In Memory of Walter Brueggemann

Last month I posted “In Memory of LBJ,” an article about the 36^th POTUS, whom you all know of. In this piece, I am writing about a man whom many of you likely have never heard of. He was a noted biblical scholar and author, and by all accounts, a man of integrity who deserves to be remembered for a life well lived from his birth until his death last year. 

Walter Brueggemann was born on March 11, 1933, and died last year on June 5. His boyhood years were spent in the small town of Blackburn, Missouri (about 65 miles east of where I live). From there he went to Elmhurst College (now University) in Illinois and then to Eden Theological Seminary in Missouri.  

After receiving his Doctor of Theology degree in 1961 from Union Theological Seminary in New York, Brueggemann served as Professor of Old Testament at Eden from 1961 to 1986 and at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia from 1986 to 2003, retiring at age 70.

A few years ago, I heard Brueggemann give a powerful lecture in Kansas City and had the privilege of chatting with him for a few minutes afterward. In addition to his being an excellent speaker as well as a prolific author of books replete with deep biblical and theological information and insight, he was also a warm and gracious Christian gentleman.

When I heard/met Brueggemann, I had already become an octogenarian, but he was five years older than me. I was somewhat envious of him, for I was already to the point that I was no longer able to travel across the country and give a public lecture such as he did that day.

According to his obituary posted by Fortress Press, who published over 40 of his books, a bibliography of Brueggemann’s works contains over 120 separate titles. They say, “Most scholars, even prolific ones, aspire to three or four books in a career; Brueggemann published fourteen in his 90^th and 91^st years of age.” Further, “It is not only the quantity that impresses; it is the quality.”

The Peculiar Dialect of Faith and Other Essays (2023) is one of Brueggemann’s books published the year he turned 90. Last year, I read that book, and I was impressed at how he could helpfully explain Old Testament Bible passages, smoothly relate the meaning of those passages to the New Testament, and then helpfully apply them to the current political situation in the U.S.

I have often said the mark of an excellent pastor or a biblical scholar is being able to clearly elucidate the original context of a given passage in the Bible and then to apply it meaningfully to the contemporary context. Brueggemann was a master at doing that.

Since March 9 was International Women’s Day*, I asked Claude (my AI ‘buddy’) to help me summarize what Brueggemann has written about the equality of women and their role in the church. Claude first pointed me to an obituary article in Sojourners magazine published after Brueggemann’s death last year.

That piece described how “Brueggemann gained a huge, denomination-spanning audience for his justice-forward exegesis of the Bible.” That exposition was about how the biblical message is one of “emancipatory love” that includes women and other marginalized groups.

Claude went on to list the following “key themes” in Brueggemann’s writings regarding women:

** Biblical equality at creation. In contrast to many conservative Christian pastors/scholars, Brueggemann declares that the Genesis account of creation provides the “strongest imaginable affirmation” of the equal status of men and women, as both genders were created in the image of God.

** Women in ministry. Brueggemann describes the presence of women in leadership roles as a radically prophetic witness against the patriarchal world. He views the historical gender revolution and the belated welcoming of women into the ministry of the church as an extension of God’s emancipatory work.

** Prophetic imagination. Brueggemann uses this concept to challenge white male Western hegemony and advocates for an alternative future where dominating powers are overturned. This framework is used to support women in leadership.

** Opposition to exclusion. Brueggemann rejects the “orthodoxies” of sexism and gender exclusion, stating that God’s embrace will not be contained by such boundaries. He maintains that in Christ there are no gender distinctions.

Thank God for biblical scholars like Walter Brueggemann!

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* International Women’s Day (IWD) has been celebrated by the United Nations since 1975. It commemorates women's fight for equality and liberation along with the women's rights movement. The theme for this year’s IWD was “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls,” emphasizing dismantling legal and social barriers to equality.

Note for baseball fans: In chatting with Claude, he (it?) mentioned that Brueggemann grew up as a strong St. Louis Cardinals fan. I replied that as a Missouri boy I was also a Cardinals’ fan. Then Claude asked me if I ever saw Stan Musial play. So, I told about seeing the Cardinals play for the first time in 1951, and how that game, with Musial playing, was against the Brooklyn Dodgers with Jackie Robinson also playing that day. That led me to share the blog article I posted back in 2013 about Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. Claude responded, “What a rich article!” (Here is a link to that blog post in case you baseball fans would like to read it again.)

