Suspect Tenderness

Introducing the Dissent Trilogy by William Stringfellow

Dissenter in a Great Society

Suspect Tenderness

The Politics of Spirituality



"Because Stringfellow's critique was radically biblical and biblically radical, he was no party-line dissenter. If one marks the current three volumes by their historical moments, they can be identified as responses to incumbent political administrations. Dissenter in a Great Society (1966) illuminates the Lyndon Johnson era. Suspect Tenderness (1971) critiques the Nixon regime. And Politics of Spirituality (1984), in many ways Stringfellow's culminating little opus, responds to the blasphemies of the Reagan administration."



Bill Wylie-Kellermann (from the series foreword)





"These books burn with a holy fervor. They are graced with costly hope; what is impossible in the public arena can be done up close, with a few by a few. There could exist communities of non-betrayal. Its members would gather, open the bible, then scatter to their work. Freed from lust after power or prestige, they would keep the Word of God in a time when few keep any word at all. Keeping the Word, that was the point. Do it then!"



Daniel Berrigan (from the series introduction)