Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

An Inconvenient Theology: Reading William Stringfellow, First Edition by First Edition

Richard Beck, professor and experimental psychologist at Abilene Christian University, has a high regard for Episcopalian Layman William Stringfellow – something he and I share in common. In 2012 he started a “project”, and it remains ongoing. The project was to first collect, then read all of the first editions (and/or first “printing’s”) of William Stringfellow published works, in chronological. Unlike here in NZ, first editions can be readily founding the US, and very affordably. Why “first editions”? Beck writes: 

“… [I] wanted to read Stringfellow's books as they came out of the crate when he first saw them. I can't explain this in any way other than wanting to make a connection with Stringfellow through space and time…” And, this is the envious part of me quoting, Beck “…found two copies that were autographed by Stringfellow. The prize of [which was] a first edition, first printing, autographed copy of My People is the Enemy…” 

So, after providing a really useful overview of Stringfellow’s theology, he’s been slowly making his way through the books and reflecting on each. Maybe he’ll complete his project, maybe he won’t, but to date he offers reflections on the following Stringfellow titles: 

A Private and Public Faith

Instead of Death

My People is the Enemy

Free in Obedience

Dissenter in a Great Society

Count It All Joy

Imposters of God. 

If you’re interested in this series, check back on Richard Beck’s blog site. If I notice he’s read / reviewed another Stringfellow book, I’ll add the link to this list. 

Priests: Their Role and Calling – Some Thoughts by William Stringfellow

Paul writes – On of the privileges I’ve had recently has been part of a process for journeying with and helping potential candidates for Anglican priesthood to discern the ways in which God might be inviting them to serve in that capacity within the laos or “people of God”. William Stringfellow was not an Episcopal priest, but like me, he was a so-called “lay person”, one committed to deep (some might say “radical”) theological reflection and to being in the world for the sake of God and God’s purposes and activity in God’s world. He was deeply committed to the implications of the incarnation for a church that was called to be paradoxically both in the world and yet also apart from the world by virtue of it’s priestly calling to be God’s people for the sake of the world. 

“…The Biblical description of the Church as the Body of Christ living in the midst of the traffic and turmoil and conflict of the world on behalf of the world. The Biblical image of the Church is, to be sure, that of a stranger and alien in the world, despised by the nation, but the Biblical image of the Church is never one of an innocuous, isolationist religious society cut off from the actual affairs of [people] and nations in the World…” (Stringfellow p.19 – see title below)

With thoughts of priesthood in my mind, and in ongoing reflections on my recent experience, alluded to above, I was struck by the following quote attributed to William Stringfellow and derived from the third book by William Stringfellow which I added to my library a good number of years back – A Private and a Public Faith.  

“…For those ordained by the church for the priesthood, this means that their office and ministry are located at the interstices of the Body of Christ and of the congregations that represent that Body visibly and notoriously in the world. The ministry of the priesthood is a ministry to the members of the Body in their relations to each other, relation’s consequent to their incredibly diversified ministry within the world. The ministry of the priesthood is one directed to the most sophisticated life of the church, the church, that is, gathered as a congregation in worship, assembled for the exposition and exhibition of the Word of God. This is the ministry addressed to the care and nurture of the members of the Body of Christ for the sake of their several, various, and common uses in the world. This is the ministry serving those people who come out of the world now and then to worship God together and encompass and include in their intercession to God the cares of the world as they know it and are involved in it. This is the ministry of confession in which the task and witness of each member of the Body is heard and related to that of all other members of the Body who are now or who have ever been or, indeed, who are yet to be. This is the ministry that cares for and conserves the tradition of the church—that is, the continuity and integrity of the Christian mission ever since Pentecost. This is the ministry devoted to the health and holiness of the Body of Christ in the world…” (Text boldened by me to highlight that this quote is as equally about mission as it is about priesthood). 

Stringfellow’s comments are not all there is to say about the calling and role of priests, but it’s an important part, sadly too often neglected. Thanks to Len Hjalmarson for reminding me of this book (and why it’s important whether for those considering ordination, for those already ordained, and for the whole people of God), and the article (excerpted from the book) from which the quote on priesthood (above) is taken. Len outlines the kind of thinking and the directions that thinking might go in as a follow up to a comment he left one of my recent posts. 

