0019 - The Weight - Shane Claiborne - “Living In Community”

Show Notes:

Christianity offers a radical redefinition of community that challenges the priorities and sensibilities that we in the church have come to embrace. Christians follow a savior who instructed his followers to relinquish belongings, wealth, and social status in order to follow him. Christians are a part of a universal church that began with a group of believers who shared everything they had with the community that they were a part of. It’s easy to see how such an example has become less prolific, specifically in the American church. What does it look like to try and create such a counter cultural way of community again?

Shane Claiborne seeks to challenge the Church, through word and example, to recognize that such a way of living is not only doable, but well worth pursuing, especially in the face of the disparities that exist for marginalized people. To reflect this possibility, he helped found “The Simple Way,” a neighborhood that seeks to create spaces for all of its members to belong and thrive. Shane has developed prominence as a speaker, activist, and best-selling author on his journey of sharing the story of this community while also being a “champion of grace” in advocacy for the homeless as well as his active opposition to war, the death penalty, and gun violence among other issues. 

In this conversation from 2018, Shane reflects on the ways in which Jesus Christ inspires counter-cultural, sacrificial living. He challenges Christians to reckon with the norms and values we have adopted that inherently impede us from living the life that Christ calls his followers to live. 

Resources:

Shane is the head of Red Letter Christians, “a movement of people who seek to take Jesus seriously by endeavoring to live out His radical, counter-cultural teachings as set forth in scripture.” Follow their work here: https://www.redletterchristians.org/

Follow “The Simple Way”: https://www.thesimpleway.org/

Follow Shane on the Web: http://www.shaneclaiborne.com/

Follow Shane on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShaneClaiborne

Follow Shane on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShaneClaiborne/

Full Transcript:

Chris McAlilly : 0:01

With this one, are we doing the thing where I say my name? And then you say your name?

Cody Hickman : 0:04

Yeah, that's what we should do. 

Chris McAlilly : 0:06

Whoa. 

Cody Hickman : 0:06

It's not what you did. 

Chris McAlilly : 0:08

So my name is Chris. 

Cody Hickman : 0:09

And my name is Cody.

Chris McAlilly : 0:10

And Eddie Rester is on... unavailable?

Cody Hickman : 0:14

Unavailable. On vacation.

Chris McAlilly : 0:15

On vacation. 

Cody Hickman : 0:16

So I get the call up when y'all are not available.

Chris McAlilly : 0:19

I'm really... I kind of like this.

Cody Hickman : 0:21

It's good. 

Chris McAlilly : 0:22

This is nice. 

Cody Hickman : 0:22

Yeah. 

Chris McAlilly : 0:23

Yeah. Well, we'll have to have a longer conversation about Eddie, after we get done with this. 

Cody Hickman : 0:29

Yeah, yeah, we can do a whole segment just about that.

Chris McAlilly : 0:31

Yeah, let's do that sometime. Maybe, maybe not. Today, we have on the podcast Shane Claiborne. Shane was in town a couple years ago, and we recorded a conversation as we were dreaming about doing a podcast.

Cody Hickman : 0:48

Yeah, so this is another one of those where we went back into the hopper to find some stuff. It was two and a half... it was January 2018 when we did this. We had a friend of ours, Rex Harsin

Chris McAlilly : 1:01

Rex Harsin Films 

Cody Hickman : 1:02

Rex Harsin Films. Look up the film "Beating Guns." It's on Amazon Prime, right? 

Chris McAlilly : 1:07

Mmhm.

Cody Hickman : 1:07

So he worked closely with Shane on that. So that's kind of how we got that connection. And Rex brought Shane to town to do some work on that film. And while he was here, we had him for an event at the church and we were like, "Hey, we have this podcast idea that maybe one day we'll do. Let's just sit down and record one." 

Chris McAlilly : 1:23

It was pretty funny because he was like, "What is this podcast?" And we were like, "We don't know." But now it is The Weight. And it was a great conversation. And the thing that's surprising as I went back and listened to it, is just how it resonates with our current moment in Mississippi. We voted as, I guess, the legislators down in Jackson voted to remove the current state flag which has been flying since 1894, that includes the Confederate battle flag. And that's where Shane begins. He's from East Tennessee. And he talks a little bit about growing up, as 

Cody Hickman : 2:06

He's a country boy.

Chris McAlilly : 2:07

a country boy in East Tennessee and then moving to Philadelphia, where he lives now.

Cody Hickman : 2:12

Yeah, it's the same... I don't know if you've listened to the Michael McBride episode that we put out a couple of weeks ago; it's kind of that same feeling. For me, it's like, "this was two years ago. And we're still right in the middle of all this now, if not more." So even though it's an older episode, it's timely. It's talking about the stuff we're dealing with right now. 

Chris McAlilly : 2:32

How do you relate to people who aren't like you? Who don't look like you or think like you or 

Cody Hickman : 2:37

Right 

Chris McAlilly : 2:37

or have a different religion or race or ethnicity?

Cody Hickman : 2:40

And that's what Shane does so well. I mean, like, as a 18-, 19-year-old kid, when I first got my hands on "The Irresistible Revolution," like... blew my mind, right? Like, every kid my age was reading that, the Christian kids who grew up in church are like, "This is different than everything I've ever read!" And so Shane is great and getting to sit down in the room with him, hear him talk, and actually flesh out these ideas and go a little bit more in depth is a great conversation. I was glad that I was able to be in the room and listen to it.

