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Walter Brueggemann's Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography
In this theological biography of the most prolific Old Testament student of the twenty-first century, Conrad Kanagy portrays Walter Brueggemann within the historical and cultural landscape of his formation.
Kanagy follows Walter from his childhood home in Blackburn, Missouri, to Elmhurst College, Eden Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary. Kanagy introduces us to the teachers who most influenced Brueggemann's personal and theological development. We observe Walter Brueggemann's unflappable energy as he moves toward the publication of The Prophetic Imagination, which will land him on the theological map of biblical studies and the American church. This breakthrough will define the rest of Brueggemann's life as he pivots among the biblical text, classroom, church, and world.
The book addresses the riddle of The Prophetic Imagination's surprising emergence and enduring resilience, peering deeply into the theologian's interior life, about which little has been understood by even those closest to him. If all ""theology is biography,"" we have missed much about Brueggemann's understanding of God by knowing so little of his person. The book's integration of his work and life within his community across nine decades reveals the most complete portrait to date of this remarkable prophet, pastor, preacher, teacher, and friend.
Still, after all the careful research, much of who Walter Brueggemann is remains a mystery. He rejects reductionist portraits of himself, the biblical text, and God. He recognizes that the worlds we construct theologically are messy, perhaps because he sees the ""wild and woolly"" God of the world as more than a bit a God who cannot be fully measured, a God who pivots just when we imagined we knew the way, and a God whose mystery and preference for openness and unpredictability are enough to keep any one of us on our toes.
Kanagy follows Walter from his childhood home in Blackburn, Missouri, to Elmhurst College, Eden Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary. Kanagy introduces us to the teachers who most influenced Brueggemann's personal and theological development. We observe Walter Brueggemann's unflappable energy as he moves toward the publication of The Prophetic Imagination, which will land him on the theological map of biblical studies and the American church. This breakthrough will define the rest of Brueggemann's life as he pivots among the biblical text, classroom, church, and world.
The book addresses the riddle of The Prophetic Imagination's surprising emergence and enduring resilience, peering deeply into the theologian's interior life, about which little has been understood by even those closest to him. If all ""theology is biography,"" we have missed much about Brueggemann's understanding of God by knowing so little of his person. The book's integration of his work and life within his community across nine decades reveals the most complete portrait to date of this remarkable prophet, pastor, preacher, teacher, and friend.
Still, after all the careful research, much of who Walter Brueggemann is remains a mystery. He rejects reductionist portraits of himself, the biblical text, and God. He recognizes that the worlds we construct theologically are messy, perhaps because he sees the ""wild and woolly"" God of the world as more than a bit a God who cannot be fully measured, a God who pivots just when we imagined we knew the way, and a God whose mystery and preference for openness and unpredictability are enough to keep any one of us on our toes.
247 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 24, 2023
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November 12, 2023
Walter Brueggemann is one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of the last half-century. But he is not just an academician, he is a scholar on behalf of the church. We who preach and teach have come to value his wisdom and insight. As I've read his books and commentaries over the years I must say that even when I disagree with something he has written, he has made me think. I've also had the privilege of hearing him speak and preach. I even led a panel discussion with him some years ago. Not only does he write about the prophets, especially Jeremiah, but when you encounter him you come away from those encounters feeling as if you have been in the presence of one of God's prophets. I've only encountered him in recent decades, but his tall lanky body, balding head, and scruffy beard give that vibe.
So who is this scholar with the air of a prophet? Where did he come from? What were the driving forces in his life? These are questions many of us have had over the years. At least a partial answer is given in Conrad Kanagy's new biography of Brueggemann. The book quite appropriately carries the title "Walter Brueggemann's Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography." The title, of course, takes a queue from perhaps his most famous and likely influential book The Prophetic Imagination.
The author of this biography, Conrad Kanagy is Professor of Sociology at Elizabethtown College. The focus of his scholarship has been American and global Christianity. It is appropriate that a professor of sociology would author a biography of Brueggemann who not only studied sociology at Elmhurst College as an undergraduate but has drawn liberally from sociology and the social sciences in his biblical scholarship.
