Book Review: Becoming the Answer to our Prayers
I’ve been a big Shane Claiborne fan since his first book, The Irresistible Revolution, came out in 2006. I’ve noticed a trend in his books since then as each one repeats the main ideas in the previous books with small additions. This book, Becoming the Answers to our Prayers, written with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the greatest example of this trend.
The book can’t decide what it wants to be. It dithers between offering advice for your prayer life and convincing the reader of the need for social engagement. As a book about prayer the authors advise us that, “where we pray makes a difference,” (pg 57) and that, “If you will, you can become all flame.” (pg 94). In general the book is quite clumpy when it talks about how we should pray, with the ideas seemly tacked into the book in such a way as to feel out of place. Part 3 of the book focused on mysticism in prayer but in a way that seemed only to confuse the issue rather than offer genuine incites. If you are looking for a book on prayer there are much better ones out there.
The other focus of this book, social justice, reads exactly like Shane Cailborne’s two previous books (I haven’t read anything by Jonathan before). In fact, the book regurgitates many of the exact same stories that appear in The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President, to the point of using the same wording. This was a minor annoyance with Jesus for President, but a major issue in this book. The only difference is that this book begins its discussion on social justice from the prayers of Jesus, whereas previous books use different passages.
Perhaps if you’ve never read a book about Christian social action this could offer a lot of food for thought, but if you have already considered these things Becoming the Answer to our Prayers will offer nothing new for you. The book is short, offering a slim portion of the wisdom available in other books. I got the distinct impression that the authors had already made their contribution to the conversation and were merely beating a dead horse (as to say, “I’m still here”).
So If you’ve read Cailborne’s other works I would recommend you spend your money on something more original, and If you haven’t go and buy The Irresistible Revolution, it covers a lot more ground and is a bargain for the price. Maybe Shane will come out with something more original in the future, but I don’t think I will be so keen to jump on it as I have been with his previous works.
Just a note that the link in this article uses Amazon’s Affiliate program (with WordPress’ permission), so if you purchase the book through it I get a small, but helpful, kickback.