Chris McAlilly : 3:10

I was... You know, I think Shane is one of those people that I've admired for a long time, since I was also in college. 

Cody Hickman : 3:19

Did you have his quotes on your Facebook wall? 

Chris McAlilly : 3:21

I wasn't like that. I wasn't that kid, man.

Cody Hickman : 3:24

Dude. It was like all Shane Claiborne. 

Chris McAlilly : 3:25

That wasn't me. It was really after college, maybe when I was in seminary, that I really started thinking about what he was doing with his life. He isn't just talking the talk, but he's trying to put his faith into action. 

Cody Hickman : 3:37

Yeah. 

Chris McAlilly : 3:38

And to live it out in community. In a community, I think they call it the Simple Way. 

Cody Hickman : 3:43

Mmhm. Yeah. It's great. Shane's great. I think you'll really enjoy the episode. So stick around.

Eddie Rester : 3:52

[INTRO] Let's be honest, there are some topics that are too heavy for a 20-minute sermon. There are issues that need conversation, not just explanation.

Chris McAlilly : 4:00

We believe that the church is called to engage in a way that honors the weightiness and importance of these topics for how we live faithfully today. We'll cover everything from art to mental health, social injustice to the future of the church.

Eddie Rester : 4:11

If it's something that culture talks about, we need to be talking about it, too. [END INTRO] We're excited today to welcome Shane Claiborne to the podcast. Shane...

Shane Claiborne : 4:22

I'm excited to be here. 

Eddie Rester : 4:23

Are you excited to be here, Shane? [CHUCKLES] Shane is a writer and a speaker, an activist. He wrote "The Irresistible Revolution" about 10, 11 years ago, revised it, and has written several other books. We'll talk about some of those, I think, later on today. Recently, "Still Evangelical?" I think is a book that's recently come out that you contributed to

Shane Claiborne : 4:43

Hot off the press.

Eddie Rester : 4:44

Hot off the press. And "Executing Grace," as well, one of your more recent works. We're glad to have you in Oxford, Mississippi today. 

Shane Claiborne : 4:52

Hey, I'm thrilled to be here. I've made so many great new friends and had some... you got some unbelievable cuisine down here. 

Chris McAlilly : 5:03

Yeah. 

Eddie Rester : 5:03

So did you get a chance to wander around Oxford at all or go see anything while you were here? Did we just keep you inside, boxed up? 

Shane Claiborne : 5:10

Mostly the cuisine.

Eddie Rester : 5:11

"Mostly the cuisine" [LAUGHS]

Shane Claiborne : 5:12

Yeah. Naw, we had a great time. I've just loved meeting your folks last night. And Rex, my friend Rex, you know, been keeping me busy running around. We've had a good time. So yeah. 

Eddie Rester : 5:23

Well, we're glad you're here. I think Chris has an important question to start off with.

Chris McAlilly : 5:28

I don't know about important, but I wonder if you'd tell us a little bit about... you mentioned that you grew up in East Tennessee. Tell us a little bit about your mom. 

Shane Claiborne : 5:40

Frog gigging?

Chris McAlilly : 5:40

Yeah, about frog gigging.

Shane Claiborne : 5:42

Yeah. 

Chris McAlilly : 5:43

You know, tell us a little bit about... I think people know a lot about your work, but less about kind of the initial part of your life. Would you talk a little bit about that?

Shane Claiborne : 5:54

Yeah, dude, for sure. Do you know what frog gigging is?

Chris McAlilly : 5:57

I know what frog gigging is. 

Shane Claiborne : 5:58

Okay, I was just making sure you know.

Chris McAlilly : 5:59

North Mississippi's not a long way from East Tennessee. 

Shane Claiborne : 6:02

Yeah, one of them shows, I don't know, those duck guys dynasties or whatever, they went frog gigging on a golf course and everybody was like, "What is that?" I was like "I can tell you what that is." But I grew up, I love my East Tennessee place I grew up. Check this out: I think was my great-great-grandfather was the mail delivery man, the postal man, by horseback up in Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountains. And when Dolly Parton won that Kennedy Award or whatever, we were watching that, she won that big award, and he said, "I remember when she used to play on the front porch!" So I grew up in right on the foothills of the Smoky Mountains there, and Southern hospitality. And also, you know, I think every place has its beauty and has its funk. Part of that in our town was we still were really, I think, and still are healing from our history around race and things and the residue of slavery and things like that. So, like, in my high school, we were the Maryville High School Rebels and the Confederate flag was on everything, you know, we had murals of it. I mean, you know a little bit about that.

Eddie Rester : 6:04

Sure do.

Shane Claiborne : 6:20

You know, here it was on our football uniforms. We were the Maryville High School Rebels. And it wasn't until I came to school up in Philly, and I put my high school yearbook on a shelf with a confederate flag on the front, my friends like, "Whoa!" Like, "That's not just about high school football," you know. And I really have been learning and leaning in, you know, and trying to figure out how to see the world through other people's eyes. But growing up, I'm an only child and an only grandchild, on both sides, so it's a little family. And my dad died when he had multiple sclerosis, so he was in a wheelchair and we played a lot of pinball. Do people know what pinball is now? It was before we had Nintendo and video games, Xboxes and all that, right? But we played pinball. And he died, though, when I was about nine, of MS. And so my mom and I've been real tight. We're real close. I've got a great stepdad and two step brothers and everything now. I go back every chance I get. Mom and I make clothes together. You know, some people think I make all my own clothes, but the truth is, my mom, my mother's-boy thing, I go home and every fall we sew and make clothes together and things like that. So yeah. 

