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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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Shane Claiborne
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: July 11
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Eastern Tennessee
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Martin
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Luther
King
Kings
Conscience
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More quotes by Shane Claiborne

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I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.
Shane Claiborne
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The death penalty has succeeded in America, not in spite of Christians, but because of us. The Bible Belt is the Death Belt. Wherever Christians are most concentrated is where executions are happening, and that's deeply troubling to me.
Shane Claiborne
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For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.
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
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The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage.
Shane Claiborne
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One by one, these disciples would infect the nations with grace. It wasn't a call to take the sword or the throne and force the world to bow. Rather, they were to live the contagious love of God, to woo the nations into a new future.
Shane Claiborne
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Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.
Shane Claiborne
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It's not that hard to say slavery is wrong after we've abolished it.
Shane Claiborne
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The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination.
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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Somehow Jesus's reputation has survived all the embarrassing things that Christians have done in his name.
Shane Claiborne
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We know the Church wasn't born 200 years ago. It's encouraging to see some of the post-denominational churches actually wanting to reconnect with the story and the prayer life of the larger Church.
Shane Claiborne
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The future of the church is also about looking back and looking at where we see these wonderful renewals and what we can learn from the early church. I think it is a really exciting time where Phyllis Tickle said every few hundred years the church needs a rummage sale where we can get rid of some of the clutter.
Shane Claiborne
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I do believe that the Church is God's primary instrument for ushering in the Kingdom (God's dream) on earth as it is in heaven, but God is not limited to use only the Church, or only Christians for that matter.
Shane Claiborne
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I'm excited we can be part of making the death penalty history.
Shane Claiborne
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Because you can poke someone's eye out legally doesn't mean you should and that it's right. The Bible teaches us a more perfect justice.
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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Jesus taught us a prayer of community and reconciliation, belonging to a new people who have left the land of 'me'.
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's hard to hear the gentle whisper of the Spirit amid the noise of Christendom.
Shane Claiborne