January 28, 2010

Contact:   Bill Giduz

Shane Claiborne

Davidson College will host author and activist Shane Claiborne to deliver the 2010 Staley Distinguished Christian Lecture on Monday, February 8. Claiborne will speak about "Radical Community: Celebrating Jesus' Prophetic Imagination" beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Duke Family Performance Hall. There is no charge to attend.
 
Claiborne is a founding member of The Simple Way, an intentional "New Monastic" Christian community in inner city Philadelphia. He studied at Eastern University and Princeton Seminary, served alongside Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, and traveled to Iraq in 2003 as a member of the Iraq Peace Team.

He is the author of numerous books, including The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical and Jesus for President, as well as an article entitled "What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?" published in Esquire Magazine.

Claiborne, 35, has attracted attention and an extensive following, especially among youth, for preaching and practicing a theology of simplicity, peace, community and service to the poor.
 
The website "Read the Spirit" describes him as "a preacher who is brave enough to live out his own sermons - and to speak hard truths to well-established powers... He's an enormously popular author with activists of all ages who are working toward nonviolence and an end to destructive forms of poverty."

To show respect for Claiborne's emphasis on simplicity, Davidson students are hosting a poster-making party and will utilize recycled laundry paper and posters from past events to create pieces publicizing his talk.  

Volunteers for "creation care" activities made posters for Claiborne's talk out of paper grocery bags rather than having them commercially printed.

Members of the Davidson College community will also participate as possible in "Creation Care" activities in the week preceding Claiborne's lecture - using less electricity, eating local and vegetarian food, and walking or carpooling rather than driving. Claiborne asks all communities that host him to take this sort of action with the intention of offsetting the carbon emissions released by his travel to the location.  

Claiborne's visit will offer an opportunity for community members to intentionally consider their actions in light of their impact on our world, as well as their relation to the teachings of Jesus.  

For more information about the talk, call 704-894-2423.

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,800 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.