The following is a quote from Dorothee Sölle’s The Truth is Concrete (1969). It’s from the eleventh (and last) chapter, “Church outside the Church.” I bring this quote to light because it highlights Sölle’s prophetic witness and her keen insight. What she says here, I believe, applies to the C/church today. In 2024, we are in no better spot when it comes to desperate attempts to validate the C/church’s presence in the world. And the worst part, which I find well articulated here in Sölle’s words, is that the church prefers recourse to archaic structures and systems and useless assertions of power and demand, conformance and performance that seem to deny our technological and scientific advancements OR pretend that the human person is all fact and data, pure material truth without need of a reinvigoration of the retelling of our sacred myths (the enlightened and intellectual denominations (so proud) often jettison the very awkward message of the Christian sacred text and, thus, relinquish full interpretive control to the fundamentalist, rightist wing). Anyway, here are some words written about 55 years ago; enjoy and find within a summons to reconsider “Concrete Truth”:

“The main points in the structure are boundaries, danger, fear. The great enemy, the devil in ever new shape, is the world. The Church is always ready to forget that Christ has got the power over the dominions and that his victory is not just personal salvation of the individual but he has also changed the face of the world. We may remark in the last two hundred years that the situation of the Church has become more and more complicated, with the progress of secularization. She can no longer rely on the ancient pre-scientific fear-bound imaginations. She is losing her authority, her dominant position, she has become one power among many, and must therefore defend herself! She defends herself externally by virtue of claims to power which bear more or less weight according to the political situation. Internally she deals with her loss of authority by trying to preserve an outdated social structure. She proclaims that a part of the world, the past world, is unassailable and not subject to historical change. Then she bullies people to perform certain tasks which are made into conditions of membership of the Christian community. Somewhat unwillingly, she builds her walls and demands a way of life whose style and social norms and image are necessarily bourgeois. She demands, which is worse, the sort of community adherence which can no longer be expected, since people have less and less desire for this kind of thing. She demands, finally, that people should be interested in an ancient document, the Bible. These demands clearly constitute high walls. They are attempts to arrest the progress of secularization, at least in this area. It is a hopeless undertaking.”

p. 102-103