Kanagy tells us in his preface that he "first met Walter Brueggemann in the library stacks of Elizabethtown College." It's not that Brueggemann was visiting the college, but it was there in 2006 while researching his own Mennonite denomination that he stumbled upon Brueggemann's books as he was looking for commentaries on the Book of Jeremiah. The book he encountered there was "The Prophetic Imagination," which he tells us "revealed that perhaps God was in the middle of the church mess I had uncovered. Perhaps God was even responsible for the mess!" (pp. xiii-xv). He again turned to Brueggemann's works in 2021 as he was working on a sermon on racism while some in his church had come under Donald Trump's spell. Brueggemann helped as Kanagy wrote to him for guidance, and Brueggemann responded. What he asked Brueggemann was whether there was a biography that could do for him than what "The Prophetic Imagination" had done earlier. When Brueggemann replied that he couldn't come up with a biography, Kanagy asked if he could write Brueggemann's story. Brueggemann's answer to that was yes, though he didn't believe there was much to say about him. Well, as Kanagy demonstrates there is much to be learned from Brueggemann's story. Kanagy notes that he is not attempting here in this biography to interpret everything Brueggemann has written. Rather, what he attempts to do here and does quite well is paint in broad strokes Brueggemann's life and how his writings, teaching, and preaching have impacted so many. More specifically, Kanagy tells us that what he attempts to do here, based on a series of Zoom calls with Brueggemann and interviews with colleagues, friends, and students, is "look into Walter's inner life with God, searching for the answer to what of divinity has produced and sustained the quality and quantity of Walter's work." What we learn is that there are no categories that fully describe his own spirituality, but it is there.
Kanagy divides the story of Brueggemann's life into three parts with the idea of The Prophetic Imagination providing the central lens. Beginning in Part 1, we encounter two chapters. The opening chapter introduces us to the heart of the issue, Brueggemann the scholar who discovered the prophetic imagination as the way to understand Scripture. We learn here that Brueggemann was committed to his scholarship, trying to find time away each day, writing (long hand) the equivalent of twelve pages double-spaced each day in about two to three hours. His understanding of the text was influenced greatly by his doctoral mentor James Muilenburg, who introduced him to rhetorical interpretation as an alternative to the dominant historical-critical method, which both Muilenberg and his students found static and didn't speak to modern concerns. After graduating from Union Seminary with his Ph.D. he returned to his beloved Eden Seminary, where he had done his seminary work and where his father had studied as well. He began teaching at Eden in 1961, but it was not until 1978 that his breakthrough book was published. That would be The Prophetic Imagination. Before that, he had taken on the role of dean at a time when the seminary was in decline and the possibility of closure was real. Thus, he tried to combine scholarship, teaching, and administrative leadership. In this chapter, we are not only introduced to his scholarship but also to his origins as the son of a pastor in the Evangelical Synod of North America, an expression of the Prussian Union. His people had come from Germany and settled in Missouri, which is where Eden was situated. It was a seminary that had been led by H. Richard Niebuhr and had educated Reinhold. The Niebuhrs did have a profound influence on the seminary. One thing to note here is that Kanagy doesn't take us chronologically through Brueggemann's life. We come and go in time. But the chapter does introduce us to his childhood, at least briefly before taking us to Union. One thing that is very important to this story is the influence of his father, who was rather poorly trained and very poorly paid, but who was committed to his ministry and the importance of education for both Walter and his brother Edward. But, we also learn that Brueggemann, who was brilliant always felt a bit under-educated due to his origins. Of course, The Prophetic Imagination changed all of that.
If the first chapter lays the foundation, the second chapter "Where Prophets Come From" takes us back to Brueggemann's origins. We gain a clearer insight into his childhood and education, along with the influence of his parents. One of the things we learn is that as a teenager, with the permission of his father, he and his brother would attend the black church on the edge of town, gaining insight into the lives of people different from him. That would influence his later commitment to social justice. We learn more here about his father's calling and the roots of the Evangelical Synod, which would later merge with the German Reformed Church before merging into the UCC. These churches of the Evangelical Synod had their origins in the Prussian Union, an ecumenical merger of Lutheran and Reformed churches in the nineteenth century. The pastors who led these churches in places like Missouri were missionary pastors. They tended to be poorly educated and paid, which was something that would be true of Brueggemann's father. It is out of this ethos that a prophetic imagination was born in Brueggemann.