Eddie Rester : 8:44

As you think about your Southern upbringing, what gifts from that do you still see evident in your life? 

Shane Claiborne : 8:52

I think part of that Southern hospitality and warmth that I learned from my grandmother and my mom. My mom is the most amazing, hospitable, compassionate person and I learned all that, you know. But what I also saw was, like, especially in some of our culture, we are good at hospitality as long as the person looks like us, you know? [LAUGHTER] So I think we've been kind of stretching those muscles and that's where Jesus is so beautiful. He says, you know, even the people in the world, everybody loves people that are like them. We're called to kind of love bigger, love bigger than that. And my mom, she's doing all that now. She's running, helping do Family Promise, welcoming families that are struggling or are at risk of homelessness, and delivering food to elderly people, and she's just doing it all. So I go back and I'm just humbled by all the wonderful things happening in East Tennessee. 

Eddie Rester : 10:00

When you made the jump to to Philadelphia to go to college, right? 

Shane Claiborne : 10:04

Yeah.

Eddie Rester : 10:04

To go to Eastern. 

Shane Claiborne : 10:05

My mom said, "God wants you to go to Philly, God can pay for it." I ended up getting a full scholarship, and I'm like, "God paid the bill!", you know, and I went. 

Eddie Rester : 10:13

We may need to have your mom on the next podcast.

Shane Claiborne : 10:15

That might be good.

Eddie Rester : 10:16

at some point in time. So when you got to Philly, you talked a little bit about the Confederate flag on your high school annual. What were some other things that you began to see and experienced that kind of stretched you or made you see the world is a bigger place than just Eastern Tennessee? 

Shane Claiborne : 10:32

Well, I had friends that, almost as soon as I got to college, that said things like, "We're going to hang out with some of our friends on the street, you know, that are homeless in Philly." And I'm like, "I don't even know if I've actually had a genuine encounter with someone that's homeless." And he said, "you want to come?" And I said, "Yeah, I'd love to go," you know. And to be real honest, I was pretty nervous. You know? I was nervous being a country boy in the city, much less going and hanging out under bridges and railroad tracks and things like that. But one of my first encounters taught me a very important lesson. I was so scared I was going to get mugged or something, that I put all my credit cards and money in my 

Chris McAlilly : 11:21

Your fanny pack?

Shane Claiborne : 11:22

Yeah, yeah, I put it in my dresser in my dorm room, and I went downtown. And while we were downtown, somebody broke in my dorm room stole all my money and credit cards. Went shopping at TJ Maxx, we found out later. I thought, all these people that I've been socially conditioned to trust, it just wasn't that cut and dry, and all these people that I was real nervous around, they showed me love. They opened my eyes to the Bible. And I met folks in the street that had been to Harvard. I met folks in the street that had most of the Bible memorized, you know? So I just think that I sort of, I had that world shattered. And, you know, a lot of times have, I've heard it said, our worldview is shaped by whatever we see out the window. And when our window changes, our world changes, you know? And I think that's a lot of the problem in our country right now, when it comes to a lot of the politics and race and stuff is, like, we're looking through different windows. And it takes humility to say, "my window is not the only window. I want to try to see see through somebody else's eyes." And that's what happened to me. I started studying sociology, because I was so intrigued by all that. And, I mean, especially even now, you ask the population of America, "do we have racial bias in policing or in the criminal justice system?" The white folks say, "No," and Black folks say, "Yeah!" and it's because we've had different experiences, and we're seeing the world through different lenses.

Chris McAlilly : 12:10

What was it about, so I know you went to Eastern, you said you wanted to go there and study the Bible. What was it about Philly? What was it about Eastern that drew you? Why were you drawn that direction? Seems like, I mean, not self evident.

Shane Claiborne : 13:10

Well, I mean, on the one hand, Philly was not East Tennessee, and as much as I love East Tennessee, I really did want to see the world. I had a sense that the world was bigger than the wonderful little town that I grew up in. I wanted to meet people from other faiths. I want to meet people that didn't look like me. I wanted to see things a little bit. So that's part of why I came to Philly. Eastern University, which is where I graduated from, is an amazing school. I was, like, kind of, didn't even understand the treasure that it was till I got there. And one of the things that we talked about at Eastern is "the whole Bible for the whole world." And there's this commitment both to the Bible and to the world. And it helped me understand that what we've been good at in the church a lot of times is promising people life after death. And a lot of people are asking, "is their life before death?" You know, like, doesn't your faith cause you to care about the injustices of the world we live in? And for Jesus, it certainly did. I mean, He's talking about widows and orphans and unjust judges and you know, all this stuff. That's what I found at Eastern. And it's also, I ended up studying the Bible and sociology. And to me that was like this, just, beautiful cocktail. You know, Karl Barth, the great, great theologian, he said, we've got to read the Bible in one hand, but we need to hold the newspaper in the other, so that our faith doesn't just become a ticket into heaven and a license to ignore the world we live in. But actually, the Bible and our faith should fuel us to live a life that matters to this world as well.

