Hope Restored Quotes

“Serious preaching that evokes change aims not at doctrinal clarification or moral rectitude (either conservative or liberal), but at a weaned, newly authorized, and hope-filled imagination.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Hope Restored: Biblical Imagination Against Empire

“quotas. We are pursued by peer pressure, debts to be paid, social expectation, the daily drive for food. We endlessly produce, and it is never enough. That world of pressured production is deeply without hope, a dead place without promise. At the edge of that dead place, however, if we listen carefully, we can hear a new, faint piece of music that, while we listen, grows louder and more compelling. The music has an odd beat, the sound of liberated tambourines. We rush to the edge of the empire from where the sound is coming.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Hope Restored: Biblical Imagination Against Empire

“Prayer is not an occasion just for pious little children on their way to bed. Prayer is not simply for neurotic people who are excessively and sadly too religious. It is rather the core gesture by which we stay in faith, by which we hope for the world, by which we keep justice as the issue before God and ourselves. To “pray always” means to hope always for justice, to nag always the judge, to trust always in the power of God.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Hope Restored: Biblical Imagination Against Empire

“One does not need to be a Luddite—and I am not one—to see that the offers of a virtual society are a feeble substitute for serious human engagement that requires critical thought and genuine care.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Hope Restored: Biblical Imagination Against Empire

“The liberal Christian temptation is to accommodate dominant culture until faith despairs. The conservative Christian temptation is to fashion an absoluteness that stands disconnected from the dominant culture. Neither of these strategies, however, is likely to sustain the church in its mission.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Hope Restored: Biblical Imagination Against Empire

“Where grief is denied and suffering is kept isolated, unexpressed, and unprocessed in a community, we may be sure hopelessness will follow.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Hope Restored: Biblical Imagination Against Empire

“The rulers of this age crave order above all. They have learned that silence is the way to preserve order, even if that order is unjust and dysfunctional. Where there is no speech about grief and suffering, there can be no hope.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Hope Restored: Biblical Imagination Against Empire