“William Stringfellow’s Sacramental Vision”.

Paul writes - The title of today’s post is also the title of a brilliant 2004 paper by Wendy Dackson – William Stringfellow’s Sacramental Vision. I highly recommend it. Stringfellow continues to gift many of us the vocabulary to name both our experiences and concerns.  Dackson’s abstract reads: 

“William Stringfellow (1929–85) was an Episcopal layman, attorney and social activist. Although much has been written about him since his death, most of it is in the form of personal testimony. Examinations of various doctrinal areas of his theological writings are unusual. Therefore, this article examines Stringfellow's idea of sacramental reality and grounds it in the worship of the Church and Christian engagement with the world. The concluding comments offer a justification for seeing this vision as one of enduring importance for faith and action in a post-Christian society.”

While on the subject of Stringfellow’s sacramental vision, I’d like to draw you attention to a four-part (so far) post by Jason Goroncy. He’s reviewing Stringfellow’s Imposters of God.In particular Jason opens his series by highlighting a section of Stringfellow’s preface to the aforementioned book: 

“…William Stringfellow’s Imposters of God begins with this insight: 

Nothing seems more bewildering to a person outside the Church about those inside the Church than the contrast between how Christians behave in society and what Christians do in the sanctuary.

This contrast is not, I suspect, just taken for granted by outsiders as evidence of the hypocrisy of professed Christians. It is not simply that Christians do not practice what is preached and neglect to authenticate worship by witness. The non-churchmen is, I suggest, much more bewildered by the difficulty of discerning either connection or consistency between social action and liturgical event. The two apparently represent not only distinguishable but altogether separate realms: the former deals with ethics, the latter with aesthetics; the first is empirical, the second theatrical; the one is mundane, the other quaint. For the stranger to the Church, to whom the churchman appears to act in the marketplace much the same as everybody else, the straightforward and cogent explanation is that these peculiar sanctuary activities are sentimentally significant—as habit, tradition or superstition—but otherwise irrelevant, superfluous and ineffectual.

More or less secretly, or at least quietly, legions of church people suffer this same sort of bewilderment. If these people sense any relationship between practical life and sacramental experience, it is tenuous, illusive and visceral: a felt connection, a matter not readily elucidated, a spooky thing. On occasion, when a priest or preacher goes forth from the sanctuary to affirm in the world what is celebrated at the altar, he is usually ridiculed for meddling in affairs outside his vocation. Or when, in the midst of worship, a pastor ventures to be articulate about the relationship between ethics and sacraments, his effort is apt to be regarded as an intrusion defiling the congregation’s ears. (pp. xxi–xxii)…” (highlights, mine – Paul) 

Stringfellow well names a reality anyone with any degree of discernment and the perspective of a so-called “outsider” would pick up if they sat in the back row of a church gathering over the course of 4-consecutive Sunday’s. There is a massive disconnect between sanctuary and the world outside the sanctuary; between the gathered experience of the people of God and their dispersed and diverse everyday contexts. 

You can read Jason’s posts: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4. 

William Stringfellow and his Homosexuality

Paul writes – While not definitive (by his own admission) Jason Goroncy has written a very useful post on William Stringfellow and his homosexuality. Included in that post are also links to three very useful posts on homosexuality by Ray Anderson. While I struggled to get my head around what he was saying and the practical implications it nonetheless offers some interesting ways of framing the questions theologically, and read in conjunction with the likes of James Alison, Rowan William’s The Body’s Grace (likewise linked from Jason’s post for those of you who haven’t read it) Kenneth Leech (indirectly and in relation to HIV – his essay “’The Carnality of Grace’: Sexuality,Spirituality & Pastoral Ministry) and Gareth Moore O.P.

