Common Prayer : A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Experience a deeper prayer life through this fresh take on ancient liturgy for believers today.

Designed to help individuals, families, and congregations pray together across denominations, this book of common prayer will help you and your community join together each day with the same songs, scriptures, and prayers. Composed under an advisory team of liturgy experts, these three influential and inspiring authors have created Common Prayer--a tapestry of prayer that will help the church be one as God is one.

This universal prayer book allows readers to greet each day together, remembering significant dates and Christian heroes in church history, as well as important historic dates in the struggle for freedom and justice. There are morning prayers for each day of the year, evening prayers for each of the seven days of the week, a midday prayer to be repeated throughout the year, and prayers for special occasions. In addition, there are morning prayers for Holy Week.

Common Prayer also includes a unique songbook composed of music and classic lyrics to more than fifty songs from various traditions, including African spirituals, traditional hymns, Mennonite gathering songs, and Taize chants. Tools for prayer are scattered throughout to aid those who are unfamiliar with liturgy and to deepen the prayer life of those who are familiar with liturgical prayer.

Ultimately, Common Prayer makes liturgy dance, taking the best of the old and bringing new life to it with a fresh fingerprint for the contemporary renewal of the church.

Shane Claiborne is a prominent speaker, activist, and bestselling author. He worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and founded The Simple Way in Philadelphia. He leads Red Letter Christians, a movement of folks who are committed to living “as if Jesus meant the things he said.” Shane is a champion for grace, which has led him to jail for “good trouble,” and to places like Iraq and Afghanistan to stand against war.

Shane’s books include Jesus for President; Red Letter Revolution; Common Prayer; Follow Me to Freedom; Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream; Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers; his classic The Irresistible Revolution; Executing Grace; Beating Guns; and Rethinking Life. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Shane speaks around the globe at denominational gatherings, festivals, and conferences. His university lectures include Harvard, Princeton, Liberty, Duke, and Notre Dame. His work has appeared in Esquire, Spin, Christianity Today, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has been featured on Fox News, Al Jazeera, CNN, and NPR. In 2023, Shane received The King Center’s Beloved Community Award for Social Justice from Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is assistant director at the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. He serves as an associate minister at St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina. He is a sought-after speaker and the author of more than a dozen books, including The Wisdom of Stability, God’s Economy, Strangers at My Door, and White Poverty with Bishop William J. Barber II.

Jonathan and Bishop Barber publish the popular Our Moral Moment newsletter on Substack. A senior democracy fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute, Jonathan has been featured in the documentary film Bad Faith and in news coverage from CBS News to CNN and The Washington Post. Learn more at www.jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com.

Enuma Okoro is a Nigerian-American author, curator, spiritual director, and lecturer. She received her Master of Divinity from Duke University and is trained as a certified spiritual director in the St. Ignatian tradition. Her work explores how engaging art, ecology, and embodied contemplative spiritual practices can nourish the human condition, interrogate inherited narratives, and alter how we live. She is a columnist for The Financial Times where she writes her globally read weekend column, The Art of Life. Learn more about Enuma at www.enumaokoro.com.