107 - Radical Christian and Exemplary Lawyer: Honoring William Stringfellow

A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow
Edited by Bill Wylie Kellerman
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1994. 434 pp. $24.99.

Radical Christian and Exemplary Lawyer: Honoring William Stringfellow
Edited by Andrew W. McThenia, Jr.
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995. 183 pp. $14.99.

These volumes-the first made up of writings by Stringfellow, the second of writings about him-will be welcomed particularly by Chris-

108 - Radical Christian and Exemplary Lawyer: Honoring William Stringfellow

tians of leftist leanings. William Stringfellow seems in some ways a quintessential- Christian radical: a critic of corporate wealth and power, a protagonist of racial justice, a supporter of women's ordination, a defender of the poor, and an opponent of nuclear armaments and environmental pollution. These were causes he supported before they were quite as fashionable as they are now. He supported them not only in writing and speaking but also in action, moving directly into Harlem to set up his legal practice; after graduating from Harvard Law School. Christian radicals will further welcome these volumes because all of his books are now out of print.

Something of Stringfellow's moral and spiritual character is indicated, however, by the probability that Christians of all kinds, even conservative Christians, will find his voice surprisingly stirring. They will not discern in him the qualities that, rightly or wrongly, they often attribute to radicals qualities like self-righteousness, sentimental misconceptions of human nature, and exaggerated notions of historical possibilities. Almost everyone will find compelling Stringfellow's uncompromising and unembarrassed Christian witness, his astringent, precise style as a social critic, and his life as an untiring advocate of the poor and marginal, all of this in spite of his own wretchedly bad health, borne throughout his mature life, and leading to his early death.

The animating passion of Stringfellow's writings and other activities was perhaps a sense of Christian life as a response to the Word of God. He was influenced more by Karl Barth than by any other theologian, and, in the general spirit of Barth, responding to the Word of God meant standing in opposition to the world. This for Stringfellow was a political task. Stringfellow's central concept was probably that of "the principalities and powers," these understood as images, ideologies, and institutions (especially nations and business corporations), not intrinsically evil, but made by human beings in their fallenness into idols and thus into purveyors of death (which for Stringfellow apparently encompassed anything hostile to life in its fullness, even if not a source of immediate biological demise). The principalities and powers have been conquered by the Word of God, but human beings have still to establish that conquest; that, at least, seems to be Stri~ngfellow's paradoxical view of our situation. In the present state of American civilization, which now strikes many Christians of both left as ominously degraded, Stringfellow's attitude seems strikingly One may sense this, for example, in his characterization of "an inversion of language, verbal inflation, libel, rumor, euphemism and coded phrases, rhetorical wantonness, redundancy, hyperbole, such profusion in speech and sound that comprehension is impaired, nonsense! sophistry, jargon, noise, incoherence, a chaos of voices and tongues, falsehood, blasphemy." And in all of this, he adds, "babel means violence."

I certainly do not mean to suggest that Stringfellow is invulnerable to serious criticisms. His historical and political pessimism is so extreme, and his own sense of the right so uncompromising, that one sometimes feels

110 - Radical Christian and Exemplary Lawyer: Honoring William Stringfellow

that he is a writer incapable of adding a qualification. Thus, he seems to say that death, in some undefined sense, is the only moral purpose of every state. He apparently saw no significant difference between America in the era of the Vietnam War and Germany in the thirties-despite the fact that he must have taken part in antiwar protests carried on under the protection of the police (at least this reviewer did). That Stringfellow was not very handy with qualifications can be seen in his characterization of the Episcopal Church (his own church) as "a preposterous phony deity importuning humanity." Walter Wink, in one of the more interesting essays in McThenia's volume, defends Stringfellow against such criticisms by arguing that he deliberately eschewed discussions of the "on the one hand, on the other hand" type and employed a dialectical method. But it is not quite clear how that helps or even what it means beyond balancing one exaggerated assertion with another exaggerated assertion somewhere else. And often , readers may fail to find elsewhere the counterbalancing assertion.

There is, nonetheless, a ring of spiritual authenticity in almost all the writings ;in Kellerman's collection. And even readers with reservations about the vehemence with which Stringfellow embraces every radical cause will find much that he says interesting, primarily because it is obviously the product of an original and discerning intelligence. Stringfellow embraced radicalism, it is obvious, not because it was fashionable to do so but because that was the way he saw the world.

For this reviewer, what is most valuable in Stringfellow, beyond his exemplary Christian witness, is perhaps his emphasis on the radically personal Character of political responsibility. To be a Christian is to take a stand, often an unpopular stand, on present issues. In doing this, one in some sense sets the eschaton over against the, prevailing order. It is not clear, however, that Stringfellow anticipated vast social transformations. The writings collected in A Keeper of the Word suggest that he saw politics primarily 4s a matter of moral and spiritual integrity rather than of historical results. Even if taking a stand accomplishes nothing that is discernible, at least it saves one's humanness.

The essays in Radical Christian and Exemplary Lawyer-essays about rather than by Stringfellow-are quite diverse; some are primarily personal memoirs, and others are pieces of the sort that might be written for a Festschrift; and not necessarily saying very much directly about Stringfellow. Some of the latter contributions are quite thoughtful and bear on matters, such as the law, that were close to Stringfellow's heart. Many readers, however, may find the personal memoirs, such as Jim Wallis' or Daniel Berrigan's, more interesting simply because they make vivid the man whose Christian voice is so powerful. And of McThenia's collection in general, lit seems fair to say that it does relatively little to clarify the structure Of Stringfellow's thought but brings him to life as a vivid political personality. This is probably fitting since Stringfellow, rooted less in theology than in the Bible, was not so much a thinker as a prophet.

112 - A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow

It must be said, however, that both volumes bring him to life, one by portraying and discussing him, the other by enabling him to speak for himself.' They are most useful and timely. After perusing them, Christians of varying political persuasions will be apt to hope that Stringfellow continues for a long time to live in the realm of Christian political discourse.

GLENN TINDER
University of Massachusetts at Boston
Boston, MA