Chris McAlilly : 14:35

You talk a lot about Mother Teresa, and your experiences going to India and seeing her as almost a mentor and this living saint. I wonder, surely there were other people in Philly, at Eastern, maybe lesser known, that were mentors, or maybe friends that you met there? 

Shane Claiborne : 15:14

Oh, Yeah, yeah.

Chris McAlilly : 15:14

I think there's a tendency when there's somebody like you who goes out as a courageous witness for Christ, to see that person as being separate from a community of people. I just wonder, you know, who are the people that really impacted you as a college student? Who were the mentors that you ran into?

Shane Claiborne : 15:32

Yeah, there's been a bunch of them, but you're right. They weren't names that people would necessarily recognize. But one of my early mentors was a formerly homeless mom. Her name's Cheri Honkala. And she's actually much more well-known now than she was then. But she had organized homeless mothers and kids, and they moved in. There was, at the time, there were, like, 3000 families on the waiting list for affordable housing, and the fastest growing homeless population was women and kids. and so they got together to, they had nowhere to go. So they moved in this abandoned church building in North Philadelphia, and that's kind of where everything started for us. They had nowhere else to go with this abandoned church, and they started living there. And they hung a banner on the front that said, "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?" It was amazing. And that was... So she's still a dear friend. I was with her a few weeks ago. And then there's folks, like, when we were living in the abandoned church, some of the other Catholic clergy got involved, priests and nuns, and I got to know one nun, she's almost 90 years old now. And she's a rabble-rouser, man. She's a sassy nun. When we first started, you know, we're living in this abandoned church building and we're starting... We're young, we're 20 years old. We're reading the book of Acts. And we're like, "Yeah, they shared everything in common." And so we caught that vision and these older nuns and priests and stuff, they said, "Hey, listen, we want you to know, we've been doing community for a long time, too. And that vision of the early church is what inspires us." One of them said, "We've been doing community for almost 1600 years. So, we've learned a few things." They became some of my mentors. So Sister Margaret, who is my almost 90-year-old nun, she's sort of like a spiritual grandmother. When, from the beginning, when the families lived in the church, to when we started sharing food with people on the streets and getting in trouble for that--I talked about that in the service we did here--but we ended up getting fined and going to jail, and Sister Margaret said, "Oh, a lot of the saints went to jail." So she's a... here's a nun in handcuffs. We got sentenced to citizenship training classes--we got arrested so many times for feeding people and sleeping in public to challenge those laws, that we had to go to trainingship school on how to be trained to be a better citizen. So those are those are my mentors, man. 

Chris McAlilly : 18:10

Right, right, right, right.

Shane Claiborne : 18:11

They're fun. Yeah. 

Chris McAlilly : 18:12

Right. 

Eddie Rester : 18:13

As we think about your life in Philadelphia, I mean, y'all are a part of a community, you and your friends intentionally chose to live in a community. And you've done that now for 20 years. I think you said the Northside Philadelphia. So help us understand. What has that journey been like over the last couple of decades for you personally? What has it taught you? What are some of the surprising things that really have emerged that maybe you didn't think you would bump up into some couple decades go? 

Shane Claiborne : 18:45

Well, one of the things that we I think really discovered is that a lot of this stuff we're talking about, it seems really radical, but it's actually pretty basic. And that's what "radical" means, "root," you know, like a radish. It's from the ground, it's getting at the bottom of things. And that's... even something like living in community, that's how a lot of the world survives. We used to be such communal people, you know, and I heard somebody say, we used to trust our neighbors and distrust strangers. Now we distrust our neighbors, and we trust strangers, you know, like Lyft or Uber. I don't know. But it's interesting, so we're made in the image of God, who is community: Father, Son, Spirit creates the first human and it's not good till they're together. "Where two or three of you gather in my name, I'm with you," Jesus said. So, we're communal creatures. And I think part of what we learned is we're just, we're using muscles that have atrophied a little bit. So even things like sharing money together. We started in one house when we were 20 years old, and 10 of my college friends and I are living in this house. We're doing, sharing everything: car and washers and dryers and all of our money we pooled together. And in some ways, we still do that, it's just grown more into a village, and we've got a little bit more elbow room. We've got a dozen properties on the same block. We've got community gardens, murals, and everything. But we're still trying to share money together. We're still trying to take care of each other and pray and eat together and all those things. And I think one of the things that we've really questioned is, "This seems so natural, why don't more people do it?" And what doesn't make sense is the sort of rampant individualism that we live in, where the average person in the US is consuming more than 500 people in Africa. That's crazy. You know, it's why I think we have 5% of the world's population, but we're consuming almost half the world's resources here in the US. So what makes sense, you know? Does it make sense to rethink how we live and maybe share a lawnmower with four other families or you know, like a washer and dryer with the people next door? Do we all need all of these things? And I think in some ways, we may have to live a little simpler, but it's also a rich way of living. You know, sometimes sometimes people go, "Oh, wow, I can never do like that." And I think man, this is actually life, you know. I love living in communities. It's not easy all the time, but neither is marriage. Neither is anything, you know. So I have come to find it's a really beautiful way to live. And now being in one place for 20 years. Even my friend Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove wrote a great book on stability, "The Wisdom of Stability." And he challenges this idea that the average person's moving every four years now, four or five years, and how can you really grow community? How can you see people discipled and transformed if you're moving all the time? So even just staying in a place for 20 years, I think, in some ways is countercultural from what we've been learning.

