The Beginnings of Walter’s Prophetic Imagination
Here’s another excerpt from Conrad L. Kanagy’s upcoming biography entitled Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography.
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Since his childhood in Blackburn, Missouri, as the son of a poorly educated and poorly paid preacher, Brueggemann had been aware of this sense that he was always behind everyone else. With only thirty students in his high school and just one shelf of books that he read and read again, Brueggemann relied upon others to subsidize his meager educational opportunities. But the advantage of working from behind meant that Walter was always working on getting ahead. This trait was about to bear more fruit than he or anyone could imagine. A breakthrough of sizable proportions was just around the corner.
Walter’s childhood position on the periphery opened up the possibility of freedom and emancipation that would eventually assist him in moving forward. He didn’t have to be like every other schoolboy because he couldn’t ever be one of them. He didn’t have to be like every other biblical scholar who published not to perish because his audience would become the church. While he didn’t know it, Walter had been imagining alternative worlds long before this day in 1977, as he sat writing in his hideaway office. He had not yet landed upon the term “prophetic imagination,” but what he had in mind was an assumption that all social reality owes its origins to the freshness of the always generative power of the biblical text and of that text’s God. To the emancipation found in that text’s God. To the freedom and sovereignty of that God to intervene in the world when and how God chose to do so.
The imagination Walter was formulating was not just any alternative view of reality, but a view grounded in the biblical text. He had little to do with other views of social realty on the Religious Left or Right. Thus, the lens of a prophetic imagination was already in place. Walter was now becoming aware of that imagination and finding words to describe it. Doing so, he would define the direction of the rest of his life.
2 Comments
Timothy Seitz-Brown · August 22, 2023 at 3:18 pm
Interested in the new Brueggemann biography!
John Modschiedler · August 30, 2023 at 1:05 pm
What a pleasure to read a bit about Walt’s “beginnings.” – He graduated from Elmhurst in the Spring of 1955, I arrived in the fall of 1955 but learned to know him when he returned for Homecoming. After Elmhurst, he went to Eden, as did I. We’re both of E & R heritage, both “PKs,” both ordained ministers of the UCC, & both taught for our careers. Both my brothers, my only siblings, were born in March. Happy forthcoming Birthday, Walt, on 11 March 2024.