Here’s an excerpt from Jason’s post:

“...There are a minimal number of references in Stringfellow’s own work to the question of homosexuality. That Stringfellow says abundantly more about Jesus Christ than he does about himself is, I think, significant in itself. One place where Stringfellow does speak to the question of homosexuality is in his essay ‘Loneliness, Dread and Holiness’, published in The Christian Century on 10 October 1962. Significantly, the essay is a reflection on 2 Corinthians 12:8–9a, ‘Three times I besought the Lord about this that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”’

In that essay, Stringfellow begins by recalling the loneliness which is ‘as intimate and as common to men as death’, and ‘the void [which] may be mere boredom’, and then proceeds to note all the places that exploit and profit from that transient loneliness and boredom ‘promising that time will be consumed for those who pay the price’ – whether it be a dance studio, a club, a bar, with ‘prostitutes or homosexuals or whatever one wants’  – even if it means relieving the loneliness in lust. ‘These are’, he writes:

‘establishments often populated by those who realize that loneliness is more than the burden of time and who are beguiled by another fiction: that loneliness can be conquered by erotic infatuation. Here are folk, whether men or women, whether looking for the same or the other sex, for whom seduction becomes a way of life, who insist on the importance of what meets the eye – physique, clothes, the appearance of youth. Here are the lonely whose search for a partner is so dangerous, so stimulating and so exhausting that the search itself provides an apparent escape from loneliness. But when a partner is found for an hour or a night or a transient affair, the search immediately resumes, becomes compulsive. And while erotic companionship seems more appealing – and more human – than resignation to boredom, while touching another may be more intimate and more honest than watching another, no one may really find his own identity in another, least of all in the body of another. Perhaps this is the most absurd fiction of them all: the notion that is present, primitively, in erotic partnerships but also very often in other relationships – between parents and children, in friendship, in marriage – that one’s own identity must be sought and can be found in another person’...” 

Also insightful is Michael Westmorland-White’s “comment” appended to Jason’s post.  

You can read Jason’s full post here.

Amidst the Powers

Paul writes – Brian Walsh and others share the benediction they used at the conclusion of the March 09 conference – Evolving Church::Amidst the Powers - this link will take you to the PPT presentation and the full text of the liturgy. For more reflection on a biblical understanding of “the powers” (cf. Ephesians 6:12) you might want to try these books (see below). All help introduce the themes, and introduce more technical thinking and writing by the authors (thinking in particular of Walter Wink), easily found on Amazon.com or other online bookshops.

 

Here’s part of what Walsh etc say in their post:

 

“On Saturday, we all participated in the Evolving Church: Amidst the Powers conference ...The keynote addresses from Walter Wink, Stanley Hauerwas and Marva Dawn all challenged us to live our faith personally and corporately in the midst of a world where the powers are simultaneously good, fallen, and being redeemed…”

 

You can read the rest of their post here.

 

Want more on the theme?

 

1. William Stringfellow – An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Start with this one. It’s a classic. Stringellow can be a little dense and quite verbose in the way he writes, but you’d be encouraged to persevere. Though dead, his thinking on this theme still speaks with a freshness and liveliness. It is still relevant, even if some of the historical examples are not. Stringfellow was very incarnational in that he did theology in the midst of the ordinary and every day happenings of the context(s) in which he found himself

2. Walter Wink – The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium (Based on Wink’s award-winning “Powers” trilogy).

3. Marva J. Dawn – Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God.

4. Stanley P. Saunders and Charles L. Campbell - The Word on the Street: Performing the Scriptures in the Urban Context (Situated very much in a range of US urban contexts, but still very helpful in listening to, embodying, and enacting the Biblical narrative (a liberating text) in conversation with history, culture(s) and context). Campbell's book on preaching and the powers is brilliant.

5. Stanley Hauerwas – While Hauerwas hasn’t written “one” text on the subject, the themes, more explicitly addressed in the books noted above, are woven implicitly and explicitly through his considerable number of essays. For example, his essay (co-written with Jeff Powell, “Creation as Apocalyptic: A Tribute to William Stringfellow” in Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular. That said, I think that if I wanted to engage with Hauerwas in an affordable and relatively accessible way, I’d start with Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity (a collection of essays) or Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony…  

An Ethic for a Post-Imperial Presidency…?

