17-06-2025
Walter Brueggemann, Theologian Who Argued for the Poor, Dies at 92
Walter Brueggemann, an influential theologian who used biblical exegesis to argue against nationalism, racial injustice and ignoring the poor, died on June 5 in Traverse City, Mich. He was 92.
His death, in a hospice facility, was announced on his website and by the Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., where he was a professor emeritus.
Dr. Brueggemann was a rare scholar of the Bible who combined close textual analysis of the Hebrew prophets with a sociological consciousness. Just as these prophets denounced Pharaoh and the oppression of their time, he argued, latter-day prophets should oppose the oppressive traits, like consumerism, militarism and nationalism, that dominate American life.
His best-known book was 'The Prophetic Imagination' (1978), which has sold more than a million copies, according to Publishers Weekly. But there were dozens of others, including collections of his sermons and guides to studying the Old Testament. Dr. Brueggemann's work, while little known to the general reading public, is widely used in seminaries.
Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelist and theologian who heads Georgetown University's Center on Faith and Justice, said in an interview that Dr. Brueggemann was 'our best biblical scholar of the prophets — and he became one himself.'
'There are court prophets, prophets who just speak to what the king wants them to say,' Mr. Wallis said, 'and then there are the biblical prophets who speak up for the poorest and most marginal.' Dr. Brueggemann, he said, was akin to the second kind.
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