Over the past couple of month's I have received and read through two papers on economic justice published by Kairos. While it is difficult to disagree with the generally progressive slant of these papers, I found it frustrating that there seemed to be little in them that was unique to the Church or to a Kingdom economics.
Last night, I began reading Walter Brueggerman's The Prophetic Imagination and it was immediately apparent that this work offers a very useful framework for understanding and explaining why liberal Christian critiques of the dominant powers in our society often seems so sterile. As Brueggarman presents it, there can be little doubt that much of the talk of God that emanates from the rich and powerful is talk of a thoroughly co-opted God -- one who poses no risk to those served. Liberal critiques of this, however, more often than not seem to omit God altogether. It seems rather than claim a more subversive and more biblical God, they retreat from the notion altogether.
For Brueggerman, the prophetic imagination is one in which the God of Moses who led His people out of Egypt is wholly present and in which the subversive nature of this God is completely claimed. It is here, that people such as Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Dorothy Day and Deitrich Bonheoffer seem to fit. In place of an idolatrous conservatism and an atheistic liberalism there is an alternative.
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