Nonaligned faith and practice in the present
Continuing my series on Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973).
When William Stringfellow uses the biblical language of the Book of Revelation, he is not referring to beings or events of some future supernatural “end time.” He is using it—as did Revelation’s author and first audience—to refer poetically to things of this present world, this mortal human world.
Chapter 4 is “Stratagems of the demonic powers.” The demonic denies
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In this post, I interrupt my chapter-by-chapter study of Stringfellow’s 1973 An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land in order to put this series into the context of 2021’s political, cultural, environmental, and pandemic crises.
Continuing my series on Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973).
Epigraph
The Gospel of Mark frequently demonstrates the typically human ways in which Jesus’ followers misunderstand his words and deeds. One pivotal story that speaks to William Stringfellow’s concern about modern American Christians and other people of faith is usually titled “the transfiguration” (Mark 9:2-8, New New Testament).
…2 Six days later, Jesus took with him
Continuing my series on Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)
Events in Sacred Story
It is worth repeating that in William Stringfellow’s language of biblical discernment, “nonempirical” connotes belief systems based on abstract concepts and notions, whereas “empirical” refers to the actual experience of biblical teachings working themselves out in the world.
The Bible is a sacred story collection. Contrary to our modern Western notions, sacred story is about
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Continuing my series of excerpts from and reflections on Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973).
Empirical and Nonempirical
Here is where William Stringfellow begins to hold our feet to the fire, we who are often proud “professors” of our religious traditions yet feeble “practitioners.” He challenges us with his special use of the term “empirical” as he applies biblical political ethics to present-day America.
For Stringfellow, “nonempirical” connotes belief
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Autobiographical introduction
I began reading William Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973) because, in the midst of our 21st century American horror story, I remembered how profoundly he changed my adolescent view of the world during “Race, War, and Poverty,” the Lutheran Youth Expo (now called ELCA Youth Gathering) at Lenoire Rhyne College in August of 1968.
My senior year of high school in Columbia, SC, had climaxed, not
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Last week I posted excerpts from the preface to William Stringfellow’s 1973 book, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Central to Stringfellow’s argument is his assertion that Americans are “grossly naive or remarkably misinformed” about the biblical concept of “the Fall.”
Christian ideology, in particular Protestant Christian ideology, has dominated the nation’s distorted self-image and consequent hurtful policies and culture from the beginning. The churches project “too mean, too trivial, too narrow, too
…The following is excerpted from the preface to An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land , by William Stringfellow (1973).
“My concern is to understand America biblically…. The task is to treat the nation within the tradition of biblical politics—to understand America biblically—not the other way around, not (to put it in an appropriately awkward way) to construe the Bible Americanly.
“Th
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