborne

142. “There are folks who burn the Koran and hold signs saying, “God hates fags” and all sorts of sick things – and they often hijack the headlines with hatred. We know that is not what Christ was like.”

— Shane Claiborne

143. “The dreams get anchored in aged wisdom not some utopian fantasy.”

— Shane Claiborne

144. “There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner.”

— Shane Claiborne

145. “Lord, in our work for justice, let us not seek after martyrdom for its own sake, but neither let us turn away from your truth because we fear suffering. Give us grace to live faithfully whatever the cost. Amen.”

— Shane Claiborne

146. “Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God.”

— Shane Claiborne

147. “There’s an understanding of common prayer that I think we’re seeing grow, more and more. When I travel, I hear from people who are deeply touched that our common prayer takes time to remember some of the terrible tragedies that have happened around the world.”

— Shane Claiborne

148. “I don’t know if you’ve read the Bible, and if you haven’t, I think you may be in a better place than those of us who have read it so much that it has become stale.”

— Shane Claiborne

149. “The history of the church has been largely a history of “believers” refusing to believe in the way of the crucified Nazarene and instead giving in to the very temptations he resisted – power, relevancy, spectacle.”

— Shane Claiborne

150. “We really do see the pattern Jesus warns us about: “Pick up the sword and you will die by the sword.” Not only do innocent children suffer as collateral damage, but the one who picks up the sword also suffers. We’ve learned that lesson all too well. We are not made to kill. So when we do, it kills a part of us.”

— Shane Claiborne