Eddie Rester : 22:08

As you talked about the sharing a lot more with for families, right? When I think about that, I think about when I need a ladder, my first inclination is not to go knock on my neighbor's door and say, "Hey, can I borrow your ladder?" My first inclination is, "Well, I guess I need to go get a ladder." And I think that speaks, at least in my mind, to this breakdown of community and this false sense of independence that we all have. That I've got to be my own person with my own stuff, handling my own problems, a lot of times. And I think maybe somehow breaking free of that is challenging or scary for us. 

Shane Claiborne : 22:48

Yeah, it has a lot to do with security, right? Because we... but what I think is so important is it's also a spiritual thing. We want to believe that we're okay on our own. And we've created this kind of idol of individualism. I mean, it's independent. We even have Independence Day. But we believe in independence. We have this idea that you've got to have your own house, your own car, your own family. And we end up, if you look at the statistics in some of the wealthiest places in the world, with the highest rates of loneliness and depression, medication and suicide. We're rich and we're lonely and that's why a lot of places that struggle financially, they are not lonely. They're very like my neighborhood is economically poor, but it is community rich. And a lot of neighborhoods that are economically rich are community poor. And I think there's got to be someplace that we can really land. We talk about "theology of enough." This idea in Scripture that, "give us this day, our daily bread" is a vision that everybody would have what they need. So like Gandhi said, "There's enough for everybody's need, but there's not enough for everybody's greed." So let's live simply so that others can simply live. That's what we're going for.

Chris McAlilly : 24:19

Last night, you talked about the commitments that you have. On the other end of the spectrum, so there's this micro-community in a particular place over the course of 20 years. But through that time, you've also been drawn into national conversations. You're in conversation about major issues, politically engaged in certain ways, in ways that are pushing back on kind of macro issues and problems that are facing America at this particular moment. You talk a little bit about that other end of the spectrum. Kind of the work that you're doing. Some of the work that you've done, most recently on the death penalty, has that emerged out of your experience on the ground in Philly? And how does that connect to the broader issues? I don't know if I'm making sense.

Shane Claiborne : 25:20

Well, absolutely. What happens, I think, is that we, for me, I began by moving nearer to the suffering of our, of my city, in my neighborhood. And there's something about being in proximity to the pain that it stirs in us a passion for justice. You know, a lot of our work started as more compassion-oriented and charitable work, which is we still give out food and help kids with homework. But there comes a point where Dr. King said so well, we're called to be the Good Samaritan. But then after you lift so many people out of the ditch on the road to Jericho, you start to say, "Maybe we need to rethink the whole road to Jericho and figure out why people keep ending up in the ditch." And that's where I think some of this justice work. But it's still very much driven by love. I like how Cornel West says, "Justice is what love looks like in public." And sometimes we limit love, I think, to personal compassion and interaction. And those are really important. I mean, you look at Matthew 25. It's visiting people in jail. It's feeding people who are hungry, taking care of the sick. Those are important, I think, absolutely. And we do them all the time. But I think that there's also a part of love that says, loving my neighbor as myself includes thinking about policies that affect my neighbor. And so immigration: I've got neighbors from El Salvador. I've got neighbors from Puerto Rico and Haiti and Cuba and El Salvador and Guatemala, and all, you know, I mean, Indonesia and Vietnam. And so as I'm thinking about that... Immigration is not an issue to debate. Immigrants are people to be loved. And they are people that have names. And so, there certainly are ways that we need to, you know, we need to have wisdom, and we need to, there are people that are dangerous that are in the world that are both... I mean, if we look at the mass shooters in this country, a lot of them are homegrown white men that have some major issues. You know? But I just read this stat that said, the chances of you getting killed by a refugee in America are less than--you're more likely to be killed by a vending machine falling on you. You know, so we're kind of taught these things. But I think about the issues that we're involved in with the death penalty, all those started personally. I got to know folks that were wrongfully convicted, that spent decades of their life on death row. One of my close friends, six execution dates, hours from being killed by the state of Ohio, before he proved his innocence without question, you know. 30 pieces of evidence showed that he was innocent, and they'd withheld all that. And there's dozens and dozens and dozens stories like that. So they impacted me. You know, I met murder victims' family members that had experienced the most horrific things I can even imagine. And yet they walked away from those, many of them because of their faith, thinking, violence is the problem, not the solution. Like you don't kill to show that killing is wrong any more than you rape to show that rape is wrong. We don't want to mirror the the evil that impacted us. That's when I, you know, then started digging into the theology and everything that really backs up the death penalty and trying to challenge some of that. But all of it, you know, even in my Bible, I've got a little note that one of my friends that was just released from death row sent me. So they're very... these things feel very personal. And I'm convinced that that's what puts the fire in our bones, you know. It's easier to remain distant when you don't know people. And I think more than a compassion problem, is we have a relationship problem. It's not that we don't care about people. Often we just don't even know them. And when you know immigrants, like, the stereotypes you're hearing on the news don't always hold up, you know? So I think that's... we're good at talking about and debating about people that we don't know, whether they're Muslims or immigrants or, you know, whatever. So I think that we've got to, we gotta do what Jesus did and build relationships and challenge fear, you know, the culture of fear. The Scripture says "love casts without fear." So all those policies and things are a natural extension, to me, of love and one of those is challenging, violence and every form that it kind of raises its head.