Burned by Billionaires: Applauding Chuck Collins

Chuck Collins is not a household name, and I had not heard of him until recently.*¹ But his new (2025) book, Burned by Billionaires (BbB) is an excellent work that is especially pertinent now, as for the first time a billionaire occupies the White House and has surrounded himself with fellow billionaires and “centi-millionaires” (people whose net worth is over $100 million).

Collins was “born on third base,” as he says in an earlier book.*² He is the great‑grandson of Oscar F. Mayer, the meat‑packing magnate. In 1985 (when he was 26), Chuck inherited roughly $500,000 from his family’s Oscar Mayer fortune. That same year, he donated the entire amount to foundations and community organizations. He later left to live in a commune.

When his father, a libertarian conservative, learned of what Chuck had done, he said he was afraid his son had become a Marxist. Chuck responded by saying that he would rather be called a “Gandhian or Christian.”*³ He explained that he didn’t want to spend his life “managing inherited wealth” and that giving it away freed him to pursue community organizing and economic‑justice work.

Collins is now widely known for his work exposing how wealth is accumulated, hidden, and protected in the U.S. He says in the Introduction of BbB “The drive by billionaires to amass ever greater wealth is warping the nonprofit sector, dictating what’s on your dinner plate, and shaping the news you consume.”

How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet is the subtitle of BbB. Collins writes, “With their inordinate wealth and power, billionaires are hijacking our political system with their campaign contributions, paid lobbyists, communication firms, and dark money contributions."

I cannot even introduce here the important chapters in this book, but I strongly recommend reading it. It is a bit pricey to buy, but many public libraries likely have it. (There are several copies in the various Kansas City metro libraries.)

“An Agenda to Reduce Billionaire Power and Improve Our Lives” is the title of the final chapter before the Conclusion, and it includes four major topics with about two dozen subtopics. They are all good suggestions, but they are not very helpful regarding what we ordinary “peons” can do—other than vote for legislators who do have power to follow those suggestions.

At the end of the Conclusion, Collins offers this advice: “Get your information from sources that are not owned and controlled by billionaires.” That is one small thing I did before reading Collins’ book: I quit subscribing to and reading The Washington Post. In doing that, I was following the actions of Jen Rubin, who was the leading opinion article writer of the Post.

In protest to a Jeff Bezos directive in 2025, Rubin left her prominent position and became co-founder of an online publication called “The Contrarian,” which I now read daily. That Substack blog, which started with the tagline “Not owned by anybody,” now has nearly 500,000 subscribers. She allows “tightwads” like me read it for free, and here is a link if you would like to try it out: The Contrarian | Substack.

Ever since the One Big Beautiful (=Ugly) Bill was signed into law on July 4, 2025, I have been concerned about the growing control of billionaires and the extremely wealthy over American life—and incensed that financial resources continue to flow upward to those who need them least, while the poor suffer even more.

That bill delivered $1 trillion in tax cuts to the top 1% of taxpayers, while cutting roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP—programs used by the poorest Americans. Nearly half of those tax cuts went to the top 0.1% of earners.

And consider who the POTUS took with him to China last week: 17 CEOs, several of whom were billionaires. Why were they in his entourage? Mainly because of the donations they had made to Trump. Several of them had previously donated $1 million or more to his inaugural fund. So, the president took them along so they could negotiate with China on behalf of their own business interests. The appearance of a quid pro quo is hard to miss.

It is also hard to miss the judgmental words of the prophet Amos, pronouncing woe on the wealthy who “trample on the needy and destroy the poor of the land” (8:4, CEB)—and it is easy to see that Chuck Collins is a present-day Amos.

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*1 The cover of the December issue of Sojourners magazine was emblazoned with the words “The Big Steal,” and the cover story was on “The Wealth Extractors: Billionaires are upending our lives and our economy.” It featured an interview of Collins by Julie Polter, the editor of Sojourners.

*2 Collins previously authored a book titled Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good (2016). The main title is said to be the words of Barry Switzer, the famous football coach, but they were not original with him.