Paul writes – with Obama having become “President-Elect”, I found Brian Walsh’s reflection (my thanks to Jonny for bringing it to my attention) a helpful way into thinking about the larger (entrenched) systemic and cultural challenges that Obama and his new government face. This initial reflection led to some of William Stringfellow’s work, particularly, An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land, and Conscience and Obedience: The Politics of Romans 13 and Revelation 13 in Light of the Second Coming.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from Walsh wondering about the possibility of a “Post-Imperial Presidency”:

“…It is no overstatement to describe the presidency of George W. Bush as imperial in character. You don’t have to be a left wing ideologue to observe that the Pax Americana of the last eight years, the centralization of coercive power legitimated in a post 9/11 America, and the American exceptionalism that has laced the rhetoric of the White House is all the stock in trade of empire…”

You can read the rest of Brian’s reflection here. And, if you’re able to get your hands on William Stringfellow’s written corpus, I strongly recommend it – not an easy read, but a needful and important read. Indeed, they would be good presidential reading for a “post-imperial presidency”.

Reading William Stringfellow and wondering if he has anything to say to the Mission-Shaped Church

Paul writes – In a recent post which linked to an essay by Brian Walsh, I mentioned William Stringfellow – a person I haven’t mentioned on this blog for a while. Here’s a 2005 article written by Bill Wylie-Kellermann, In One Another's Light: Reading [Martin Luther] King and Stringfellow, for The Witness.

Stringfellow remains an important and needful voice 23-years after his death, particularly with regards the whole conversation around the church as the hermeneutic of the gospel over and against the "principalities and powers", i.e. how we "live humanly in the midst of death" or how we are to live as what Rowan Williams calls “biblical persons”; realities given too little attention in the mission-shaped conversation, particularly with regards our understanding of incarnation and it’s missiological implications along with those of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.

Here’s two excerpts from Wylie Kellermann’s essay:

“… [On] March 2, 2005, we also marked the feast of [William] Stringfellow -- twenty years since his passing in 1985. His birthday, by the way, is April 26 -- he would have been 77 this year. For those unfamiliar, a brief introduction may be in order: Stringfellow was a Harvard-trained lawyer who went straight from law school in 1956 to East Harlem where he improvised street law, before there really was such a thing. He is crucial theologically, for being the one in the U.S. to bring the "principalities and powers" back on to the map of ethics and ministry. This language, found largely in the letters of Paul -- "the rulers and authorities," the "princes, thrones and dominions" -- comprise terms which had been hermeneutically inaccessible to the church, virtually since the conversion (so-called) of Constantine in the fourth century. Stringfellow would reference that same event, actually, as the conversion of the church to empire…”

Stringfellow reflected:

“…From the point of view of either biblical religion, the monstrous American heresy is in thinking that the whole drama of history takes place between God and human beings. The truth, biblically and theologically and empirically, is quite otherwise: the drama of this history takes place amongst God and human beings and the principalities and powers, the great institutions and ideologies active in the world. It's the corruption and shallowness of humanism which beguiles Jew or Christian into believing that human beings are masters of institutions or ideology. Or to put it a bit differently, racism is not an evil in human hearts or minds: racism is a principality, a demonic power, a representative image, an embodiment of death over which human beings have little or no control, but which works its awful influence over human life…”

You can read the whole essay here, or as a PDF below. If this article whets your appetite, try this one from Bill Wylie-Kellermann – Not vice versa. Reading the powers biblically: Stringfellow, hermeneutics, and the principalities.

And this one by Simon Barrow – The Word Turned Upside Down.

Versions of both were included in this expensive but excellent collection of essay’s edited by Anthony Dancer.

Download bill_wyliekellermann_in_one_anothers_light_reading_king_and_stringfellow.pdf

William Stringfellow’s Sacramental Vision – Help Required…

Paul writes – The Journal of Anglican Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, 75-86 (2004) has, published within it, an essay, William Stringfellow’s Sacramental Vision by Wendy Dackson. I have tried e-mailing the author to ask her for a copy of her essay, but she no longer has an electronic copy. I don’t have access to a theological library. This is a bit cheeky, but I’d be really grateful to anyone who does have access to a theological library – one that has this particular journal in it – and would be willing to photocopy and post a copy of the essay to me, down here at the bottom of the world.

Here’s the abstract:

“William Stringfellow (1929-85) was an Episcopal layman, attorney and social activist. Although much has been written about him since his death, most of it is in the form of personal testimony. Examinations of various doctrinal areas of his theological writings are unusual. Therefore, this article examines Stringfellow’s idea of sacramental reality and grounds it in the worship of the Church and Christian engagement with the world. The concluding comments offer a justification for seeing this vision as one of enduring importance for faith and action in a post-Christian society.”

