My guest this week is Shane Claiborne, a sought-after speaker, beloved activist, and best-selling author. I had such a meaningful time talking with Shane and hearing his passion for connecting with other people and seeing through the false divisions that alienate us from each other, and really caring deeply for the most vulnerable among us. This conversation is for you if you’re a Christian, or you used to be, or you love someone who’s a Christian, or you hate Christianity, and especially if you’ve ever wondered if there’s more to being a Christian than just saying you believe certain things. I found myself crying during parts of our conversation, because I just find Shane’s words and actions so refreshing and life-affirming.

Topics we discussed included:

• My own background in fundamentalist Pentecostal Christianity
• My guest’s understanding of Jesus
• A version of God that’s easy to fear but hard to love
• Jesus’s life as solidarity with the human condition
• The assumption of violence in some Christian atonement theology
• The organization that Shane co-founded called “Red Letter Christians”
• How our core beliefs differ from those that Jesus seemed to hold
• How Jesus “made a spectacle of death on the cross” (Colossians 2:15)
• Being transformed by the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2)
• What it means to be “born again”
• The profoundly counter-cultural nature of Jesus’s message (Matthew 5-7)
• Caring for the most vulnerable members in our society
• Being called not simply to beliefs but to change the way we live
• Making converts into evangelicalism but not converts into love
• Common perceptions that young non-Christians have of Christians
• My own embarrassment about Christianity when I was younger
• Competing narratives of what Christianity is really about
• Frederick Douglas’s description of two versions of Christianity
• Cultural Christianity as an “inoculation” against the full message of Christ
• American Nationalism camouflaged as Christianity
• Leslie Callahan and Mark Tyler, pastors in Philadelphia
• Jesus’s Gospel as good news for the poor, welcoming immigrants, and taking care of widows and orphans
• The influence that Rich Mullins’s words and music had on me
  • Here’s a clip from the concert Shane and I talked about; the full concert can be purchased here

Shane worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and founded The Simple Way in Philadelphia, about forty minutes from where I live. He heads up Red Letter Christians, a movement of people who are committed to living “as if Jesus meant the things he said.”

Shane is a champion for grace, which has led him to jail for advocating for the homeless, and to places like Iraq and Afghanistan to stand against war. Now grace fuels his passion to end the death penalty and help stop gun violence.

Shane’s books include (affiliate links): Jesus for President, Red Letter Revolution, Common Prayer, Follow Me to Freedom, Jesus, Bombs and Ice Cream, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, Executing Grace, his classic The Irresistible Revolution, and his newest book, Beating Guns. He has been featured in a number of films including “Another World Is Possible” and “Ordinary Radicals.”

His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Shane speaks over one hundred times a year, nationally and internationally. His work has appeared in Esquire, SPIN, Christianity Today, TIME, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has been on everything from Fox News and Al Jazeera to CNN and NPR. Shane has also given academic lectures at Harvard, Princeton, Liberty, Duke, and Notre Dame, and he speaks regularly at denominational gatherings, festivals, and conferences around the globe.

Find Shane online at the Red Letter Christian website and on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.