William Stringfellow Quotes & Sayings

West Side Story was a highly popular and successful musical play and now is a similarly well-received motion picture. (I would think that it could also be used shrewdly as a document for discussion in Sunday Schools, in place of some of the ridiculous curriculum materials now in use). — William Stringfellow

Biblical spirituality means powerlessness, living without embellishment or pretense, free to be faithful in the gospel, and free from anxiety about effectiveness or similar illusions of success. — William Stringfellow

The Fall is where the nation is. The Fall is the locus of America. — William Stringfellow

Too commonly sex does not have the dignity of a sacramental event because sex is thought to be the means of the search for self rather than the expression and communication of one who has already found himself, and is free from resort to sex in the frantic pursuit of his own identity. — William Stringfellow

Hence the vocation of the Church of Christ in the world, in political conflict and social strife, is inherently eschatological. The Church is the embassy of the eschaton in the world. The church is the image of what the world is in its essential being. The Church is the trustee of the society which the world, not subjected to the power of death, is to be on that last day when the world is fulfilled in all things in God. — William Stringfellow

Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another's word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word. — William Stringfellow

He looked for a job, and the job that he found was that of an orderly in a hospital, on the night shift, where his work was emptying bed pans, wrapping up dead bodies, and doing all the other things which orderlies have to do.
You never met a more emancipated man. — William Stringfellow

Being holy ... does not mean being perfect but being whole; it does not mean being exceptionally religious or being religious at all; it means being liberated from religiosity and religious pietism of any sort; it does not mean being morally better, it meas being exemplary; it does not mean being godly, but rather being truly human. — William Stringfellow

Reckon your weakness as praise of God's power, endure suffering in joy, risk your life on the veracity of Christ, count your loneliness a means of grace. — William Stringfellow

The seminaries have generally been so covetous of academic recognition, and so anxious for locus within the ethos and hierarchy of the university, that they have not noticed how alien and hostile those premises are to the peculiar vocation of the seminary. Thus the seminaries succumb to disseminating ideological renditions of the faith which demean the vitality of the biblical witness by engaging in endless classifications and comparisons of ideas. All this eschews commitment and precludes a confessional study of theology. — William Stringfellow

Notice, too, how often the standard of help - rehabilitation, as it is usually called - is not just made up of the common morality of middle class society, but specifically in how far the client or patient or case imitates and becomes like the case worker or probation person or professional - that is, in how far the one who is being helped becomes like the one who is helping him. — William Stringfellow

The biblical lifestyle is always a witness of resistance to the status quo in politics, economics, and all society. It is a witness of resurrection from death. Paradoxically, those who embark on the biblical witness constantly risk death - through execution, exile, imprisonment, persecution, defamation, or harassment - at the behest of the rulers of this age. Yet those who do not resist the rulers of the present darkness are consigned to a moral death, the death of their humanness. That, of all the ways of dying, is the most ignominious. — William Stringfellow

Anxieties do not end in death.
Anxieties end in God. — William Stringfellow

It points, for instance, to the fact that there is never an abstract, single 'Christian answer' to an issue to which all Christians are bound to adhere or conform. — William Stringfellow

What is involved in such issues, in the end, is learning to respect the freedom of the dead to be dead; honoring the dead in their status as dead people, and refraining from harassment of the dead by refusing to mythologize the dead or enshrine them. What is at stake is recognition by those in grief of the right of the dead to be regarded mortally, which is to say, to be treated humanly in death. — William Stringfellow

Thus the vocation of the baptized person is a simple thing: it is to live from day to day, whatever the day brings, in this extraordinary unity, in this reconciliation with all people and all things, in this knowledge that death has no more power, in this truth of the resurrection. It does not really matter exactly what a Christian does from day to day. What matters is that whatever one does is done in honor of one's own life, given to one by God and restored to one in Christ, and in honor of the life into which all humans and all things are called.
The only thing that really matters to live in Christ instead of death — William Stringfellow

