Brueggemann on Jeremiah Wright

I immediately thought of Walter Brueggemann when I heard the recent criticisms of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's prophetic rhetoric. I felt certain that somewhere Dr. Brueggemann was shaking his head and wondering aloud if once again Christians skipped over one of the most important parts of our Bible. Two months ago I spent the weekend listening to Dr. Brueggemann speak at length about the prophet Jeremiah and his key role in our faith tradition. Here is what Dr. Brueggemann wrote in a recent comment printed in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution:

The current spasm of "righteous indignation" concerning Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama's pastor, smacks of embarrassing ignorance. Such a critique of Wright is ignorant of black preaching rhetoric and the practice of liberation interpretation. It is also disturbingly ignorant of the prophetic traditions of the Bible that regularly expose the failures of society in savage rhetoric. I am grateful for the ministry of Wright, a colleague of mine in the United Church of Christ, who for a very long time has been a faithful pastor and a daring prophetic figure. It is odd when right-wingers misconstrue this belated Jeremiah as they do the original Jeremiah, who knew about God's passion for truth-telling in risky places.

Walter Brueggemann - professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary

Christian Capitalism?

How can a person worship the God of Justice and follow Jesus’ radical message of subversive resistance to the values of Empire while operating a thriving business within a capitalist society? It is no secret that capitalism is built to reward greed at the expense of others. Gordon Gekko - the fictional character from the 1987 film Wall Street - is an icon and has inspired a generation of Wall Street capitalists by insisting, “Greed is good”. He might be correct in assuming that greed is the fuel feeding capitalism but history has proven that this mentality always fails to deliver anything satisfying.

I run a business, own property, buy products, sell services, employee people, construct lucrative business deals, and at the end of the day, I have to admit I benefit from our capitalist society. I often question my prosperity and the power I’ve been awarded to change lives through my business dealings. I am a capitalist, yet I view the Bible as a socialist document and I accept its principles as the driving force in my life. How does my biblical ideal for justice coexist with the reality that I clearly benefit from the unjust results of capitalism?

What Does The Bible Say About Greed? The Bible’s long narrative of the nation of Israel begins with the desperate cry of mistreated workers who have fallen victim to the power of Empire and its obsessive greed. The Exodus began with workers who dared to say “No more bricks!” The Israelite’s captured their response to the imperial values of Egypt in a 10 point list of subversive anti-Pharaoh statements about their new community (the Ten Commandments). This subversive text begins with the remembrance of their bondage in Egypt and how they were delivered in order to create something new. Located within that list of rules for building their new society, one item sticks out as something radically different. The centerpiece to this alternate-view of how to build a community is the fourth commandment (remember the Sabbath).

Walter Brueggemann suggests that fundamentally keeping the Sabbath must involve: “periodic, regular disengagement from systems of productivity whereby the world uses people up to exhaustion. That disengagement refers also to culture-produced expectations for frantic leisure, frantic consumptions, or frantic exercise.”

The purpose of the Sabbath, which literally means to desist or stop, is to withdraw from the forces of Empire whose goal is to exhaust everything it touches. We must realize that any society operating within the normalcy of Empire will inevitably crumble as it burns up the very resources which once made it strong. This is even true when the most valuable resources of a society are its people. The commandment to remember the Sabbath reminds Israel never to become like Pharaoh.

The more I understand the Bible’s subversive perspective on reality, I'm beginning to realize it can actually work. It seems evident that most people have eyes to read these ancient texts but they cannot see its truth. It is sad that we have yet to convince more people to open their eyes and implement these ideals on a national and global level. I have hope and I agree with Jesus that one day we will.

Walter Brueggemann - 19 Theses

I heard this a while back. After reading Brian McLaren's new book I think it is even more clear. You can download the full talk and Q&A via Mp3. In particular, I like how he talks about the difference between certitude (belief/doctrine) and fidelity (faith) in the Q&A session. Thanks to Paul Soupiset for posting this transcription and the audio.

1. Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or explicit. It may be recognized or unrecognized, but everybody has a script.

2. We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process of nurture and formation and socialization, and it happens to us without our knowing it.

3. The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.

4. That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism) enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us happy.

5. That script has failed. That script of military consumerism cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy. We may be the unhappiest society in the world.

6. Health for our society depends upon disengagement from and relinquishment of that script of military consumerism. This is a disengagement and relinquishment that we mostly resist and about which we are profoundly ambiguous.

7. It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us. That is, too enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists and indeed never did exist.

8. The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.

9. The alternative script is rooted in the Bible and is enacted through the tradition of the Church. It is an offer of a counter-narrative, counter to the script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism.

10. That alternative script has as its most distinctive feature, its key character – the God of the Bible whom we name as Father, Son, and Spirit.

11. That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence – [a] huge problem for us.

12. The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless. [I think the writer of Psalm 119 would probably like too try, to make it seamless]. Because when we do that the script gets flattened and domesticated. [This is my polemic against systematic theology]. The script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must betaken to let this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible self.

13. The ragged, disjunctive character of the counter-script to which we testify invites its adherents to quarrel among themselves – liberals and conservatives – in ways that detract from the main claims of the script and so too debilitate the focus of the script.

14. The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?”

15. The nurture, formation, and socialization into the counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialization by the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action, spirituality, and neighboring of all kinds.

16. Most of us are ambiguous about the script; those with whom we minister and I dare say, those of us who minister. Most of us are not at the deepest places wanting to choose between the dominant script and the counter-script. Most of us in the deep places are vacillating and mumbling in ambivalence.

17. This ambivalence between scripts is precisely the primary venue for the Spirit. So that ministry is to name and enhance the ambivalence that liberals and conservatives have in common that puts people in crisis and consequently that invokes resistance and hostility.

18. Ministry is to manage that ambivalence that is crucially present among liberals and conservatives in generative faithful ways in order to permit relinquishment of [the] old script and embrace of the new script.

19. The work of ministry is crucial and pivotal and indispensable in our society precisely because there is no one [see if that’s an overstatement]; there is no one except the church and the synagogue to name and evoke the ambivalence and too manage a way through it. I think often; I see the mundane day-to-day stuff ministers have to do and I think, my God, what would happen if you took all the ministers out. The role of ministry then is as urgent as it is wondrous and difficult.