Who IS this Shane Claiborne person?
A reflection by Christina Brennan Lee for February 2, 2025.
If you heard Fr. Patrick’s sermon last week* you’ll remember him talking about Philadelphia’s own Shane Claiborne.**
A 49-year-old man with a kind of raggedy beard with a loving and welcoming intensity that makes one take notice. He has a lovely wife and year-old child now and they look like any normal family in northeast Philly. I bought one of his books more than a decade ago: Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro and have used some of it in my writing and personal prayer. When I read a brief bio of him recently, I was struck by the fact that he was born just a month before my younger daughter (now retired from the Army), and he was nine when his Vietnam veteran father died. My daughters were 9 and 7 when their active duty dad, also a Vietnam veteran, died. But he is far from ordinary, neither are my daughters of course, but he in a completely different way.
As Fr. Patrick mentioned, Shane and five others founded “The Simple Way” in 1998 in Kensington as an intentional community in one of the poorest of Philadelphia neighborhoods where there were no churches.
They planted gardens, ran a store, and worked for food security in the area with more than a few obstacles to overcome. He published his first book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, a plea for Christian voluntary simplicity and social justice. He joined with the late Tony Campolo to form Red-Letter Christians, a TV show and podcast, as a group to further the social justice needs of this country.
In 2007, The Simple Way Community Center, where Shane and others lived, was destroyed by a fire and they all lost their possessions. However, the group continues to work together in the same neighborhood. Shane and several others make trips around the country and around the world with their message of simple living through faith and of utmost importance, the reduction of gun violence, capital punishment, and social justice.
He has since published several more books one of which is Beating Guns: Hope for People Who Are Weary of Violence, with Michael Martin, and is known world-wide for his efforts to reduce gun violence by one of the major projects of his work which is to gather, chop up guns lock, stock, and barrel, and turn them into tools for the garden and other uses including prayer beads, some decorative pieces, even jewelry (see below). His company is named Raw Tools, using “raw” which is the inversion of the word “war”.
Shane is also part of a social justice movement known as The New Monasticism: living in an intentional community, not a monastery; living as a family or singly; with a Rule of Life.
One author, Rod Dreher, describes The New Monasticism in his book, The Benedict Option, as a strategy for western Christians to survive the influence of a hostile society using tools he identifies as order, prayer and work, stability, community, hospitality and balance.
Shane and his contemporaries are ordinary yet extraordinary yet relatable and completely human who serve God through Christ with the Holy Spirit in many and amazing ways.
* Click here to watch the January 26, 2025 worship service on YouTube.com. You can fast forward to the sermon, 21 minutes in.
** https://redletterchristians.org/about-us/our-mission-our-story/
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Every week, Christina Brennan Lee writes the Prayers of the People we use in our worship services on Sundays. She also leads weekday prayer services and serves on the SsAM Vestry. Click here to see her People’s Prayers website.
For more than 25 years, Christina Brennan Lee was a consultant/trainer in the areas of Interpersonal Skills, Conflict Management, Communications, Strategic Planning, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, etc. She has been a consultant to and has been employed in Corporate, Non-Profit, Public/Govt, Educational, and Religious organizations around the US including the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware. Currently through writing, small group facilitation, and the occasional seminar or retreat, she works in the areas of prayer, spirituality, and adult Christian Education. She has an MA in Religious Studies and Vatican Diploma as Teacher of Religion from St. Charles Borromeo School of Theology, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania; BA, AS, Psychology and Human Resource Management from Widener University, Chester, PA; and a Certificate in Non-Profit Management, University of Delaware, Newark, DE.
