Jim Wallis was talking about William Stringfellow’s dining room table out here on Block Island. It was at that table, Wallis said, where he learned more about life and theology than almost all of the corridors of power and influence that he has been in during more than 45 years of Christian writing and social activism. Stringfellow was a respected lay theologian who made his home on Block Island.
Wallis, who will be speaking this Sunday, Aug. 16, at the Harbor Church at 10 a.m., has done everything from walkside by side with Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu, to getting thrown in jail to, most recently, organizing peaceful protests on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. What has motivated him, since being a teenager in Detroit, is a powerful sense of racial equality and social justice. As American streets were the scenes of rioting and unrest45 or 50 years ago, so are some of them again today, borne out of issues that seem to rise and fall at any given time. Wallis has a new book addressing his perpetual American dilemma.
Wallis met Stringfellow — whom he called Bill — about 45 years ago when Wallis was a young man giving a speech at Princeton. “I’m 22 or 23 and one of the speakers was Bill Stringfellow. He was not well even then. (Stringfellow died at 56 in 1985 on Block Island.) I was transformed by this experience and then he said to me, in a matter of fact way, ‘You wanna go for a walk?’ We talked for hours and hours. I was awed by him.” It was Stringfellow who suggested that Wallis come to Block Island, which he has done regularly ever since.
“The only place I went for a retreat or respite was the island,” Wallis said.