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Philadelphia caught my attention in 1995 when a group of homeless families were living in an abandoned cathedral. Even from the beginning they connected theology with what they were doing. They put a banner on the front of the cathedral that said, How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday.

Shane Claiborne

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Shane Claiborne
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: July 11
Author
Writer
Eastern Tennessee
Beginning
Sunday
Cathedrals
Groups
Families
Banner
Attention
Connected
Philadelphia
Living
Caught
Monday
Even
Group
Homeless
Men
Fronts
Abandoned
Worship
Theology
Front
Ignore
Cathedral

More quotes by Shane Claiborne

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This is the company we keep when it comes to the death penalty: China, the number one executing country Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, those are the top 4, and number 5 is the US. And those are not countries that are known as champions for human rights, you know.
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David, Moses, Saul of Tarsus, these were all people who did terrible terrible things  -  they were murderers. The Bible would be a lot shorter without grace.
Shane Claiborne
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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
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I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me.
Shane Claiborne
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Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.
Shane Claiborne
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How ironic is it to see a bumper sticker that says 'Jesus is the answer' next to a bumper sticker supporting the war in Iraq, as if to says 'Jesus is the answer - but not in the real world.
Shane Claiborne
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The more recent effort to encourage everyone to pray in common involves so many people.
Shane Claiborne
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It is the church's job, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King says, to be the conscience of the state, not the chaplain of the state.
Shane Claiborne
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Faith is believing in the impossible because we have a God who is master of impossible.
Shane Claiborne
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I moved to Philadelphia to go to school at Eastern partly because I wanted to study the Bible and I also went to study sociology. I like how Karl Barth said we have to read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other so that our faith doesn't just become a ticket into heaven and a license to ignore the world around us.
Shane Claiborne
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It's hard to hear the gentle whisper of the Spirit amid the noise of Christendom.
Shane Claiborne
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It's unilaterally true that it costs more to maintain the death penalty than the alternatives to it, and we can leverage more resources to victims families. We can do all sorts of creative ways of healing the pain that people have done by channeling the energy and resources to other more redemptive forms of justice.
Shane Claiborne
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We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.
Shane Claiborne
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People had taught me what Christians believe, but no one had told me how Christians live.
Shane Claiborne
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[People] need to find words that can reconnect them with each other. That is the gift of good liturgy, yeah. We're not talking about fluffy stuff. We're talking about real life for people around the world. Our prayers should be said like the daily breath that gives us life.
Shane Claiborne
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Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.
Shane Claiborne
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I just have a more holistic sense of what it means to be for life, knowing that life does not just begin at conception and end at birth, and that if I am going to discourage abortion, I had better be ready to adopt some babies and care for some mothers.
Shane Claiborne
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There is real value in these local congregations. For me, a lot of it is the value of the sacraments we share. In neighborhoods like ours, the churches provide stability.
Shane Claiborne
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We are faithful not to the triumphant golden eagle (ironically, also an imperial symbol of power in Rome) but to the slaughtered Lamb.
Shane Claiborne
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All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe.
Shane Claiborne