 "Photo: N/A")
Charlotte- Sunday at 7:00 p.m. Myers Park United Methodist Church housed guest speaker Shane Claiborne, co-author of “Jesus for President,” and advocate for nonviolence and love for mankind.
United Christian Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte advertised the event on their Web site’s calendar and provided rides for those in need. A pre-event dinner was scheduled to acquaint attendees with UCF’s campus ministry. While the calendar mentioned nothing of the dinner and miss-lead interested viewers into thinking the event was held at UCF’s off-campus location, Advent Lutheran, Shane Claiborne was easy to find via Google search engine.
If hungry attendees missed the UCF dinner outing, they were not left wanting. Cookies and beverages were provided to the large crowd and, as people pilled in their seats with napkins full of tasty treats, a live local Christian band rocked the sanctuary with contemporary gospel.
Once a prayer was said over the congregation, Claiborne walked on stage with his long dreadlocks, bandana, baggy pants and white tee-shirt. His informal demeanor was reflective of his iconoclastic beliefs.
Jeremy Hatchett, a resident of the university area and proclaimed Christian, had done his research and expected Claiborne’s unconventional appearance, but seeing him in person was a different experience. “I can really respect a person who is not afraid of being different. I have never seen him in person, but Shane is definitely someone I am going to look into,” Hatchett said.
During Claiborne’s hour long rhetoric on revolution in the heart of American Christians, Claiborne aimed to avoid stepping on toes with his radical opinions on politics. Although he does not consider himself a capitalist or a socialist, he did say, “I think some might call God a socialist.”
The crowd laughed at his many jokes and nodded in agreement when he condemned the American dream saying, he believes God has a different dream than the American dream. As an advocate for a minimalistic lifestyle, Claiborne challenged the crowd with statistics on American consumption and urged them to examine and reevaluate their destructive path.
After concluding his speech with a prayer, he handed the stage over to the band who led the audience in praise and worship. Once the song was over, Claiborne returned to the stage to end the night by taking questions from the crowd.
Hatchett felt that the question and answer session “had the potential to be pretty powerful.” While the answers where motivational, the questions where confusing and unrelated to Claiborne’s message. Hatchett would like to have gotten Claiborne’s opinion on selling all of your possessions to start a new life free from material good; however, he left early.
1 comments