DET

"Statue of Justicia (Justice), by Walter Seymour Allward, outside Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario Photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons William Stringfellow – the incisive, trenchant, and often quirky lawyer, activist, and Episcopal theologian – died 40 years ago this weekend (on March 2, 1985) in a Rhode Island hospital. Though death claimed him at age 56, after two decades suffering from chronic disease, it never defeated him. By the accounts of people close to him, he lived in the radical freedom of his calling in the Word of God. Indeed, one might profitably read his 15 books (including three co-written with his lover and partner, the poet Anthony Towne) as one sustained broadside against the rule of Death (the capitalization seems apropos to me) – that mysterious, penultimate, all-pervasive moral power reigning in a fallen cosmos, in society, in politics, and in our very bodies. The academic theology and ethics guilds have been slo...

I greeted with great pleasure the unlooked-for arrival on my desk of Mark Lindsay’s newest book, Markus Barth: His Life & Legacy . It is an occupational hazard for academic administrators such as me to find it increasingly difficult to read scholarship in their field, but that proved not to be the case with reference to this engaging volume—I gobbled it up in a weekend! Lindsay has done an admirable job in bringing to light the younger Barth’s many significant contributions while also narrating his story in a compelling and enjoyable manner. Well done, Mark! I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in exploring a broader “Barthianism,” in political theology, in Jewish-Christian dialogue, and / or in the theology of the sacraments.* As is my habit, I’d like to highlight a passage of this volume for you, gentle readers, wherein Lindsay narratives some criticisms that M. Barth made of American foreign policy, specifically. However, they are relevant beyond their time an...