If Part 1 offers us an origin story for Brueggemann (and I've only hinted at what is there), in the three chapters in Part 2, we delve more fully into Brueggemann's scholarship. In chapter three "Imagination Everywhere" we discover that in a world of specialists, Brueggemann chose to be a generalist, which placed him at the edge of the academy until the publication of The Prophetic Imagination. But that book provided a platform to speak to both the church and academy, prophetically telling each that they had been domesticated and needed liberating. In Chapter 4, titled "Pivoting Here and There," we learn how Brueggemann pivoted away from moralism to a more prophetic stance that drew from such sources as Marx to speak to economic and other justice issues. He did this not to enhance his status in the academy but for the church. Then in the fifth chapter, Kanagy reminds us that Brueggemann devoted himself to the text of scripture. For Brueggemann, if there is no text there is no God. Kanagy shows how both the left and right had problems with Brueggemann. On one hand the left was puzzled by his commitment to the biblical text while the right didn't understand his commitment to social justice, but for him it all had to do with the biblical text. In the course of his work, in the 1980s, Brueggemann would move from Eden to Columbia Theological Seminary, a PCUSA seminary in Georgia. That move gave Brueggemann more time and resources for his writing.
Finally, in Part 3 we encounter Brueggemann in his later years, after retirement from Columbia and a move to Cincinnati where he joined an Episcopal Church, where he found a church and its pastor who understood text, justice, and the nature of the church to fit his vision. We learn more here about Brueggemann's human side and some of the struggles he had in life. We also encounter his prayers, which are deeply rooted in scripture and reflect his poetic sense (after all he spent much time with the Psalms). This penultimate chapter is titled "The Secret." The reason for that title is, as Kanagy notes, Brueggemann's prayers are the "secret core from which all of his work and writing emerge." (p. 176). The final chapter is titled "Where Prophets Go," which brings some closure to the story. Kanagy also reveals that while he hoped Brueggemann's story would provide some assurance that this prophetic path would provide some comfort. He didn't find that, but he discovered what Brueggemann knew and that was prophets return to scripture, from which they can proclaim an alternative message to that of the empire.
I truly appreciated this book because I now have a better sense of Brueggemann's life and message. In many ways, it confirmed what I believed about him, but now I know more about the origins of his story. I also came to a better understanding of why I appreciate his work, and that is his commitment to the text of scripture. As a progressive Christian, I find some in my camp's distance from scripture unsettling. It's not that we embrace everything literally without interpretation, but scripture should be the touchstone of our faith. Brueggemann shows us how and why. Kanagy does a nice job connecting the dots. I did struggle a bit not with the text and the way the story was shared but with problematic editing issues. Names were occasionally misspelled, thus sometimes Kanagy speaks of Jim Wallis and at others Jim Wallace (it's Wallis). There is a strange reference to a book of Hezekiah (it was a discussion of Hezekiah). Then there were the references to Richard Niebuhr and H. Reinhold. It's H. Richard and Reinhold. Several other instances caught my eye. I think it's largely an editorial issue as someone should have caught these things. Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed this theological biography of one of the most influential scholars of our day.
. . .
.
So who is this scholar with the air of a prophet? Where did he come from? What were the driving forces in his life? These are questions many of us have had over the years. At least a partial answer is given in Conrad Kanagy's new biography of Brueggemann. The book quite appropriately carries the title "Walter Brueggemann's Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography." The title, of course, takes a queue from perhaps his most famous and likely influential book The Prophetic Imagination.
The author of this biography, Conrad Kanagy is Professor of Sociology at Elizabethtown College. The focus of his scholarship has been American and global Christianity. It is appropriate that a professor of sociology would author a biography of Brueggemann who not only studied sociology at Elmhurst College as an undergraduate but has drawn liberally from sociology and the social sciences in his biblical scholarship.
