Bates College | The William Stringfellow Award

This icon of peace activist, human rights lawyer, and theologian William Stringfellow (Bates Class of 1949) hangs in the Bates Chapel. The Chaplain's Office confers an annual peace and justice award in his honor to a student of the College and a citizen of Maine.

In honor of the witness and legacy of William Stringfellow (Bates Class of 1949), the Office of the Chaplain at Bates College annually recognizes the achievements of both a Maine citizen and a student of Bates College whose lives and work have been dedicated to the promotion of peace and justice.

Like Stringfellow himself, award winners are distinguished by their courageous and sustained commitment to redressing the systemic, root causes of violence and social injustice, their dedication to engaging and opposing "the powers and principalities" of this world.

William Stringfellow was a man whose life and work are of inestimable significance to the movements for justice and peace in this country and throughout the world. His several books and countless addresses have together formed a significant chapter in the unofficial canon of the American peace movement, informing and guiding such people as Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Thomas Gumbleton, Dorothy Day, and many others.

In his April 7, 1999 Founders' Day Convocation address at Bates, President Donald W. Harward offered this summary of William Stringfellow's achievements:

"A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bates, William Stringfellow was president of the Representative Assembly [the Bates student government], a debater, and orator, and a delegate to the Second World Conference of Christian Youth in Norway. He then studied at the London School of Economics and the Episcopal Theological School before enrolling in the Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1956.

"Combining his sense of social obligation, his religious witness, and his professional competence, he began a long practice as a street-corner lawyer in East Harlem. A gay, white lawyer, he lived and practiced law in Harlem a decade before the 'war on poverty.' His experience there deepened both his legal and religious thought, shaped the message of his widely influential books, pleading the sustaining relevance of a universal ethic of human rights.

"He urgently called Americans to attend to the social evils most visibly affecting the urban poor. As a Guggenheim Fellow, his scholarship centered on moral theology; his actions were directed through the law firm he founded. And he served the disenfranchised ... in the largest city in the U.S.

"He offered his service to the frightened, the defeated, angry, the 'have nots,' in a society of comparative plenty. Considered one of America's most gifted theologically-grounded social activists, Stringfellow saw the need to be guided by principles ... but he also understood the necessity to act."

That career of activism can be traced to his junior year at Bates when he organized a sit-in at a local Maine restaurant that refused to serve people of color. It was his first foray into social activism, and he never looked back.

Just a few short years later, Stringfellow gained a reputation as a formidable critic of the social, military and economic policies of our country and as a tireless advocate for racial and social justice. That justice, he insisted, could be realized only if it were pursued spiritually.

As a Christian, he firmly believed that he had been committed in baptism to a life-long struggle against the "Powers and Principalities," as systemic evil is sometimes called in the New Testament, or the "Power of Death." While other Christian theologians have expressed this truth in countless ways,

Stringfellow declared it most prophetically through his very life. He boldly proclaimed that being a faithful follower of Jesus means to declare oneself free from all forces of death and destruction and to submit oneself single-heartedly to the power of life.

Stringfellow is especially well known for his thorough-going theological and political analysis of the" Powers and Principalities" which interfere with that radical commitment to life, an analysis which cleared the way for later theologians and peace activists like Walter Wink to extend and deepen his important work.

Inaugurated in the 2000-2001 academic year, the Stringfellow Award aims to honor that powerful legacy and to support its continuation in our own time.

Read more about William Stringfellow

2000-2001 Recipients

2001-2002 Recipients

2002-2003 Recipients

2003-2004 Recipients

2004-2005 Recipients

2005-2006 Recipients

2006-2007 Recipients

2007-2008 Recipients

2008-2009 Recipients