*3 Collins has been a lifelong member of the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Note: Research and wording assistance was provided by Claude (Anthropic A.I.).

Why I Am a Progressive Christian

As I wrote in response to Thinking Friend Vern Barnet’s excellent comments regarding my April 30 blog post, I grew up in a rather fundamentalist/traditionalist Protestant church and denomination. My theological understanding changed through the years, though, with the help of a good professor at William Jewell College (David O. Moore) and good profs/scholars at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Eric Rust, Dale Moody, and Glenn Hinson). 

Advocating a Radiant Center. My theological position changed progressively, and now I am pleased to identify myself as a progressive Christian. As one who has long advocated a “radiant center,” I intentionally sought to avoid the extremes of fundamentalism on the right and liberalism on the left. That intention is seen in the two books I have written on the subject.*¹

In those two books, I had in mind a continuum with five positions: fundamentalism on the far right and liberalism on the far left. Then, I titled the tenth chapter of the second book “Between Liberalism and Fundamentalism,” and I concluded with a subsection called “Advocating the Radiant Center” (pp. 329-330)

Perhaps it is now time to propose only three positions: liberalism, the radiant center, and fundamentalism, with the center constituting half of the spectrum and the extremes only one-fourth each. On such a scale, I now place myself on the left side of the broad middle, rejecting the extremes of liberalism but being as far as possible from the extremes of fundamentalism.  

Introducing ProgressiveChristianity.org. Mark Sandlin is a Presbyterian pastor of a small church in North Carolina, but a prominent shaper of progressive Christianity. He is the president and co-executive director of ProgressiveChristianity.org. On that website, Sandlin articulates “The Core Values of Progressive Christianity.”*²

First, though, please bear in mind that a key difference between progressive Christianity and evangelical Christianity is that the former emphasizes the importance of this world where is the latter tends to be “otherworldly,” emphasizing the importance of “saving souls” for everlasting life in Heaven. Progressive Christianity, however, primarily stresses the importance of life on earth now, helping people to flourish (with the “abundant life” Jesus promised) in this present world.*³

Here are some of the values Sandlin postulates:

* We [progressive Christians] believe God is Love, not a distant evaluator.

* Jesus shows us what Love looks like in human form.

* The Bible is a living conversation and we’re invited into it.

* Salvation is about becoming whole, not escaping earth.

* Other religions hold wisdom too and that doesn’t threaten our faith.

Introducing Doubter’s Parish. Martin Thielen is a former Southern Baptist who became the pastor of a large Methodist church. He graduated from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982 (20 years after I did) and later received a D.Min. degree from Midwestern Baptist Seminary in Kansas City.

Since his retirement from the 8,000 member megachurch, he created a website called Doubter’s Parish. He posts only one article a month, but I have found them to be well worth reading. Here are some of what he said about progressive Christianity in his April 7 post titled “A Life-Giving Alternative to Religious-Right Religion” (see here; the image above is at the top of that website, but is location of that church sign is undesignated).

Thielen writes, “Thankfully, we don’t have to choose between religious-right religion and no religion at all. There is an alternative. It’s called progressive Christianity. And we need it now more than ever.” Here are a few of the fourteen benefits he says that kind of faith embraces:

* Progressive Christianity emphasizes grace over judgment.

* Progressive Christianity is committed to social justice.

* Progressive Christianity prioritizes Christian living over doctrinal conformity.

* Progressive Christianity practices inclusion rather than exclusion.

* Progressive Christianity seeks to follow the example and teachings of Jesus.

* Progressive Christianity majors on living a life of love.

Since my faith now resonates significantly with the values and characteristics given by Sandlin and Thielen, I am pleased to say that I am (or seek to be) a progressive Christian.

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*¹ Fed Up with Fundamentalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Fundamentalism (2007; 2^nd ed., 2020), and The Limits of Liberalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Liberalism (2010; 2^nd ed., 2020).
*² I encourage you to click on the following link to that website and see how progressive Christianity is portrayed there: https://progressivechristianity.org/.
*³ That difference is explained in a 2023 post by Presbyterian pastor Bo McGuffee. That post, which I read for the first time while working on this article, can be found at https://evolvingchristianfaith.net/2023/01/evangelical-progressive-christianity/