A
Ahimsa
Guest
By JOHN LELAND
Published: March 2, 2006
BY phone from Nashville Bryan Norman was talking about rebellion, God and the mullet haircut. Mr. Norman, 26, is the editor of a gothic scripted, visually hyperactive book called “The New Rebellion Handbook,” and he took a particular line on the romance of the rebel. “Rebellion,” he said late last month, “is the truest expression of the fully committed believer in Jesus.”
…
The claim of a Christian counterculture, which recurs periodically in American Protestantism, cuts in two directions, defining itself as counter to the consumer-driven secular culture and to mainstream church culture. For Shane Claiborne, 30, the author of “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical” (Zondervan), it has meant living for a decade in a monastic community in North Philadelphia, whose members make their own clothing, refrain from sex outside marriage and minister to the homeless and poor.
When he applies the language of rebellion to his faith, Mr. Claiborne said: "I’m trying to reclaim the language. I think it resonates with people because Christianity has been anything but radical. It’s been stale. When you ask people what they think about church, it’s sad. But Jesus doesn’t have the bad reputation that Christianity has. “What we do looks extreme because it’s an indictment of the idea of Christianity that so many of us have settled for. When we look at the early church, it was very revolutionary. Jesus sat down to rethink revolution. He was able to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.”
Published: March 2, 2006
BY phone from Nashville Bryan Norman was talking about rebellion, God and the mullet haircut. Mr. Norman, 26, is the editor of a gothic scripted, visually hyperactive book called “The New Rebellion Handbook,” and he took a particular line on the romance of the rebel. “Rebellion,” he said late last month, “is the truest expression of the fully committed believer in Jesus.”
…
The claim of a Christian counterculture, which recurs periodically in American Protestantism, cuts in two directions, defining itself as counter to the consumer-driven secular culture and to mainstream church culture. For Shane Claiborne, 30, the author of “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical” (Zondervan), it has meant living for a decade in a monastic community in North Philadelphia, whose members make their own clothing, refrain from sex outside marriage and minister to the homeless and poor.
When he applies the language of rebellion to his faith, Mr. Claiborne said: "I’m trying to reclaim the language. I think it resonates with people because Christianity has been anything but radical. It’s been stale. When you ask people what they think about church, it’s sad. But Jesus doesn’t have the bad reputation that Christianity has. “What we do looks extreme because it’s an indictment of the idea of Christianity that so many of us have settled for. When we look at the early church, it was very revolutionary. Jesus sat down to rethink revolution. He was able to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.”