Pacifist Radical Shane Claiborne Addresses Indiana’s Methodist Clergy

Neo-Anabaptist activist Shane Claiborne, a Philadelphia “urban monastic” who has likened America to Nazi Germany, preached for an Indiana United Methodist clergy retreat. The two-day “Our Life Together” conference convened in Indianapolis to refresh Indiana Conference clergy and to prepare them for the upcoming Lenten season.

Introduced as “a prophet for our times,” Claiborne shared his typically inspiring tales about helping the urban poor to an eager audience. The winsome, dreadlocked activist helped found the Simple Way “New Monastic” community in Philadelphia, where he put his training under Willow Creek Community Church and Mother Theresa to good use in aiding the downtrodden.

More controversially, Claiborne often touts radical political themes.  His 2008 book Jesus for President likened American to the Third Reich and the biblical Whore of Babylon.  In 2002, Claiborne was in Iraq with Christian Peacekeeping Teams ostensibly to defend Iraq from invading U.S. led forces. He commemorated 9-11’s 10 year anniversary by touting “more ice cream” and “less bombs” at an event hosted by leftist ice cream mogul Ben Cohen.  Claiborne has also praised Occupy Wall Street and recently called for an “excorcism” of Wall Street.

Many young evangelicals have flocked to Claiborne’s counter-cultural image and provocative criticism of evangelicalism. Even at this United Methodist conference, he questioned, “If Wesley was alive today, would he be a Methodist?…Holy cow, this brother was crazy.”

To the Indiana United Methodist clergy, Claiborne ridiculed emphasis on the conversion experience. After making fun of his own numerous responses to altar-calls as a young man, he remarked, “The crisis in our faith today is not right believing, but right living.”  Claiborne complained:  “We have lost the art of spiritual formation…We need to move past just making believers.”  He then clarified, “How we live in the world doesn’t automatically change when we become believers.” And he suggested:  “The gospel spreads best, not through force, but by fascination…I didn’t follow Jesus because I was afraid of Hell or wanted crowns in Heaven. I chose him because I fell in love.”

Claiborne repeated common refrains of the Evangelical Left, such as “the church needs imagination in the face of injustice” and “our Bible doesn’t say God so loved America, but God so loved the world.” He recounted his Christian Peacekeeping Team trip to Baghdad, in which he witnessed the onset of the Iraq War. An ardent pacifist, Claiborne hailed the cross of Jesus as “a beautiful spectacle of nonviolence and grace.” He further declaimed a “world riddled with violence.” Claiborne also demanded liberalized immigration policies for the U.S. through a story about Christians sharing communion over a southern border fence.

In Indianapolis, Claiborne did not repeat his earlier effusive praise for Wall Street occupiers (perhaps out of concerns about violence).  But the neo-monastic remained critical of business: “I think Wall Street has some things to learn about jubilee [a periodical removal of debt and slavery in Old Testament law].” Regarding the Virgin Mary’s Magnificat, he declared, “If she had said that today, Fox News would say she was trying to initiate class warfare.” Claiborne bemoaned evangelicals as often homophobic and judgmental hypocrites. “We’ve become known for who we’ve excluded rather than who we’ve embraced,” he complained.  On the more liberal side, he criticized the “emergent church,” a lot of which he said “is about…jumping ship.”

Claiborne, who describes himself as an “ordinary radical,” directly shared some of his Anabaptist theology. “I think the Amish are on to something,” he announced. “We live the way we do because we have a different story…[The Amish] have a lot to teach us about community…and cultivating people in a different story.” He urged the audience to notice “the way Jesus is against patterns of violence in this world.” He praised the efforts of his own Simple Way enclave, especially since “we insist on advocating for the most marginalized in the world.”

Describing how he and his friends distilled monasticism into their own community devoted to social amelioration, nonviolence, and discipleship, Claiborne shared how they even created their own liturgy from the bottom up.  This liturgy combines many prayer traditions into one volume entitled Common Prayer.  His group lacks any strong ecclesiastical authority, since these counter-culturalists reject hierarchy and also reject celibacy. Claiborne himself is recently married.

Several audience members challenged Claiborne on his community model. They worried that the New Monasticism had no measures in place to censure exploitation or enforce discipline. Although Claiborne responded that his community-mates address problems with “straight talk,” he did not say what happens when someone continues to defy the community’s consensus or when he would allow the government to step in for criminal situations.

Claiborne remains one of the most popular advocates for Anabaptism to Mainline Protestants and evangelicals. Increasingly, the Anabaptist theological arguments of the late John Howard Yoder and the still very much alive Stanley Hauerwas blend with a contemporary distaste for U.S. military and economic policies to form a popular movement in some trendy evangelical circles. Since Anabaptist pacifism attracts educated young, middle class people, some Mainliners try to co-opt its enthusiasm. Claiborne seeks to give American Christianity better public relations especially among liberal urban elites.  He declared:   “We have a really bad image crisis in the world, and much of it is deserved.”  But how these neo-Anabaptist beliefs can meld with historically very different other traditions like Wesleyanism is usually left unexplained.