Kanagy tells us in his preface that he "first met Walter Brueggemann in the library stacks of Elizabethtown College." It's not that Brueggemann was visiting the college, but it was there in 2006 while researching his own Mennonite denomination that he stumbled upon Brueggemann's books as he was looking for commentaries on the Book of Jeremiah. The book he encountered there was "The Prophetic Imagination," which he tells us "revealed that perhaps God was in the middle of the church mess I had uncovered. Perhaps God was even responsible for the mess!" (pp. xiii-xv). He again turned to Brueggemann's works in 2021 as he was working on a sermon on racism while some in his church had come under Donald Trump's spell. Brueggemann helped as Kanagy wrote to him for guidance, and Brueggemann responded. What he asked Brueggemann was whether there was a biography that could do for him than what "The Prophetic Imagination" had done earlier. When Brueggemann replied that he couldn't come up with a biography, Kanagy asked if he could write Brueggemann's story. Brueggemann's answer to that was yes, though he didn't believe there was much to say about him. Well, as Kanagy demonstrates there is much to be learned from Brueggemann's story. Kanagy notes that he is not attempting here in this biography to interpret everything Brueggemann has written. Rather, what he attempts to do here and does quite well is paint in broad strokes Brueggemann's life and how his writings, teaching, and preaching have impacted so many. More specifically, Kanagy tells us that what he attempts to do here, based on a series of Zoom calls with Brueggemann and interviews with colleagues, friends, and students, is "look into Walter's inner life with God, searching for the answer to what of divinity has produced and sustained the quality and quantity of Walter's work." What we learn is that there are no categories that fully describe his own spirituality, but it is there.
Kanagy divides the story of Brueggemann's life into three parts with the idea of The Prophetic Imagination providing the central lens. Beginning in Part 1, we encounter two chapters. The opening chapter introduces us to the heart of the issue, Brueggemann the scholar who discovered the prophetic imagination as the way to understand Scripture. We learn here that Brueggemann was committed to his scholarship, trying to find time away each day, writing (long hand) the equivalent of twelve pages double-spaced each day in about two to three hours. His understanding of the text was influenced greatly by his doctoral mentor James Muilenburg, who introduced him to rhetorical interpretation as an alternative to the dominant historical-critical method, which both Muilenberg and his students found static and didn't speak to modern concerns. After graduating from Union Seminary with his Ph.D. he returned to his beloved Eden Seminary, where he had done his seminary work and where his father had studied as well. He began teaching at Eden in 1961, but it was not until 1978 that his breakthrough book was published. That would be The Prophetic Imagination. Before that, he had taken on the role of dean at a time when the seminary was in decline and the possibility of closure was real. Thus, he tried to combine scholarship, teaching, and administrative leadership. In this chapter, we are not only introduced to his scholarship but also to his origins as the son of a pastor in the Evangelical Synod of North America, an expression of the Prussian Union. His people had come from Germany and settled in Missouri, which is where Eden was situated. It was a seminary that had been led by H. Richard Niebuhr and had educated Reinhold. The Niebuhrs did have a profound influence on the seminary. One thing to note here is that Kanagy doesn't take us chronologically through Brueggemann's life. We come and go in time. But the chapter does introduce us to his childhood, at least briefly before taking us to Union. One thing that is very important to this story is the influence of his father, who was rather poorly trained and very poorly paid, but who was committed to his ministry and the importance of education for both Walter and his brother Edward. But, we also learn that Brueggemann, who was brilliant always felt a bit under-educated due to his origins. Of course, The Prophetic Imagination changed all of that.
If the first chapter lays the foundation, the second chapter "Where Prophets Come From" takes us back to Brueggemann's origins. We gain a clearer insight into his childhood and education, along with the influence of his parents. One of the things we learn is that as a teenager, with the permission of his father, he and his brother would attend the black church on the edge of town, gaining insight into the lives of people different from him. That would influence his later commitment to social justice. We learn more here about his father's calling and the roots of the Evangelical Synod, which would later merge with the German Reformed Church before merging into the UCC. These churches of the Evangelical Synod had their origins in the Prussian Union, an ecumenical merger of Lutheran and Reformed churches in the nineteenth century. The pastors who led these churches in places like Missouri were missionary pastors. They tended to be poorly educated and paid, which was something that would be true of Brueggemann's father. It is out of this ethos that a prophetic imagination was born in Brueggemann.
