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Authors Beah and Claiborne Featured at Montreat Conference Center Book Signings
The theme for this year’s annual college conference at Montreat Conference Center, “Hope Has a Voice,” will draw over 750 college students from all over the country, eager to hear a message of hope from noted authors Shane Claiborne and Ishmeal Beah. During the January 3-6 conference, book signings have been scheduled for both authors.
The public is invited to meet Shane Claiborne for a signing of his book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living As An Ordinary Radical, Friday, January 4 at 3:00 PM in the conference center’s Anderson Auditorium. Ishmael Beah will be available Saturday, January 5 at 5:30 PM, also in Anderson Auditorium, to sign his book, A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
Shane Claiborne is one of the founding members of a new monastic community in Philadelphia, PA, called “The Simple Way.” In addition to his writing and speaking, Claiborne is also a prominent activist for the redistribution of resources to the poor and nonviolence. His outlook on ministry to the poor is often compared to Mother Teresa, whom he worked with during a 10-week term in Calcutta.
“The vision of Jesus is not spread through organizational structures, but through touch, breath, shared life,” says Claiborne. “It is spread through people who have discovered love.” Going on, he says, “I believe that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor, but that they do not know the poor.”
Ishmael Beah, born in Sierra Leone in 1980, tells a riveting story of childhood in the midst of war. Pressed into service as a child soldier at the age of 13, he fought for almost three years before being rescued by UNICEF. “One thing I want people to know,” he insists today, “is that what happened to Sierra Leone was very difficult, but I don’t want people to think that only in Africa, Asia, or Latin America are people capable of losing their humanity. Everyone has that capacity. It’s part of our nature. We can lose it, and we can regain it.”
Beah currently works for the Human Rights Watch Children’s Division Advisory Committee, lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is considering attending graduate school.
Learn more about the College Conference at Montreat Conference Center. Books by Claiborne and Beah will be available at the signings or may be ordered online at www.montreatbooksandgifts.org.