The Prophetic Imagination
The evangelical church has a bucket load of stories attached to its brand. And the use of that word is intentional as apart from its hard right faction of heaven and hell mantra preacher/believers the evangelicals were ambushed by capitalist consumption in the 1950’s under the For Sale slogan : Church Growth. Partly fueled by a handsome white male American preacher and post ww2 world wide colonialism the whole of the “boomer” period ( 1945-1964) was caught up in the excitement of the “growth growth growth” infection fetish. And it continues to burn out and leave out scores of church pastoral leaders whose personas and true selves cannot face the daily Ronald McDonald dress up franchise.
One of the many writers who expounded a road less travelled died last week in the USA at 92 was Walter Breuggemann. I discovered his book “The Prophetic Imagination” about 1992. It was one of those good aha books that has stayed in the disturbing/ comforting parts of my brain. It’s a book about the call to diagnose and call out empire.
An empire can grow from the tiniest of seeds. And be an insidious comforting infection.
Brueggemann looks at prophets in the Old Testament ( and the Jesus figure) as people whose primary calling was to expose empire. Empire is always limiting and exclusive, fuelled by ego and encased grandeurs. Its iterations are multiple. Discernment is a tricky intuitive skill to develop. Making marks on the subway walls is a risky rush.
The role of medical imaging is to expose and join the treatment team on disease and trauma, recovery and growth. It’s not a decorative addition to medicine. It says – look at this and fix it!
The arts at times has some pretty thin decoration only elements particularly under the influence of the growth pandemic but it is from the centre of a person’s prophetic imagination and gift/skill base that the insideous dangers of empire are created, published and experienced. Productivity is not the bastion of such expressions of the imagination.
Radiographers and graffiti artists, improv musicians and comedians.
“ The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls” and experienced in the spaces between.
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