Understanding the gospel as emancipation has been central to Walter Brueggemann's biblical interpretation. This book illustrates the theme's centrality, addressing the emancipation of God from our attempts to control, the emancipation of the church to be the people of an emancipated God, and the emancipation of the gospel to be a cultural prophecy. This volume divides into three parts: "The Emancipation of God," "The Emancipation of the Church," and "The Emancipation of the Neighborhood." What the three parts hold in common is the kingdom of God. In each chapter, Brueggemann grinds away at biblical texts that have been muffled, silenced, and disabled to free the text from its cultural entrapments so that that the liberated text can speak for an emancipated God and a liberated church to free the world.
Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, he is regarded as the premier Old Testament interpreter and biblical theologian of today. Among his many publications are Prophetic Imagination and Old Testament Theology. Conrad L. Kanagy is professor of sociology at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania. He holds an undergraduate degree from Wheaton College (Illinois) and a PhD from Penn State. He is the author of eight books and numerous scholarly articles. His primary area of expertise is American and global Christianity. He blogs at www.centerforpropheticimagination.org and hosts the podcast A Church Dismantled--A Kingdom Restored.
Preface Prayer Introduction All Things Emancipated Part I The Emancipation of God 1. The Emancipatory Work of Interpretation 2. Some Dare Call it Treason 3. Wir Sind Da! 4. Watch Where You Go and How You Get There 5. Two Farmers...Two Ways 6. On the Way to Otherwise 7. Biodiversity contra Babel 8. An Iconic Act of Civil Disobedience Part II The Emancipation of the Church 9. Saved in and Through Weakness 10. I Bet on You 11. Take Twenty! 12. Start with Me Too 13. The Results Men 14. The Fundamental Dilemma 15. The Advent of Agency 16. On Gerrymandering Texts 17. Elect from Every Nation Yet One o'er All the Earth Part III The Emancipation of the Neighborhood 18. The Pathetic Imagination 19. Hoe! Hoe! Hoe! 20. Deserves to be Paid! 21. Cities of Refuge? 22. The Hard Work of Exceptionalism 23. The Ethical Dignity of the Other 24. Profiles in Cowardice 25. On Seeing "the Enemy" a Second Time 26. Imagine! Extermination Colonialism and Slave Labor! Conclusion The Wonder of Emancipation
Newer approaches to biblical interpretation can address the multiple (and sometimes contradictory) biblical traditions, the significance of different communities of readers and their respective histories and contexts, interdisciplinary insights, and the theological implications of our interpretations, among other things. It is a daunting task, but in The Emancipation of God: Postmarks on Cultural Prophecy, Walter Brueggemann uses these specific approaches to offer new insights on the Bible and its meaning for a life of faith amid today's seemingly intractable divisions. This book is an important resource that will serve us well. --Cheryl B. Anderson, professor emerita of Old Testament, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary This collection is a rare gift for all interpreters and proclaimers of biblical texts for church and culture. Walter Brueggemann continues to be the most significant biblical theologian speaking to church and culture in our day. The Emancipation of God gives us all the revealing opportunity to see him at work; he clearly identifies his method and then illustrates it immediately in the first essay on the debate over the Bible and human sexuality. Brueggemann regularly shows tensions in biblical texts and how he navigates those tensions. In three parts he mingles pieces on the emancipation of God, the church, and the neighborhood. Don't miss this jewel of delightful and remarkably crafted biblical interpretations. -- H. Bellinger Jr., professor emeritus of religion, Baylor University; author of Psalms as a Grammar for Faith and Introducing Old Testament Theology
