Revolutionary Patience

Dorothee Soelle enjoyed a solidly-established reputation as theologian in both Europe and the United States. Works such as ’Christ, the Representative’, ’Political Theology’, and ’Suffering’ have shown her to be a writer who combined scholarship with clarity of expression, and made theology come alive through her human warmth and compassion. ’Revolutionary Patience’, however, reveals yet another facet of Soelle as both person and writer. With disarming simplicity, the prayer-poems in this book reflect the author’s own deep Christianity as she attempts to make sense, in the light of the Gospel, of a world brutally scarred by oppression, filled with cries of the hungry and the hunted. These poems are also prayers, of a kind rarely heard in our churches, but disturbingly evocative of Amos, Isaiah, and Jesus. These pages offer stones, not bread, for any who might open them looking for spiritual comfort or consolation. Yet, for those with ears to hear, ’Revolutionary Patience’ will also be a treasured experience as Dorothee Soelle’s lines sing and sting their way into the reader’s mind and heart.

Dorothee Soelle is one of the most widely read theologians of our time. She was Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1975 to 1987. Among her numerous publications are ’Suffering’ (1975), and her magnum opus, ’The Silent Cry’, which joins deep religious knowledge and wisdom with passion for social justice in a work destined to be a classic of religious literature.