Philippians presents us with a powerful vision of both the way in which suffering encourages churches, and how churches are called to minister to the suffering. Stanley Hauerwas’ work on the nature of suffering is instructive here, fleshing out some of the ecclesial contours of Philippians.
In current theological discourse, the role of congregations in the struggle against the 'powers and principalities' moves in one of two directions: either 'church' is treated reductively in terms of viihat it provides for social gains (and thus not what it provides independently of social activism), or 'church' as a particularist space is negated entirely. This article argues that the work of William Stringfellow provides a resource for thinking productively about the role of churches within larger social struggles against what theology has termed 'the powers and principalities'. In Stringfellow's work, this article claims, we see a model for how ecclesiastical space and 'worldly space' can join together in ways that do not negate the integrity of either 'church' or 'world', while still making use ofthe 'powers' discourse in theologically productive ways.
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