Chris McAlilly : 30:23

Yeah, go for it.

Eddie Rester : 30:25

But I was just gonna say, so as we think about, "we don't have a compassion problem. We have a relationship problem." How do we, as people who believe in the body of Christ, who believe in the work of the church in the world, how do we begin to draw good church people like me, like Chris, into those relationships? What are the ways that we can, that you would say to a local church or to a pastor, or to folks, here's some ways that you can break free and find those relationships?

Shane Claiborne : 30:55

Yeah, I spent a year working at a fairly wealthy mega church, and I got to know a whole lot of other folks in similar evangelical churches. In my senior year of college, I did a survey. And I asked folks who self identified as strong Christians. So these are folks that are saying, "Yeah, I'm a strong, committed Christian." And I said, "Did Jesus spend time with the poor?" And like, almost all of them, like 90% of them said, "Yeah, Jesus spent a ton of time with the poor." And later in the survey I asked them, "Do you spend time with the poor?" And less than 5% of these folks that said they were strong Christians said that they have any meaningful relationships with people in poverty. And that's where it hit me, that we've got this sort of cultural impasse, you know, that we don't get outside of our own socio-economic places. So I think we've got to... Jesus is not saying to a hurting world "come find the church," right? He's saying, "Go into the world." So the thing is, they say the hardest part about a marathon is not getting to the finish line, but getting to the starting line, like, taking the first leap. And that's where we need some help. I think we need to build some bridges with folks that do have those relationships. And that's what I've done with the death penalty. I didn't just go to some random death row and, you know, be like, "Hey, I'm here to visit people," or something. I had friends that had been visiting folks for ages and I kept coming alongside of them. Same with the very first times I went downtown, you know, I had folks that I knew had been building some credible, beautiful relationships with folks on the street and came alongside of them. And I think especially around race, as a white man, that's been so important to me to realize, geez, I've got to get outside of my own cultural homogenous world a little bit. Dr. King lamented that one of the most segregate hours in the world is 11 o'clock on Sunday morning. You know, when we gather for worship, we mirror the patterns of segregation more than the beautiful kind of diversity of the kingdom. So when we started our community, we always have worshiped in congregations around us and tried to build, become part of the fabric of the neighborhood and join organizations that are led by people of color that we can learn from and that we can... we're a lot of white folks, we're used to being in charge of stuff. And so I think a lot of times we need to join things that other folks are in charge of, especially leaders of color.

Chris McAlilly : 33:40

Can you talk a little bit more about that, as a white kid from East Tennessee moving into a predominantly black neighborhood, or a neighborhood that's more diverse than what you were used to? You talked a little bit last night about the white Christian savior complex that will sometimes... that you're kind of lifted up as a hero because you've done this thing. That you've chosen downward mobility instead of upward mobility. What are some of the things that, just in terms of as you develop more self awareness, there are other people out there that see your witness that want to do a similar kind of thing, what are the things, what would you warn them about that path in terms of self awareness as you're interacting with other people?

Shane Claiborne : 34:27

Well, so first of all, my neighborhood is really mixed. We've got a lot of older white folks that their families used to work in the factories. A lot of them are Irish and Polish immigrants. Many of them, when the factories closed, they stayed and so there in Philadelphia, there's a large working class. And there's also a large, economically struggling white community that are descendants of some of the folks that used to work in the factories. About a third of my neighborhood is African American. And about, actually, almost half of my neighborhood is Latino, like Puerto Rican, Dominican families. So we're one of the most racially mixed zip codes in the entire state of Pennsylvania, which is incredible. And it's one of the gifts that I think I've experienced being there. But certainly a part of what we've had to think about is challenging the larger narrative of even like, where change, how change happens. And even a lot in the church, our missional ideas have reinforced dynamics of power where we believe that we need to go into a neighborhood, even just more implicit language, "we're going to bring hope to this neighborhood." And what we don't realize is God's already there. You know, I heard a pastor in my neighborhood say, some people in Philly call my neighborhood the Badlands, which I always push back on, but he said "if you ever hear someone call Kensington"--my neighborhood--"the Badlands, remind that that's exactly what they said about Nazareth." You know, so if we hear someone say nothing good could come from Kensington, we know better. If we hear a place called s-hole we know that's what they said about Nazareth. 

Eddie Rester : 36:15

Right. 

Shane Claiborne : 36:17

But when I think about that, what we've learned from people like John Perkins and the Christian Community Development Association is one of the things that... John is an incredible, he's over 80 years old. He's a hero here in Mississippi. And, I mean, around the country, around the world. But one of the things that he says is restoring a neighborhood takes three groups of people working together: remainers, returners, and relocators. Remainers are the indigenous neighbors of folks from the neighborhood and they've stayed even when the pressures are for them to leave. Returners are maybe some folks from the neighborhood that grew up there that didn't forget where they came from. They bring their gifts and skills back to the neighborhood. And then what I am is a relocator. Folks outside that come in. That's been really helpful language for us, because it invites everybody to find their place at the table and says, "we all have a piece of this puzzle." So we're working together. And a lot of times we've kind of acted like the relocators, the folks that are bringing in the keys. And one of the quotes on my wall is, "if you're coming to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you're coming because our survival is bound up together, then grab my hand and let's work together."

