Shane Claiborne: Living as an Ordinary Asshole.

From the back cover of Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical:

Welcome to the irresistible revolution, a new and ancient way of life that is so attractive, who would settle for anything else? The revolution begins inside each of us, and through little acts of love, it will take over the world. Let us begin to be Christians again. Jesus, give us the courage. –Shane Claiborne.

In The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne invites you into a movement of the Spirit that begins in the heart and extends through our hands into a broken world. Using examples from his own unconventional life, Shane Claiborne stirs up questions about the church and the world, challenging you to live out an authentic Christian faith. This book will comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable, and invite believers to change the world with Christ’s radical love.

Harmless, right? It’s two-thirds charming and one-third numbingly annoying. All fine. The book’s premise: a young Christian buck going out into the world and living like a poor person to prove his version of Christianity the “authentic” one. Look, it says it right there!

…challenging you to live out an authentic Christian faith.

See! It’s authentic because Shane Claiborne practices it. You can look him up on Wikipedia. Charming, no? He’s like the Dave Matthews Band’s answer to Mother Teresa, only whiter! That’s some authentic Christian shit.

How did Claiborne come by his authentic Christianity? The Bible, of course! Let’s take a look-see at the first 35 pages (because there wasn’t enough vomit in me to eject to get through the next 314), and check out which awesome Bible passages he drops like they’re hot.

1 Cor. 1:27: But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

1 Kings 19:12: After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

Matt. 21:31: The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

John 9:6: Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.

Pretty innocuous, right? Standard socialist Christian fare, something about rich people and camels and needles and the like. I wonder why Claiborne didn’t include any of these next passages to support his theological and political views?

Deut. 20:13-14: When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies.

Deut. 20:16-18: However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God.

1 Tim. 2:11-14: A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

The Book of Revelation. All of it.

Bad, right? Maybe not Shane Claiborne’s cup of tea (or is it?). His brand of Christianity–with camels and needles and rich people sucking–draws support from the same text which could be the basis for a genocidal and misogynistic fascist cult. Yay, Bible!

Does Shane Claiborne attempt to explain the presence of these troubling passages (three among hundreds) in his book? No! These passages are apparently not “authentic.” Despite, you know, sitting a few feet away in the same book that justifies and validates his entire subjectivity.

If Claiborne had, say, selected his preferred passages, did a fancy cut and paste job and crafted a new Bible (the Shane Claiborne Bible!), I would not object to this solipsistic textual approach: “I’m right because these passages are nice!” But this is not Claiborne’s project–to do so would (obviously) undermine the sanctity of his arrogant theology. It is far easier to write off the televangelists, the Falwells and the Robertsons, arguing that their Christianity is somehow “lesser,” despite the fact that you are using the same goddamn source material to support your own hacky beliefs.

So what we get instead of a charming approach to aiding the impoverished is a manual equally as dogmatic and proselytizing as the evangelical sermons it alleges to deride. “Authentic?” Shane Claiborne is an authentic asshole.

Take one last look at Claiborne’s book, where he relays an incident in a surprisingly callous tone.

We read in the Scriptures that God says to take good care of strangers, for we could be entertaining angels without knowing it (Heb. 13:2). And I really think we saw angels and demons. One night we met a precious, fragile old woman who looked just like a granny about to pinch your cheek. As we walked by, she began whispering, “Jesus is dead. Jesus is dead,” louder and louder until it became chillingly eerie. At a loss for words and taken a little off-guard, we just began quietly humming the tune of an old worship song. She put her hands on her ears and began shaking her head, her whole body squirming as if we were running our fingernails down a chalkboard. She rocked back and forth, shouting, “Get away from me! Get away from me!” And then she scurried down the street with her hands on her ears. I didn’t even know if I believed in angels or demons, but I had the distinct sense that we were encountering them. They just looked so much different than they do in the horror movies and Hallmark cards (49-50).

I don’t blame her. I have the same reaction whenever I hear tone-deaf white boys humming “worship songs” in my ear because they take me for a demon. Perhaps had they not been so enthralled by Jesus driving out devils in several Bible passages, they would have, I don’t know, helped an obviously beleaguered woman instead of writing her off as possessed–because what self-respecting old poor person would EVER hate Jesus?!

Shane Claiborne isn’t authentic. Shane Claiborne isn’t righteous. Shane Claiborne is just another asshole, this one furnished with reductionist readings of the Bible.

And that’s one asshole nobody should be forced to sniff.