Walter Brueggemann Column
Church Anew is honored to welcome Walter Brueggemann as our featured weekly columnist. We look forward to sharing Walter’s work with church leaders and faithful people worldwide. May his powerful and reflective writings inspire, energize, guide, and comfort you.
From “Rag-Tag” to “Holy”
Walter Brueggemann reminds ua to have fresh courage for the work yet to be done, stating: “The great missional mandate to the church stems from this wondrous reality that God desires to choose “the weak and the foolish” to do the transformative work.”
Peddlers Who Prey on Our Prayers
Walter Brueggemann discusses the usage of the term “peddler” came to mind as he observed Donald Trump selling his “USA Bible” for $59.99.
“I have not seen his Bible, but it clearly intends to voice the gospel alongside Trump’s particular version of nationalism,” Brueggemann writes.
Growing in Grace
When Brueggemann reflected on moral seriousness, the first thing he thought of was “stages of growth” in the defining work of the great Swiss child psychologist, Jean Piaget. In a series of books in the mid-twentieth century, Piaget reported on his careful observation of children and concluded that children in their intellectual and moral development regularly advance through several different stages of learning.
Mapping as Power
The very ones whom the elite seek to exclude are the primary candidates to constitute the community of Jesus, for the “holy people” is formed “from below” among those who live a distance from the mirages of virtue and control.
We the People
The very ones whom the elite seek to exclude are the primary candidates to constitute the community of Jesus, for the “holy people” is formed “from below” among those who live a distance from the mirages of virtue and control.
It’s the Economy, Stupid
To many people the “economy” meant and means good paying jobs that produce greater purchasing power. But of course, in presidential elections, it is always “the economy.”
Jubilee Recovered
As an Old Testament teacher, Walter Brueggemann has often been asked a recurring set of questions about the Jubilee text. But no question has been asked more frequently than this: “There is no evidence that the Jubilee Year was ever really practiced, is there?”
Does Not Have Love
Walter Brueggemann writes how it is the counterwork of the creator God to protect from human probes into the hidden ways in which creation functions.
The Father God Who is No God-Father
In the course of a family household, there are characteristically two most demanding, most rewarding relationships: the relationship of marital partners and the relationship of parent and child.
The High Cost of Prudence
Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time (Amos 5:13).
Lethal Discovery/Toxic Denial
The “Doctrine of Discovery” is constituted by a series of papal teachings in the 15th century, culminating in 1493, the year after Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World. This series of papal declarations asserted that the “New World” rightly belonged to White Europeans and was to be divided between Spain and Portugal, two states fully supportive of the Vatican. That teaching, over time, provided cover and justification for White occupation of the New World with an eager readiness to convert, enslave, or kill the indigenous population.
Written Down, Written Up
The Greek term is apographo, that is, “written down.” All were to be “written down” under imperial auspices in the same way I had been “written down” by the church and by the government. Joseph and Mary, vulnerable peasants from the shabby village of Nazareth, were ‘written down” by the empire in its long reach into the peasant economy.
Brueggmann’s Top 10 Blogs 0f 2023
Wondering what Brueggemann's most read posts were in 2023? Check out this list of his insightful Biblical and prophetic wisdom as you start the new year!
Finding Your Voice
Newman writes in an almost gnomic style with abrupt half-sentences, wistful unfinished thoughts, and frequent appeal to “threes” that he finds suggestive. The crux of his elusive work is to report on the way in which good writing must adhere to conventions of plot, structure, and genre.
The Goodly Company of “the Good Mrs. Murphy”
The dominant Western theological tradition has been mesmerized by the muscular adjectives of sovereignty…that we have until most recently failed to discern the force of another set of divine characteristics, namely, “goodness and mercy.”
The Empowering, Illuminating Word From Elsewhere
In Psalm 119, by contrast, each letter gets eight successive lines. Thus with twenty-two letters in the alphabet, and each letter reiterated eight times, we get a sum of 176 verses. It is for that reason that the Psalm is so long. Our verse 105 occurs as the first of eight verses that start with nun (n) (vv. 105-112). The first word in verse 105, the first of eight lines with nun, is “ner” (lamp).
When Water Does Not Win
In its pre-scientific articulation of creation, ancient Israel understood that the created order of the world is sustained by the creator God who held back the chaotic waters that were all around the earth, and that were endlessly moving against the created order in threatening ways.