What Is Gleanings?

At Christianity Today, we’re constantly tracking important developments in the church and the world. Often we use our network of reporters around the world (and for that, visit our main site). But we also monitor other news outlets, bloggers, newsmakers’ social media feeds, and countless other information streams. Gleanings compiles the most urgent and interesting items we’ve found, explains why you need to know about them, and gives you the background you need to understand them. It’s our snapshot of what God is doing in the world, hour by hour.

Free Newsletters

« Even in Death, It's All About God | Main | The Church of the American Experiment »

May 17, 2007

The New Monasticism Continues

The Door interviews Shane Claiborne.

When I saw that Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution was being released on audio, I wasn't surprised. It was a good read; Shane's an interesting character. But I was surprised when I saw the catalog's ad copy that read something like "The revolution continues, and now it's available on MP3." How can these guys continue their critique of consumer Christianity when they're hawking their goods like this? I thought.

I was relieved then, when I saw The Wittenburg Door's interview with Claiborne in its May/June issue.

DOOR: What do you do with the royalties from your book?

CLAIBORNE: In the back of the book, I list ordinary radicals and local revolutions. We're spreading that money out to a lot of other groups that are doing beautiful work. To me, that's the only logical way that I would know to have integrity with that.

The rest of the interview is Shane being Shane. Here's his response to his being on the cover of CT.

When people want to talk about the new monasticism I'm like, "No, no. I'm not really interested in that. I want to talk about community, church history, and things like that." I feel like it's one thing to say life happens like we're doing here, talking in a diner. It's another thing to say, "Let's have a conference about talking in diners." Now we have book deals and stuff, so it gets really complicated.

Also, from reading a lot of the buzz around all of this, you get the sense that God is very, very hard at work among male white evangelicals. That puts a tremendous responsibility on those of us who find ourselves in places where we're more visible because there is a whole lot happening in the Church all over the world that doesn't make the magazine covers.

Comments

Hi, Rob - greetings from South Africa!

I'm keen to open up the conversation about New Monasticism in this country. I've started a blog (carlbrook.wordpress.com) but would appreciate some more pointers.

Who are the chief voices, what are the important writings, etc.?

Thanks, Carl Brook
Principal: South Coast Bible School