Walter Brueggemann Column

Church Anew is honored to host Walter Brueggemann as our featured 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.

Humanity Erased?
Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann

Humanity Erased?

We remain before the tricky question, “What is a woman or man”? What is humanity? The answer we give to that question is that we humans are “lord of all, servant of all.” I suspect that Kirsch and his company would and could to some great extent share that conviction. The hard part is living it out, and thereby creating futures that are beyond technological rationality. That hard work is the reason we gather regularly around the news of dying and being raised to new life.

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Trees: Signals of Hope and Defiance
Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann

Trees: Signals of Hope and Defiance

The children’s book by Franck Prevot is entitled Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees (2015) has led me to think about trees and the role they play in the Bible for a viable creation (and a viable economy). That crucial role played by trees has been played since the appearance of trees on the third day of creation (Genesis 1:11-13). This is some of what I learned about trees in the Bible.

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Singing the Counter-Culture
Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann

Singing the Counter-Culture

We know and trust that the force of this other world does not evaporate when we close our hymnals. It persists. Our signing into that other world may also persist. We return to our more mundane worlds close at hand. But the singing persists and so that world persists among us, deabsolutizing the world in front of us, permitting us to host that other world and sign on for “a more excellent way” marked by faith, hope, and love.

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Money Talk in the Church
Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann

Money Talk in the Church

It is unmistakable that the Torah designation of covenantal economics persists in the narrative reflection of the New Testament. It remains for the church to recover this awareness about the economy in our tradition, and to recover the courage necessary to contest the predatory practices of our economy that have become normative in our society.

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Start Me with Two!
Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann

Start Me with Two!

The wealthy, the powerful, and those who produce the poison of our planet count on the rest of us to be compliant, even if in dissent. The spell of such fearful compliance can be and will be broken only by the few good women and men who dare to march to a different drummer, work from a different script, and act in ways congruent with their conviction of a world held in the good hands of the creator.

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On Gerrymandered Texts
Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann

On Gerrymandered Texts

Such an accent on the power of God, moreover, has been a long-running seduction for the church, as we have imagined the power of God to be not unlike the worldly power of mighty empires and imperial rulers. Insofar as the church has been seduced in this regard, attentiveness to the “weakness of God” may be a deep and significant corrective.

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Saved in and through Weakness
Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann Brueggemann Column, Ministry, Preaching Dr. Walter Brueggemann

Saved in and through Weakness

Such an accent on the power of God, moreover, has been a long-running seduction for the church, as we have imagined the power of God to be not unlike the worldly power of mighty empires and imperial rulers. Insofar as the church has been seduced in this regard, attentiveness to the “weakness of God” may be a deep and significant corrective.

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