William Stringfellow Quotes (11 quotes)

William Stringfellow: 11 quotes0 likes

Famous William Stringfellow Quotes

“The Christian as revolutionary is constantly welcoming the gift of human life, for himself and for all men, by exposing, opposing, and overturning all that betrays, entraps, or attempts to kill human life.”

William Stringfellow

Source: William Stringfellow: Essential Writings (2013), "Jesus the Criminal" (1969), p. 64

“The ecclesiastical authorities, for all practical purposes, acted as servants of the State in the confrontation with Jesus. In one version, the chief priest protests: "Caesar is our king, we have no other king but Caesar." In the dispute over jurisdiction between Pilate and Herod, they warn: "If you release him, you will not be Caesar's friend." The ecclesiastics were, practically speaking, surrogates of the State. That is an all-too-familiar situation for chief priests to be found in.”

William Stringfellow

Source: William Stringfellow: Essential Writings (2013), "Jesus the Criminal" (1969), pp. 65-66

“Christ as King means humanity free from bondage to ideologies and institutions, free from revolutionary causes as well, free from idolatry of Caesar, and, not the least of it, free from religion which tries to disguise such slavery as virtuous.”

William Stringfellow

Source: William Stringfellow: Essential Writings (2013), "Jesus the Criminal" (1969), p. 67

“The mark of the Christian is, simply, that he is a matured and freed human being. The direct political implication of this risen character of the Christian is that … the Christian is an incessant revolutionary. He is always, everywhere in revolt—not for himself but for humanity.”

William Stringfellow

Source: William Stringfellow: Essential Writings (2013), "Jesus the Criminal" (1969), p. 64

“If a congregation somewhere comes to life as Jerusalem at some hour, that carries no necessary implications for either the past or the future of that congregation. The Jerusalem occurrence is sufficient unto itself. There is—then and there—a transfiguration in which the momentary coincides with the eternal, the innocuous becomes momentous and the great is recognized as trivial, the end of history is revealed as the fulfillment of life here and now, and the whole of creation is beheld as sanctified.”

William Stringfellow

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), pp. 60-61

“While Babylon represents the principality in bondage to death in time—and time is actually a form of that bondage—Jerusalem means the emancipation of human life in a society from the rule of death and breaks through time, transcends time, anticipates within time the abolition of time.”

William Stringfellow

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 60

“The unique aspect of biblical faith is that immediate, mundane history is beheld, affirmed, and lived as the true story of the redemption of time and Creation. Biblical ethics constitute a sacramental participation in history as it happens. ... In this saga, time is transcended within the events of a single day—today—so that all that is past, from the first day, is consummated and is anticipated; so that today is esteemed in its real dignity, as if it were the first day, as if it were the last day, as if it were the only day, as if today and eternity were one.”

William Stringfellow

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), pp. 47-48

William Stringfellow Quotes about the world

“In this story, there is no other place actually known to human beings, except this world as it is—the place where life is at once being lived; there are no other places for which to search or yearn or hope—no utopia, no paradise, no otherworldly afterlife.”

William Stringfellow

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 48

“The Bible deals with the sanctification of the actual history of nations and of human beings in this world as it is while that history is being lived.”

William Stringfellow

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 47

“Kierkegaard cautioned that the crisis for biblical faith concerning conformity to the world, in one form or another, occurs wherever the anomaly of an established church appears. In the United States, the Constantinian Accommodation has been marvelously proliferated. Practically all churches and sects are, in effect, established and, in turn, conformed to the dominant social philosophy or secular ideology or civic religion. Biblical faith, here, in consequence, is strenuously distorted and persistently ridiculed—in the name of God, of course.”

William Stringfellow

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 46

“This otherworldliness or antiworldliness is actually conformity to the world with a vengeance. And, for professed Christians, it is the most ignominious possible apostasy.”

William Stringfellow

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 44

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