Acceptance of another person is acceptance of the other as he is, without entailing any demands that he change in any empirical way. This boy is an addict, and while I would rejoice if he were freed from this affliction, that would not change or increase my acceptance of him as a person. And though I am not an addict, that makes me no better nor any worse than he. I am not his judge. I am just his friend. — William Stringfellow

A most obstinate misconception associated with the gospel of Jesus Christ is that the gospel is welcome in this world. The conviction endemic among church folk persists that, if problems of misapprehension and misrepresentation are overcome and the gospel can be heard in its own integrity, the gospel will be found attractive by people, become popular and even be a success of some sort.
This idea is curious and ironical because it is bluntly contradicted in Scripture, and in the experience of the continuing biblical witness in history from the event of Pentecost unto the present moment. During Jesus' earthly ministry, no one in His family and not a single one of the disciples accepted Him, believed His vocation or loved the gospel He bespoke and embodies.
Since the rubrics of success, power, or gain are impertinent to the gospel, the witness of the saints looks foolish where it is most exemplary. — William Stringfellow

Each layman must be his own apologist, responsible for his stewardship of the Gospel in his daily life and work. — William Stringfellow

The characteristic place to find Christians is among their enemies. The first place to look for Christ is in Hell. — William Stringfellow

In other words, the most notorious, plain, and victorious truth of God is that God participates in our history - even yours and mine. Our history - all our anxieties - have become the scene of His presence and the matter of his care. We are safe. We are free. Wherever we turn we shall discover that God is already there. Therefore, wherever it be, fear not, be thankful, rejoice, and boast of God. — William Stringfellow

Crisis - that is, the serious encounter of a man with exactly that which now threatens his own life, with that which represents, signifies, and warns of his own death - is always terrible, wonderful, eventually inescapable, saving and holy. — William Stringfellow

The Church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the poor. — William Stringfellow

Don't be afraid. There is no more to fear. Do not fear rejection. If you fear rejection by another you do not love the other, though you may profess it. You are only being anxious for his love of you. The free man does not seek the love of others, nor fear that his love will be rejected, for rejection - as is known from the night Christ was betrayed - does not destroy love, and it does not destroy the one who loves. Don't be afraid, you are not alone. — William Stringfellow

Biocides, for example, are designed to kill bacteria - it's not a benign material. — William Stringfellow

Perhaps the moral ambiguity of money is most plainly evidenced in the popular belief that money itself has value and that the worth of other things or of men is somehow measured in monetary terms, rather than the other way around. — William Stringfellow

That means, in turn, that this is an experience which shatters time and liberates people from the confinement of time by at once recalling all that has gone before and anticipating all that is to come. — William Stringfellow

The separation of religion from the practical affairs of society is a convenient doctrine for those who fear that social change would threaten of modify their own political and social self-interest. — William Stringfellow

The Christian social witness is achieved only insofar as Christians are deeply implicated in the real life of society - in unions and political clubs and citizen groups and the like; it is not made by Christian people gathering off by themselves in a parish house to study and discuss social issues. — William Stringfellow

The characteristic place to find a Christian is among his very enemies. — William Stringfellow

Dorothy Day, of blessed memory, did not like to be called (as she often was, for good reason) a saint, because it usually meant that she was not being taken seriously. She heard it as an accusation - a device ostensibly distinguishing her from ordinary people so as to simultaneously discount her words and deeds while exempting others from moral responsibility to speak and act. — William Stringfellow

Yet even among those who are not economically poor, work remains, as a matter of experience, a great burden. Those whose work consists of serving the great corporate principalities, for instance, are subject to dehumanized, enslaving, frequently idolatrous claims over their lives. Does anyone seriously suppose that the high-ranking executives involved in the price-fixing scandals in some of the great corporations in this country are anything but prisoners, no more truly free than serfs, confined and conformed to the interest of the principalities they serve? — William Stringfellow

The practice of the Christian life consists of the discernment of (the seeing and hearing), and the reliance upon (the reckless and uncalculating dependence), and the celebration (the ready and spontaneous enjoyment) of the presence of the Word of God in the common life of the world. — William Stringfellow

Where money is an idol, to be poor is a sin. — William Stringfellow