Eddie Rester : 37:30

I think that's such a, I mean, that's so critical. I'm just sitting here thinking about that, because the church does so much in sending out short-term, we're going to go take hope to wherever 

Shane Claiborne : 37:39

Right, right. 

Eddie Rester : 37:40

And yet, even though--those groups are important, I'm not downplaying those groups--but the mindset that they go with, they're going to be a part of what God is already doing, rather than going to bring something that only we've got and they don't. I mean, 

Shane Claiborne : 37:54

Yeah, yeah.

Eddie Rester : 37:54

it seems like when you really stop to think about it, it's ridiculous. 

Shane Claiborne : 37:57

Yeah. And what people bring away from those trips so often you hear them come home, right? What do they say? I thought I was going to help. But I 

Eddie Rester : 38:06

I'm the one.

Shane Claiborne : 38:06

walked away, knowing that I am the one that received. And you're like, "Yeah, and that's also part of the problem." Because we go reinforcing this idea that we are the benevolent ones. And we come and it can actually kind of be almost parasitical, where we're taking from this experience, and sometimes even build, we're painting a wall that the neighborhood could have painted themselves. I heard one story, I'm not sure if it's true or not, but one of my friend's said, "We've got a short-term missions group coming, so we have to go graffiti one of our walls." They had to paint over it. I think part of what we got to do is say, "How can we honestly have a symbiotic relationship?" One of my friends in Philly had some of the kids from our neighborhood go on a missions trip. I think it was to Indiana, to this rural neighborhood, and then they brought kids to our neighborhood. So they're seeing each other's worlds and they're realizing we're going to learn from each other; we're going to work together. But those dynamics of power, we really, really need to challenge. So anytime we bought brought groups into our neighborhood, we've had them do, like, we have an article called "The Costs of Short-Term Missions" that talks about if we don't do things, right, then we can actually have a really heavy footprint on the neighborhood. Like, we don't allow people to take pictures of our neighborhood and things like that, because we don't want to turn it into sort of poverty tourism or something like that. And that's because my neighborhood is more than a poor neighborhood. My neighborhood is a neighborhood that is rich with community and there are a whole lot of people that could learn from how our neighbor has survived. And yeah, I think it's got a lot to teach the world. 

Eddie Rester : 39:45

We have about six or seven minutes. I know, so I'm going to point it Chris because I...

Chris McAlilly : 39:49

Yeah, there are a few... you know, I mean, we're here in Mississippi. There are a lot of people that I come across that are not a part of the church. That grew up in the church here. That are burned out on the church. That are quite cynical about what they see is the predominant Christian witness. So I want to ask just,kind of, if you could talk a little bit about some buzz Christian words and offer a definition and kind of your perspective on them. So one is just simply, what is the gospel? How would you define that?

Shane Claiborne : 40:23

So the Gospel, for folks that don't know, it means good news. So I think that that's been distorted as well, because a lot of what we hear in the church doesn't sound like good news. Doesn't even always sound like okay news. It just sounds like bad news. You know, you hear a God that a lot of times, I think, is easy to fear but hard to love, and a lot of what they see in Christianity doesn't look like good news. I mentioned that study that showed that the perceptions of Christians are that we are number one, anti-gay; two, judgmental; and three, that we're hypocritical. And the things that people say when they hear "Christian" are not what Jesus said they should say, which is love or the fruits of the Spirit, you know: kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, those are the things that we should be known for. So Gospel, I think, is good news. It's also a subversive word. It was a word in the imperial, like, in kind of the imperial lexicon of Rome that the Emperors would pronounce a good news. And so, there were many gospels out there. So when Jesus comes, and then Angel actually announces, you know, this is a savior, and was bringing good news, and you're like, wow. These were all words that are being flipped on their head. And it's challenging where our hope comes from. It's challenging who's going to change the world. So when the early Christians were saying, "Jesus is Lord", they were saying "Caesar is not," and I think that's a great witness for us right now, when a lot of people seem to be more hopeful in a political person or a candidate than they are in Christ. A lot of my evangelical friends are... I just, I thought, man, if every Christian in America were more committed to Jesus than to Donald Trump, or to whoever their favorite political person is, it would be such a radically different world. Because I look at the things that Jesus said. His gospel, His good news was the poor blessed. The merciful, the meek, the peacemakers are the children of God. Like, all of these things that we've shunned. And if you read that list of the Beatitudes in the Gospel, they are the antithesis of so many of the things that we've come to adore and celebrate in America. You know, meek, merciful, the poor, I mean, these are not the things that are, you know, winning an election. I think that's the point. 

Eddie Rester : 43:00

Yeah, I feel like that's part of the we've sold our soul to something that looks so different from good news. 

Shane Claiborne : 43:06

Yeah.

Chris McAlilly : 43:07

I got another word. 

Shane Claiborne : 43:08

Okay, that's that's the first one.

Chris McAlilly : 43:09

Yeah. Second. I've got three words. So that was number one. Number two: evangelical. Can you define that? What does that look like to you?