If anyone can please assist, could you please drop me an e-mail (address near the top of the right hand column) and I’ll let you have my postal address.

The Advocacy by Bill Wylie-Kellermann for William Stringfellow and His Writing

Paul writes Having in the last few days re-read, Mike Riddell’s novel The Insatiable Moon (Brilliant, by the way!). Having continued to read about NZ Poet / Prophet James K. Baxter, I’ve also felt the pull again to dip in to the writing of William Stringfellow and Bill Wylie-Kellermann again. Long-standing readers of this blog will appreciate that both have been important to my Jesus-following journey over the last few years.

From an old post , I included the following two quotes from Stringfellow:

“…As I find it, religion in America is characteristically atheistic or agnostic. Religion has virtually nothing to do with God and has little to do with the practical lives of men in society. Religion seems, mainly, to have to do with religion. The churches – particularly of Protestantism – in the United States are, to a great extent, preoccupied with religion rather than with the Gospel…” [Emphasis, mine] William Stringfellow

So how might Stringfellow describe the ministry of Christ?

He writes, “Christ’s is a ministry of great extravagance – of a reckless, scandalous expenditure of his life for the sake of the world’s life. Christ gives away his life. The world finds new life in His life and in His gift of His life to the world. His is not a very prudential life, not a very conservative life, not a very cautious life, not – by ordinary standards – a very successful life. He shunned no one, not even adulterers, not even tax collectors, not even neurotics and psychotics…not even poor people, not even beggars, not even lepers, not even those who ridiculed him, not even those who betrayed him, not even his own enemies. He shunned no one. The words that [describe] the ministry of Christ are…sorrow, poverty, rejection, radical, unpopularity. They are the words of agony. It seems ridiculous to apply such words to the ministry of churches nowadays. Yet where these words cannot be truthfully applied to the ministry of churches today they must then be spoken against the churches to show how far the churches are from being the body of Christ engaged in the ministry of Christ in the world.” (Emphasis, mine).

Here’s a very good Wylie-Kellermann essay (Naming the Powers: William Stringfellow as Student and Theologian), and the fascinating syllabus he is teaching in February. I wish I lived closer, but will have to make do with having read many of the course books. Also Wipf and Stock Publishers have some newly re-printed Stringfellow books, including the very good The Politics of Spirituality. You can hear Stringfellow here (Quicktime). Thanks Anthony.

You could do a lot worse than start the year reading about Stringfellow (Kellermann's reflections would be a great place to start), or something written by Stringfellow.

William Stringfellow Reviewed

Paul writes – Chris Marshall (Senior Lecturer, Religious Studies @ Victoria University, Wellington) reviews (in the March issue of Stimulus) one of my favourite books from 2005, William Stringfellow in Anglo-American Perspective, edited by Anthony Dancer (Anglican Social Justice Commissioner, The Anglican Social Justice Commission, Wellington). Stringfellow has been hugely influential in my thinking.

Contents
Foreword; Introduction.

Part I Writings:

·          On reading Stringfellow by Anthony Dancer.

Part II Reflections:

·          Honoring the gift of life, Andrew W. McThenia, Jr.;

·          On being a prophet and a theologian: reflections on Stringfellow and the East Harlem Protestant parish, Kenneth Leech;

·          The vocation of the Church of Jesus the Criminal, Mark Thiessen Nation;

·          Not vice versa: Stringfellow, hermeneutics, and the principalities, Bill Wylie-Kellermann;

·          William Stringfellow's apocalyptic hermeneutics, Christopher Rowland;

·          William Stringfellow and the politics of liturgy, Mark D. Chapman;

·          Kindred minds, prophetic voices, Andrew Goddard;

·          Speaking nonsense to power: the mission of William Stringfellow, Simon Barrow;

·          Being biblical persons, Rowan Williams.

Marshall writes, “The name of William Stringfellow (1928-1985) is not well known to the theological establishment. This is partly because he was not a “real” theologian, in the professional sense of the term. He was an attorney…a lawyer who, by his own admission, found reading the Bible and, more importantly. Listening to the Bible, to be one of the major preoccupations of his life, much more so than studying law. He was a grassroots theologian, one who discerned the Word of God in the midst of everyday life and who penned what Kenneth Leech calls “street theology, theology in a hurry.”