Finished reading: Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination by Conrad L. Kanagy 📚

Not quite what I expected. I really enjoyed listening to the author talk about his book and about his admiration for Walter Brueggemann. And the book is peppered with good insights, both from Brueggemann and from Kanagy. But I don’t think it lived up to the genre of “theological biography.” Brueggemann’s fascinating family history in the Prussian Union and the German Pietist tradition, and especially his lifelong regard for his father’s ever-struggling but ever-genuine life as a pastor — these are mentioned repetitively throughout the book but I thought given little depth or storyline, and no real (narrative or theological) progression to follow. Neither is much insight given into Brueggemann’s actual theological writings.

Still, Kanagy presents a short, affectionate look at a prolific theologian who has shown great courage amid “ambivalence and ambiguity” — even, if not especially, amid his own. As Kanagy puts it, through his life Brueggemann has shown

the courage to tell the empire to be merciful, to show the empire its injustice, to remind the empire of its short-lived power, and to remind the empire that in front of it, [visible through the “prophetic imagination,"] lies an alternative reality that doesn’t have the empire’s name on it.

If you like, here’s a short clip where you can hear that straight from the horse’s mouth.