If Part 1 offers us an origin story for Brueggemann (and I've only hinted at what is there), in the three chapters in Part 2, we delve more fully into Brueggemann's scholarship. In chapter three "Imagination Everywhere" we discover that in a world of specialists, Brueggemann chose to be a generalist, which placed him at the edge of the academy until the publication of The Prophetic Imagination. But that book provided a platform to speak to both the church and academy, prophetically telling each that they had been domesticated and needed liberating. In Chapter 4, titled "Pivoting Here and There," we learn how Brueggemann pivoted away from moralism to a more prophetic stance that drew from such sources as Marx to speak to economic and other justice issues. He did this not to enhance his status in the academy but for the church. Then in the fifth chapter, Kanagy reminds us that Brueggemann devoted himself to the text of scripture. For Brueggemann, if there is no text there is no God. Kanagy shows how both the left and right had problems with Brueggemann. On one hand the left was puzzled by his commitment to the biblical text while the right didn't understand his commitment to social justice, but for him it all had to do with the biblical text. In the course of his work, in the 1980s, Brueggemann would move from Eden to Columbia Theological Seminary, a PCUSA seminary in Georgia. That move gave Brueggemann more time and resources for his writing.
Finally, in Part 3 we encounter Brueggemann in his later years, after retirement from Columbia and a move to Cincinnati where he joined an Episcopal Church, where he found a church and its pastor who understood text, justice, and the nature of the church to fit his vision. We learn more here about Brueggemann's human side and some of the struggles he had in life. We also encounter his prayers, which are deeply rooted in scripture and reflect his poetic sense (after all he spent much time with the Psalms). This penultimate chapter is titled "The Secret." The reason for that title is, as Kanagy notes, Brueggemann's prayers are the "secret core from which all of his work and writing emerge." (p. 176). The final chapter is titled "Where Prophets Go," which brings some closure to the story. Kanagy also reveals that while he hoped Brueggemann's story would provide some assurance that this prophetic path would provide some comfort. He didn't find that, but he discovered what Brueggemann knew and that was prophets return to scripture, from which they can proclaim an alternative message to that of the empire.
I truly appreciated this book because I now have a better sense of Brueggemann's life and message. In many ways, it confirmed what I believed about him, but now I know more about the origins of his story. I also came to a better understanding of why I appreciate his work, and that is his commitment to the text of scripture. As a progressive Christian, I find some in my camp's distance from scripture unsettling. It's not that we embrace everything literally without interpretation, but scripture should be the touchstone of our faith. Brueggemann shows us how and why. Kanagy does a nice job connecting the dots. I did struggle a bit not with the text and the way the story was shared but with problematic editing issues. Names were occasionally misspelled, thus sometimes Kanagy speaks of Jim Wallis and at others Jim Wallace (it's Wallis). There is a strange reference to a book of Hezekiah (it was a discussion of Hezekiah). Then there were the references to Richard Niebuhr and H. Reinhold. It's H. Richard and Reinhold. Several other instances caught my eye. I think it's largely an editorial issue as someone should have caught these things. Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed this theological biography of one of the most influential scholars of our day.
. . .
.
March 5, 2024
En fin liten biografi om Walter Brueggemann, en av de virkelig ruvende skikkelsene i GT-faget de siste tiårene. Selv om jeg ofte kan være sterkt uenig i deler av teologien til Brueggemann, er det alltid noe nytt, spennende og matnyttig å hente hos ham. Han er en teolog som alltid har jobbet med kirken for øye.
Biografien er dels en presentasjon av hovedtrekk i Brueggemanns teologi og viktigste bøker, og dels noen vesentlige glimt fra hans livshistorie. Den er basert på intervjuer. Det var veldig nyttig å få et innblikk i bakgrunnen og oppveksten hans. Jeg skulle gjerne lest enda mer om viktige tenkere og bøker som formet ham, selv om det blir gitt en god del av dette i boka.
Som biografi er det nok mer enn "hagiografi" enn en biografi. Det blir mye hyllest og lite kritisk distanse. Slik er det jo ofte - og så kommer de mer analyserende fortellingene etter hvert.
