Books in the William Stringfellow Reprint series

Suspect Tenderness opens with a narrative concerning the capture of Daniel Berrigan, related in his continuing friendship and pastoral relationship with Stringfellow and co-author Anthony Towne. It continues with an examination of the ethical and theological implications of the Berrigan witness, in which middle-class American piety is asked to face the fact that Jesus was a criminal. Stringfellow insists that every state feels threatened by Christ's claim to a moral authority over death, and sees the community of resistance as a community of resurrection.

Spirituality, according to William Stringfellow, represents the ordinary experience of partaking in politics - the activity of the Word of God in judgment over all that belongs to human history. He criticizes religiosity, advocating instead for a biblical holiness that implies wholeness for all creation. He takes a prophetic and somber view of the present dark ages, characterized as they are by hypocrisy, profligate consumption, disregard for human life, and dependence on nuclear force. Speaking from a lifetime of experience and reflection, Stringfellow issues a call to conscience and sanity, a reaffirmation of the incarnation, and belief in the grace of the Word of God who transcends the injustice of the present age and agitates the resilience of those who struggle to expose and rebuke injustice.

Introducing two Stringfellow/Towne reprints about Bishop Pike: The Bishop Pike Affair The Death and Life of Bishop PikeThe Bishop Pike Affair presents the climactic showdown between James A. Pike and his peers at the Wheeling meeting of the Episcopal House of Bishops, in October 1966. It dramatized for millions the struggles for reform and relevance within the church in the mid-twentieth century.This book reveals the whole chronicle of the historic controversy. Thousands of documents were researched. The authors disentangle the web of political, racial, theological, traditional, and personal interests that account for the accusations that Bishop Pike is a heretic and that culminated in his censure at Wheeling.The authors relate The Bishop Pike Affair to celebrated heresy trials of the past, probe the issues of fairness and due process of law, explore the ethics of the fraternity of bishops, examine the dynamics of the Episcopal Church as an institution, and expose the design of the ""ultra-right whites"" to stage a coup d'eglise in America.

Introducing two Stringfellow/Towne reprints about Bishop Pike: The Bishop Pike Affair The Death and Life of Bishop PikeThe Death and Life of Bishop Pike is an in-depth, documented portrait of James A. Pike--the most controversial American clergyman of modern times. Based on prodigious research into private letters and unpublished documents, as well as exhaustive interviews, it is a biography so candid that the book itself is bound to be controversial.The authors are utterly frank about the bishop's turbulent personal life--his three marriages, his sexuality, his alcoholism, the suicides of his oldest son and of an intimate associate, the temptation of his celebrity, his complex relationship with his mother, and his terrible death in the wilderness. They have thoroughly investigated his notorious experiences with ""psychic phenomena""--arriving at their own startling and provocative conclusions.Nevertheless, this book is neither an expose nor an apologia. It is an honest, dramatic, and compelling testament to an extraordinary and vital personality--to the colorful and courageous Christian witness of Bishop James A. Pike, whose advocacy of social justice and whose search for faith--restless and unorthodox as it was--had an astonishing impact on the contemporary church.