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Adam Russell Taylor writes in this week’s SojoMail that the late theologian saw the direction the country was headed, and he knew the key to fighting it was to start dreaming bigger:
Last week we lost a theological giant: Walter Brueggemann passed away on June 5 at the age of 92. It would be impossible for me to overstate the profound impact that Brueggemann had on justice-oriented Christians. Not only did he write more than 100 influential books of theology and biblical criticism over the course of his long career, he also wrote dozens of articles for Sojourners. There are very few theologians I can think of who taught me as much as Brueggemann did about how to read the Bible and what a deepened understanding of scripture reveals about God’s heart for justice and our ability to imagine a world beyond empire. Brueggemann first wrote for Sojourners in November 1983, offering analysis of the lectionary texts for the first two Sundays in Advent. In speaking to the challenge of discarding a status quo from which all too many of us benefit, Brueggemann says: “Many of us benefit from the marginality of the poor, and we do not want it to change. In the real commitments of our lives, we are deeply in conflict with the new reign. And we are without hope, meaning we do not want, expect, or welcome the new leader. In our moments of honesty, we crave our hopelessness because it lets us keep things as they are.” It’s an evocative statement that captures the despair many Americans felt in the context of Reagan-era consumerism. And as we look around in 2025, can we claim that American society and our relationship to economic inequality has meaningfully changed? Yet while facing this difficult truth, Brueggemann offers a powerful and hopeful image of the Spirit on the wind: Sometimes even despite our best efforts, God will challenge us, shaking us out of the despair that perpetuates an unjust status quo.
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