A Private and Public Faith
About this ebook
“This is a tract. It consists of four essays about the status of religion in contemporary American society and about the condition of the churches of American Protestantism.
“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.
That, in brief, is the substance of the essays in this tract.”
About the author
William Stringfellow, born Frank William Stringfellow (April 26, 1928 - March 2, 1985), was an American lay theologian, lawyer and social activist, mostly during the 1960s and 1970s. He was also the author of a number of books, including The Life of Worship and the Legal Profession (1955), Instead of Death (1963), My People Is the Enemy (1964), Free in Obedience (1964), and Dissenter in a Great Society (1966).
Free in Obedience, New York, NY: Seabury Press, 1964.
Born in Johnston, Rhode Island, he grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts and graduated from Northampton High School in 1945. He obtained several scholarships and entered Bates College in Lewiston, Maine at the age of 15. He later earned a scholarship to the London School of Economics and served in the U.S. 2nd Armored Division. Stringfellow then attended Harvard Law School. After graduation, he moved to a slum tenement in Harlem, New York City to work among poor African-Americans and Hispanics.
A lawyer by profession, Stringfellow’s chief legal interests pertained to constitutional law and due process. He dealt with both every day in Harlem as he represented victimized tenants, accused persons who would otherwise have inadequate counsel in the courts, and impoverished African-Americans who were largely excluded from public services like hospitals and government offices.
Throughout his student days Stringfellow had involved himself in the World Student Christian Federation. He later became deeply immersed in the World Council of Churches, as well as his native denomination, the Episcopal Church (Anglican), where he supported women ordination. Stringfellow was also involved with the Sojourners Community in Washington, D.C. He also harbored at his Block Island home Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J., who went underground after fleeing from Federal authorities for acts of civil disobedience.
Stringfellow died from diabetes in Rhode Island in 1985, aged 56.
