Book Reviews
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed.” Francis Bacon (d. 1626)
A Pilgrim in Rome
Al Staggs
Charlotte, NC, Baptist Peace Fellowship, 2008.
Reviewed by Robert Flynn
For twenty-four years Al Staggs was a Baptist pastor, armed with a BA degree from Hardin-Simmons University, MRE from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, ThM from Harvard Divinity School, and a Doctor of Ministry from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. But a Baptist pulpit did not allow time for all of Stagg’s messages or space for all his talents.
His social consciousness honed as a Fellow at Harvard in Applied Theology under the direction of Harvey Cox, Staggs presented one man performances of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison. Later he expanded the programs to characterizations of Clarence Jordan and Archbishop Oscar Romero presented at churches, synagogues, universities across North America and Europe.
Their voices can be heard in his book of poetry, A Pilgrim in Rome: Cries of Dissent, published by Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, grief at what their country had become, sorrow that rich Christians robbed the poor, rage that death squads kept the powerless cowering in silence. Staggs aims his pen at peace and poverty, and the power that denies one and drives the other. “We are the oppressors,” he writes, “the children of the one who came to bring peace on earth.”
Fearing a national descent into barbarity he writes of the idle in Zion who fatten themselves on the produce of oppression. As an army veteran and father of a career soldier, Staggs has a soldier’s abhorrence of torture and of American Christians who are unable to see the crucified Christ in the faces of helpless prisoners. “How can you be a Christian and not be transformed?” he asks.
Difficult to accept, impossible to deny, these are prophetic poems for meditation, teaching and preaching.