Shane Claiborne : 43:15

Yeah, evangelical is the one who brings the good news. It's the proclamation of good news. And the evangel is the that which we're bringing, that good news. So I think... wow, when I think of evangelicalism, its roots are beautiful. I love the evangelicalism to the past. It also causes me to grieve what evangelicalism has become. Like Charles Finney, john Wesley, you know, so many of these evangelicals, they were abolitionists, they were anti-racists, you know, they were caring about the poor and social justice and economic redistribution, and all these things. And now evangelicals, like, we have totally become known for other things. And especially white evangelicals. And I think it's important to say that, because what we've done is we've erased entire groups of people that don't fit the political narrative of evangelical. Some of that's been done by the media. They've seen evangelicalism more as a political belief system than as a theological belief system. And so if there's people that don't fit the politics, then they don't call them evangelicals, even though there's tons of black and Latino and other, you know, evangelicals by every characteristic of traditional evangelicalism: high view of Scripture, personal relationship with Jesus and all those things. But they're raised because they're not fitting that, you know, camp. So that's the problem, I think. And, you know, we wrote this book, "Still Evangelical" with a diverse group of people that are all kind of navigating this post-evangelical era in different ways. But I don't feel like we are called into the world to make evangelicals. We're calling the world to form disciples and people that remind the world of Jesus. And frankly I am very troubled by the state of white evangelicalism in our country. And my love for Jesus has put me at odds with what white evangelicalism has come to hold dear.

Chris McAlilly : 45:36

So let me ask you the last word, to me, I think is the most important one, because I think in the face of issues, problems within or without, within the church or beyond the church. I think there's a... I run into people, a lot of people that are either in despair or they're completely apathetic, where they've given up hope, either for the church or for the world. I heard you say in a couple different places that Christians hope different. And I wonder, for yourself personally, you know, I'm sure that there are ups and downs for you. What is it about Christian hope that's different? And then how does it impact the way that you are able to kind of continue in the work you do?

Shane Claiborne : 46:26

So one of the things I would say is for those folks who are out there that are really... have kind of given up hope in the church and in Christians, I would sort of just invite you not to give up on Jesus because of the embarrassing things that Christians have done. You know, and literally, I mean, I think of my African American brothers and sisters and the fact that their faith survived the horrible things that white folks were doing with the Bible in their hand. And lynching Black folks and going to church on Sunday morning, and, like, these things that we did. And they... God is bigger than the terrible things that white folks and white Christians have done. And so I think we've got to tell the truth about those things. And we, we've got to... I love how Gandhi said, "I love Jesus, I just wish the Christians looked more like him." 

Eddie Rester : 47:28

Yeah.

Shane Claiborne : 47:28

You know, "they look so unlike their Christ." And I think for those of us that are Christians, we really need to be honest about our struggles and hypocrisies and contradictions. And one of the tenants of our faith is confession, is saying, "I'm sorry." And you rarely hear a president or a politician saying that unless they're forced to. And so I think one of the radical things that we do is we confess our sins. We realize that this whole story is about imperfect people that are falling in love with a perfect God. We're trying to become more and more like our God. And we're helping every time we come together for worship. We're saying, "I can't do this alone." We're trying to help each other get there. So I went to this one church the other day, and the greeters at the door, instead of, like, suits and ties, they had on T-shirts that said, "no perfect people allowed." [LAUGHTER] What, what great church bouncers, you know, to be like, "You're self righteous, and you think you got it all together? Find another church." You know? "If you know you need help, and you need a savior, come on in." One of my favorite lines of friend told me is, "when people tell me, 'the church is full of hypocrites,' I say, 'No, it's not. We've always got room for more.'"

Eddie Rester : 48:44

There you go.

Shane Claiborne : 48:45

And I think that's, you know, that's where we need to really be honest, though. And one of the biggest obstacles to Jesus I think is self-righteous Christians who have acted like we're perfect and pointed fingers at other people when they're clearly not. And we've ended up really, I think, tainting the fact that Jesus actually says, "I've not come for the righteous, but for the sinners. Not for the healthy, but for the sick." So my hope is that we have a Jesus that extends that love and grace to us, no matter who we are. Even if we're sitting on death row, actually guilty of taking someone's life, like, God's grace is extended to us. If we're, if we've looked looked at someone with lust in our eyes, and we've committed adultery, so that should give us a little bit more humility before we point fingers at other people. I think that's the heart of the hope of the gospel is no one's above reproach, and no one's beyond redemption. 

Eddie Rester : 49:47

I think that's a great place to end. "No one above reproach. No and beyond redemption." And I think that's a big part of what you are sharing in your ministry. And in your reach. I want to thank you for that and I want to thank you for spending some time with us today. 

Shane Claiborne : 50:00

Absolutely, man, it's been great. Yeah, you do it again. You don't have to twist my arm to come back to Oxford. Yeah.

Eddie Rester : 50:05

There you go. Well, we're glad you enjoyed it and hope you have a safe trip home. [OUTRO] Thank you for listening today. Go ahead and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And go ahead and hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts.

Chris McAlilly : 50:19

This wouldn't be possible without our partner, General Board of Higher Education in Ministry. We want to thank also our producer, Cody Hickman. Follow us next week. We'll be back with another episode of The Weight. [END OUTRO]