The Poetry of Faith: Sermons Preached in a Southern Church

Synopsis

The ministry of the Rev. Stephen F. Dill was forged in the turbulent civil rights years when he stood for social justice and spoke against racial segregation. In this collection of sermons-many from his 20 years as pastor of Dauphin Way United Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama-Dill reflects on the implications of his faith for the lives of individuals and for the life of the world. Robin Wilson, one of Dill's successors at Dauphin Way, praises "the bold humility" of his message, and author Frye Gaillard, in the book's introduction, offers this description of Dill and his sermons: "Almost inevitably, the poetry of his preaching caught the quick of my imagination and quietly, inevitably made me think." Appropriately, the publication of The Poetry of Faith coincides with the 100th anniversary of Dauphin Way. But these challenging and reassuring sermons resonate far beyond those walls. As Methodist educator Gorman Houston put it, this is the Christian faith at its finest, for Stephen Dill has always been "one of those ministers ... able to see the church as it should be and not as it was."