For alle som har hatt nytte og glede av å lese Brueggemanns GT-teologiske bøker, er dette likevel en svært interessant og nyttig bok, og det er mange ting i hans tenkning som faller på plass når man får servert glimtene fra livshistorien hans.
Biografien er dels en presentasjon av hovedtrekk i Brueggemanns teologi og viktigste bøker, og dels noen vesentlige glimt fra hans livshistorie. Den er basert på intervjuer. Det var veldig nyttig å få et innblikk i bakgrunnen og oppveksten hans. Jeg skulle gjerne lest enda mer om viktige tenkere og bøker som formet ham, selv om det blir gitt en god del av dette i boka.
Som biografi er det nok mer enn "hagiografi" enn en biografi. Det blir mye hyllest og lite kritisk distanse. Slik er det jo ofte - og så kommer de mer analyserende fortellingene etter hvert.
For alle som har hatt nytte og glede av å lese Brueggemanns GT-teologiske bøker, er dette likevel en svært interessant og nyttig bok, og det er mange ting i hans tenkning som faller på plass når man får servert glimtene fra livshistorien hans.
July 27, 2024
Conrad Kanagy’s “theological biography” of Walter Brueggemann was an excellent overview of Brueggemann’s life and teaching. It would be a good companion for those new or unfamiliar with Walter Brueggemann, as well as for veterans and fans. The last two chapters were particularly meaningful for me, reflecting on the prophetic edge in Walter Brueggemann’s poetry; and lastly a fresh call to a renewed prophetic imagination for our day and age. Both left me personally challenged, feeling both hopeful and convicted. I would love to see a longer treatment done on Brueggemann poetry itself. Hopefully Kanagy and our friends at Fortress Press will grace us all with that volume someday (but not too far away).
October 20, 2024
Brueggemann is so refreshing, challenging, prolific and passionate. He may have produced for the church a better way of understanding the Bible. He moves beyond the Bible as a textbook for living (the evangelical view) and the Bible as a historical document to be dismembered (critical-academic) to reading its inner dialogue, it’s paradoxes, it’s tensions and finding there a realistic faith to live by.
That said, the book is not particularly well written; but good enough to allow its subject to glow.
That said, the book is not particularly well written; but good enough to allow its subject to glow.
October 23, 2023
This is an excellent book that takes a great look at a life well lived, helping readers imagine what it looks like to work with courage, commitment, and faith in a world often hostile to all these things. I highly recommend it to everyone interested in Brueggemann’s work, but particularly to pastors seeking encouragement during difficult days and to Christians feeling disillusioned or discouraged by their church experiences.
October 26, 2023
Poorly written. Too many superlative adjectives and adverbs. For example. The faculty at Columbia "were nearly giddy with disbelief" at the prospect of Brueggemann joining them while rumors had begun to circulate among their daughters that "the Brueggemann package" included sons Jim and John. Really?
The Niebuhr brothers are named as "Richard ... and his brother H Reinhold ...." Did the author not have access to Google?
The book needed a fearless editor.
The Niebuhr brothers are named as "Richard ... and his brother H Reinhold ...." Did the author not have access to Google?
The book needed a fearless editor.
November 30, 2023
What a meaningful account of Brueggemann's life and the way he has influenced the academic and church worlds. Kanagy's preparatory work included direct conversations with Brueggemann. He writes in a way that reveals Brueggemann as both a prophet we must listen to and a person who, like the rest of us, has his ups and downs, his successes and failures. He's someone who never fits perfectly anywhere. Thank you, Dr. Kanagy, for a book that truly matters!
April 29, 2024
I got ahold of this book after being invited to follow Kanagy's writings on social media. If I heard of Brueggemann prior to this, he didn't make much of an impression on me, which says much more about me than it does Brueggemann. In this book, Kanagy makes a theologian and his work interesting, enough so that I ordered a copy of "The Prophetic Imagination" to read for myself.
November 29, 2024
Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination has profoundly shaped me, so it was great to read more about his theological development, religious family background, his work, the reception of The Prophetic Imagination, and his writing habits. This isn’t a full biography but a theological biography that’s an amazing read for anyone interested in Brueggemann!
July 21, 2025
The idea and topic were so good, but the book was so poorly written…
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews