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The Arrests of Peter and John... and Daniel Berrigan
An Authority Over Death
WILLIAM STRINGFELLOW
need for pity or remorse, least of all from us.
To open the Bible then was an obvious, straight-forward, natural thing to do. Berrigan had done
something similar, publicly, when he preached to
the Germantown congregation on texts from the
Letter to the Hebrews. This is a wholly characteris-
tic recourse for Christians since, in the Bible, they
find a holy history that is human history transfig-
ured; and since, in turn, they realize that human
history is holy history; and since, thus, they dwell
in the continuity of the biblical word and the pres-
ent moment.
Through the late spring and the summer I hadbeen engaged with the Babylon passages in the
Book of Revelation. That effort had influenced my
participation in the conversations that were taking
place with Daniel and Anthony. With the abrupt
interruption of our talk on August 11, 1put aside
though not out of ready reachthe Babylon texts
to return to the Acts of the Apostles, and to some
of the letters that are thought to be chronologically
proximate to Acts, specifically James and First
Peter.
Facing the Essential Issues
These testimonies, of course, deal with the issues
of the apostolic church struggling to distinguish it-
self from the sects of Judaism, while at the same
time confronting the political claims and challenges
of the zealots, on one hand, and the manifest bias-
phemy and idolatry of the civic religion of Rome,
on the other. All these subjects are so familiar in
contemporary American reference that it is a temp-
tation to treat them fatalistically (pursuing tritequeries like Is Nixon our Nero? ).
The immediate trauma of the aggression against
our household in which Dan had been taken spared
me from speculations of that sort, however, and I
realized, while reading Acts, that more rudimen-
tary and more fundamental problems had to be
faced. Moreover, I remembered vividly how the
same matters had plagued and confounded me, for
all my precocity, years earlier, and how, in a sense,
the situation of August 11, 1970 had been long since
foreshadowed. The episode of the arrest of Peter
A
S I regard myself, I have never been especially
.religious. Having been reared as an pisco-palian, the pietism of which I may be guilty has
been ambiguousa casual matter and an inconve-
nience more than a matter of consistency or fixed
conviction. Still, as a younger person, particularly
while an undergraduate, I had been precocious the-
ologically and, instead of being attentive to what-
ever it was that students in those days were inter-
ested in, I concentrated much, in the privacy of my
mind, on theology and upon what might be called
heologizing.
I do not mean that I often studied or even readhe works of theologians, but I did begin then to
ead the Bible, in an unordered and spontaneous
way; and I did begin, thus, to be caught up in a
dialectic between an experience with the biblical
witness and my everyday existence as a human be-
ng. I recall that there seemed to me to be a strong
opposition between the biblical story and my own
ife, on one side, and religion and religious moral-
sm, on the other. After a while that opposition took
on greater clarity, and I could discern that the for-
mer has to do with living humanly, while the latterhas to do with dying in a moral sense, and, indeed,
with dying in everysense.
To any one who knows this about me, it will
come as no surprise to learn that in the immediate
aftermath of the seizure by the Federal authorities
of Daniel Berrigan at schaton, the home that
Anthony Towne and I share on Block Island, I
pent what time our suddenly hectic circumstances
would afford with the New Testament. This was no
exercise in solace; neither Anthony nor I had any
egret or grief to be consoled, and we had each be-held the serenity of Dan as he was taken into the
anxious custody of the FBI. The coolness of Berri-
gan had been a startling contrast to the evident
hame and agitation of the agents; and we both
understood that, whatever needs Dan was suffering
n his transition from fugitive to captive, he had no
WILLIAM STRINGFELLOW is, by now, well-known to our readers andthers as a lawyer and lay-theologian. In his last appearance In theseages (June 8 Issue), he wrote about /fJsus the Criminal," with hisriend Dan Berrigan in mind. His latest book, A Second Birthday, in
which he writes about his personal confrontation with illness, pain and
eath, was published a few days ago.
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resurrection in a political context, as the New T
tarnent does, seems a most radical incongruity
unthinkable thought.
At the same time, the simplistic Constantinian
tha t informs American attitudes toward Christia
and the nation allows Americans to view Rome
the ancillary ecclesiastical-political establishm
allowed in the Empire at the time of the crucifix
during the apostolic era as an aberrant versio
the State rather than as an archetypical symboall political institutions and authorities in any t
or place. There are no doubt some serious
tinctions to be kept between Rome and Americ
between the Nazi state and the United States or
tween Sweden and the USA or, for that matter,
tween revolutionary America and contempo
America. But such issues must not obscure the t
that every nation, every political regime, every
power shares a singular characteristic that
weighs whatever may be said to distinguish t
one from another. And it is that common attribof the State as such to which the New Testam
points where the texts deal with the witnes
Christ being condemned as criminal.
The State's Sanction: Death
The sanctionthough it takes different form
is, in principle, the only sanctionupon which
State relies is death. In the healing episodesa
other works within the ministry in Christ, as in
proclamation of the resurrection from the deathe authority of Christ over the moral powe
death is verified as well as asserted. It is this cl
of the Gospel that the State beholds as threaten
it is the audacity to verify this claim in living
thought and word and actionthat the State c
demns as crime. The preaching of the resurrect
rather than being politically innocuous, and
healing incidents, instead of being merely priv
are profoundly, even cosmically, political acts.
This is how on August 11, in the hours s
after Father Berrigans capture and incarceratiothought of Dans ministry and the various way
which he has exercised his vocation through
years that Anthony and I have known himas p
oner, as guest, as fugitive, as convicted felon
Catonsville defendant, as exile, as citizen in pro
as poet, as priestas a man. Confronted with w
I was reading in Acts, I marvelled at the patie
of Berrigans witness. I sensed the humor of wha
has said and done being construed, especially in
churches, as so radical. It seemed utterly obv
that Berrigan had taken his stand in the m
and John, following upon the healing of the lame
beggar at the temple gate, as told in Acts, sums
up the issues:
And as they were speaking to the people, thepriests and the captain of the temple and theSadducees came upon them, annoyed becausethey were teaching the people and proclaimingin Jesus the resurrection from the dead.And theyarrested them and put them in custody. . . ,
Acrs4:13aI read this, and read it and read it. The most
difficult questions of my initiation in Bible study
returned: What does the resurrection from thedead mean if proclaiming it is cause for arrest?Why is healing a cripple so threatening and provoc-ative to the public authorities? Why should this ap-
parent good work count as a crime?
This arrest of Peter and John, associated publicly
with the healing of the lame man and the open
preaching of the resurrection, portended a wider
persecution of Christians and an official repressionof the Gospel. But it also relates back to the rea-
sons for the condemnation and execution of Jesus
in which, it must not be overlooked, Jesus ownministry of healing was interpreted by the incum-
bent authorities as if it were political agitation and
was deemed by them to be a threat to their political
authority. Where healing or, more broadly, the wit-
ness to the resurrection was involved, the compre-
hension and response of Caesar and his surrogates
to Christ as well as to the Apostles was, signifi-
cantly, consistent. Such a witness was judged as acrime against the State.
Christian Witness as Criminal Offense
There is a sentimentalistic (and unbiblical) tradi-
tion of bible stories in American Christendom
that, when coupled with the thriving naivet of
Americans toward their own nation, renders it diffi-
cult for many citizens, particularly churchfolk, to
assimilate the fact that the Christian witness is
treated as a criminal offense, even though this is sobluntly and repeatedly reported in New Testament
texts. Within the American churchly ethos, biblical
references to healing, however they may be inter-
preted medically (as metaphors, magic or miracles),
are generally supposed to be highly private, indi-
vidual and personal happenings, having nothing
categorically to do with politics. Meanwhile, when
it comes to the resurrection as an event and the
meaning of the resurrection as the gist of the Gos-
pel, the sentimentalization of scripture has reached
a quintessence of distortion, so that to regard the
Christianity and182
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would have been to prosecute the defendants on
nominal or minimal charges. There exists ample
precedent for that; and if that had been done, the
authority of the State would have been asserted in
a way that recognized the political and, indeed,
theatrical, character of the actionas distinguished
from one implementing criminal intent. And, it can
be argued, the State might have succeeded in estop-
ping other protests by minimizing their notoriety.
