The Irresistible Revolution

I've heard Shane Claiborne speak twice, the book was on my shelf for more than a year, I've even had dinner with him! I thought that I'd heard what he had to say and that I didn't need to read the book, until a conversation with one of my students who'd read Irresistible Revolution in High School. After reading the book, he and a few friends decided to honor the lunch ladies at their school with a special dinner, served by tuxedoed high schoolers. So I picked it up and read it over the past month on airplanes and buses. Sure, I'd heard several of the anecdotes from the book in his presentations, but there is so much more. Claiborne refers repeatedly to source material that inspired his own theological reflections on the relationships between Christians and poverty: Martin Luther King Jr, Dorothy Day, Charles Marsh, and others. He wrestles articulately with a lot of the things I've wrestled with in the years since I began college: how should Christians respond to sweatshops, violence, war, the church? His response to these questions is in many ways more radical than mine have been, but they have both encouraged me to persevere in ways that I've invested my life more deeply and challenged me in ways that I've made selfish choices. He reads the Bible as if Jesus really meant what he said, and challenges the reader to do likewise. I'm considering this as a text for a group of students I work with who will recruit volunteers from their residence halls to serve in various capacities, mostly within under-resourced communities. My hesitation comes with the sometimes political slant taken in the book, that may serve to alienate several of the students I work with. However, as I've now finished the book, I'm more convinced that his message and Biblical interpretation are right on. I'm recommending this book broadly, if you are a Christian who is serious about your faith, or someone whose not been convinced that the Christianity we see in America today is for you. I'm also wondering which other writer/speakers I've short changed by assuming that I know all they have to say after hearing them speak for forty minutes.

Challenging Tradition

Do we honor the past and tradition most by challenging its role in shaping the present and future? Sometimes I think we imagine that traditions just emerge effortlessly from the stream of history. But do we forget the often difficult challenges that individuals faced in establishing their deepest convictions, which now arrive in the form of long standing beliefs and practices. I contest that by passively receiving our traditions from the past, we fail to honor the radical and progressive nature that is at the heart of many traditions. This need not mean that we now reject our traditions, but rather we join in the passion of traditions by critically engaging what is handed down to us, and synthesizing and adapting such materials for a still better future. Conservatism, as understood as the mere perpetuation of tradition, may in fact be the very antithesis of what first inspired such vigor and conviction as to generate a long standing belief and practice. How are we engaging our traditions today? How does Calvin College engage its heritage of Dutch Reformed tradition in this modern context?