Skip to content

The moral pretenses of Imperial Rome, the millennial claims of Nazism, the arrogance of Marxist dogma, the anxious insistence that America be "number one" among nations are all versions of Babylon's idolatry. All share in this grandiose view of the nation by which the principality assumes the place of God in the world.

— William Stringfellow An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

Another quote →

More quotes by William Stringfellow

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.

An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

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

An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

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: Essential Writings (2013)

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.

An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

This is the vanity of every principality—and notable for a nation—that the principality is sovereign in history; which is to say, that it presumes it is the power in relation to which the moral significance of everything and everyone else is determined.

An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

All William Stringfellow quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Stringfellow (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.