Instead, the State reacted to what the Catonsville
Nine had done as if it were a crime of magnitude.Precedent was put aside, along with common sense,
and legal process was usurped for a political objec-
tive, namely, the quashing of dissent. The manne
in which the State undertook the prosecution of the
Catonsville Nine betrays a purpose not only to pun-
ish the defendants harshly but also to admonish al
citizens, emphatically, to be quiet, to behave, to
acquiesce, to fear that otherwise they risk a simila
retribution.
The intimidating message of the Catonsville
prosecution, furthermore, does not stand out alone.It is but one among many other recent pathetic
aggressions of the State against citizens, the mos
urgent of which the Black Panthers have suffered.
In the days that have followed upon Dans seizure
many Block Island neighbors, many other friends
and many strangers have told Anthony and me o
their outrage and their apprehensionwhateve
they might think of what the Catonsville Nine did
or of Father Berrigans fugitive interludethat the
State seemed so anxious and overreactive and was in
such hot pursuit of, as one person put it, a harm-In this tentative, uneasy perception, I.less man
believe, a host of citizens, otherwise subdued, grasp
the desperate issue in what is taking place in
America now: the power of death incarnate in the
State violating, enslaving, perverting, imprisoning,
destroying human life in society. To fail or refuse
to act against that power amounts to an abdication
of ones humanness, a renunciation of the gift o
ones own life as well as a rejection of the lives o
other human beings, a very ignominious idolatry of
death. In the face of that power the only way toactno matter how the State judges or what the
State doesis to live in the authority over death
that the resurrection is. A person cannot be human
and be silent about that, as Acts attests:
So they called them and charged them not tospeak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. BuPeter and John answered them, Whether it iright in the sight of God to listen to you rather
you must judge; for we cannot buthan to Godspeak of what we have seen and heard
4:18-20Ac t s
stream of the apostolic tradition and that his course
had been not at all unusual, but simply normative.
I do not imply that Berrigan is engaged in some
self-conscious imitation of Peter or John or any
other of the earlier Christians. I just mean that to
proclaim the resurrection in word and act is an
affront the State cannot forbear because the resur-
rection exposes the subservience of the State to
death as the moral purpose of the society the State
purports to rule.
As has been intimated, the clarity or literalnesswith which the moral dependence upon death of the
State can be discerned may vary greatly, from time
to time and from place to place. Nonetheless, the
American circumstances today represent an instance
in which death is pervasive, aggressive and undis-
guised in its moral domination of the nations ex-
istence. Theologically speaking, the war in Viet
Nam is not just an improvident, wicked or stupid
venture. It epitomizes the militancy and insatiabil-
ity of death as a moral power reigning in the na-
tionas that morality in relation to which every-thing and everyone is supposedly judged and justi-
fied. Thus to oppose the war becomes much more
than a difference over policy. From the viewpoint
of the State protest against the war undermines the
only moral purpose the State has: the work ofdeath. It risks the only punishment of which the
State is capable: consignment to death or to some
status that embodies the same meaning as death,
though it be short of execution, i.e., imprisonment,
prosecution, persecution, loss of reputation or prop-
erty or employment, intimidation to beget silenceand conformity.
Not to Act Is an Abdication
of One's Humanness
To those who may think this a grotesque doctrine
of the State in America in the present day, I cite,
amidst a growing accumulation of other evidence,
what happened in the case of the Catonsville Nine
to the Berrigan brothers and their fellow defen-
dants. Verbal protests against the war and all it
symbolizes had been of little or no avail; and these
citizens dramatized the issue by destroying draft
records with napalm, taking effective precautions
against their action causing violence or any other
harm to human beings since that would vitiate their
witness against the violence of the State.
Let it be conceded that the State could not over-
look the incident (although, in fact, it frequently
does exactly that in circumstances where its dignity
is as much embarrassed). One option for the State
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