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.
A Newly Produced World
In this column, Walter Brueggemann writes on technological advancement and its ties to imperialism, and how Scripture can help us avoid the pitfalls of a rapidly advancing world.
Celebrative Dining
In this column, Walter Brueggemann writes on James Baldwin's unfinished work, and how feasts reflect the restorative and abundant power of God and his promises.
It’s All Made Up
In this column, Walter Brueggemann reminds us that the Bible's most powerful messages were 'made up' by its poets--Miriam, Isaiah, Mary--challenging us to question what we can learn from their expressions of imagination
Greed which is Idolatry
Walter Brueggemann examines how we may use the Bible to maintain generosity in the face of modern greed. Through loyalty to our community and the God of abundance we may resist the ideologies of scarcity and covetousness.
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.