Interrupting Silence: God's Command to Speak Out
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Silence is a complex matter. It can refer to awe before unutterable holiness, but it can also refer to the coercion where some voices are silenced in the interest of control by the dominant voices. It is the latter silence that Walter Brueggemann explores, urging us to speak up in situations of injustice.
Interrupting Silence illustrates that the Bible is filled with stories where marginalized people break repressive silence and speak against it. Examining how maintaining silence allows the powerful to keep control, Brueggemann motivates readers to consider situations in their lives where they need to either interrupt silence or be part of the problem, convincing us that God is active and wanting us to act for justice.
Walter Brueggemann
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 the author of dozens of books, including Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, Interrupting Silence: God's Command to Speak Out, and Truth and Hope: Essays for a Perilous Age.
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Reviews for Interrupting Silence
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A work that encapsulates both the compelling and frustrating natures of Brueggemann and his work.Over the first seven chapters Brueggemann incisively explores narratives in the Old and New Testament as they relate to breaking silence. He considers the cry of the Israelites regarding oppression by Pharaoh; Amos' unwillingness to be silenced by the priest in Bethel; David's meditation on how an unwillingness to cry out to God for forgiveness and to keep silent hurts and kills; the Syro-phoenician woman's challenge to Jesus for healing; Jesus casting out the demon who made a boy mute; and Bartimaeus being quieted by the crowd but proving unwilling to be silent. In these chapters Brueggemann is often at his best, providing compelling exegesis and commentary, showing how God brings forth justice for the dispossessed and marginalized, although at times, as is often the case, he's stretching things a bit.And then we get to the last chapter, and ostensibly the point of the book: associating all of these earlier episodes about silencing as oppression and applying it to women preachers in light of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, and how such is a similar type of silencing.And so the book really becomes a means by which a liberal progressive Christian attempts to show Biblical continuity in making such a claim. In so doing the rest of the book loses a bit of luster, and questions arise about the selective choice of silence. Silence is not merely an oppressive tool; Habakkuk summons all to be silent before God in His holy temple (Habakkuk 2:20), and there is silence in heaven when the seventh seal is opened (Revelation 8:1). The argumentation in the final chapter often begs the question. As is consistent with the theme, Brueggemann would have us read all of the NT in light of Galatians 3:28, never mind that Paul shows no inclination elsewhere to flatten or deconstruct the roles and positions mentioned in the verse. Ephesians and Colossians are of course right out as not truly Pauline; he has to except 1 Corinthians from his discussion of how Paul views women, and whenever some evidence has to be excluded, you have to wonder why. Even if you're tempted to agree with his reasoning, you can hopefully see why there remain strong arguments against it. The book would have been quite compelling without the final chapter; then again, without the final chapter, it would likely not have been written. In the end, therefore, a bit disappointing.**--galley received as part of early review program
Book preview
Interrupting Silence - Walter Brueggemann
INTERRUPTING SILENCE
Also by Walter Brueggemann
from Westminster John Knox Press
Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of History
(Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation series)
Cadences of Hope: Preaching among Exiles
Celebrating Abundance: Devotions for Advent
Chosen? Reading the Bible amid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Volumes 1 and 2
First and Second Samuel (Interpretation series)
From Whom No Secrets Are Hid: Introducing the Psalms
Genesis (Interpretation series)
Gift and Task: A Year of Daily Readings and Reflections
Great Prayers of the Old Testament
Hope for the World: Mission in a Global Context
Hope within History
An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination, Second Edition (with Tod A. Linafelt)
Isaiah 1–39 (Westminster Bible Companion series)
Isaiah 40–66 (Westminster Bible Companion series)
Journey to the Common Good
Living Countertestimony: Conversations with Walter Brueggemann (with Carolyn J. Sharp)
Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church
Many Voices, One God: Being Faithful in a Pluralistic World (with George W. Stroup)
Power, Providence, and Personality: Biblical Insight into Life and Ministry
Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes
Sabbath as Resistance: New Edition with Study Guide
Struggling with Scripture (with Brian K. Blount and William C. Placher)
Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary (with Charles B. Cousar, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, J. Clinton McCann, and James D. Newsome)
Truth Speaks to Power: The Countercultural Nature of Scripture
Using God’s Resources Wisely: Isaiah and Urban Possibility
The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions, Second Edition (with Hans Walter Wolff)
A Way Other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent (compiled by Richard Floyd)
INTERRUPTING SILENCE
God’s Command
to Speak Out
WALTER BRUEGGEMANN
© 2018 Walter Brueggemann
First edition
Published by Westminster John Knox Press
Louisville, Kentucky
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396. Or contact us online at www.wjkbooks.com.
Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.
Book design by Erika Lundbom-Krift
Cover design by Mark Abrams
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brueggemann, Walter, author.
Title: Interrupting silence : God’s command to speak out / Walter Brueggemann.
Description: Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017047327 (print) | LCCN 2017048884 (ebook) | ISBN 9781611648508 (ebk.) | ISBN 9780664263591 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Silence—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Silence—Religious aspects—Christianity—Biblical teaching.
Classification: LCC BV5068.S55 (ebook) | LCC BV5068.S55 B78 2017 (print) | DDC 248.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047327
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Most Westminster John Knox Press books are available at special quantity discounts when purchased in bulk by corporations, organizations, and special-interest groups. For more information, please e-mail SpecialSales@wjkbooks.com.
For
Rolf Jacobson
Carolyn Sharp
Brent Strawn
Christine Yoder
I am pleased to dedicate this book to my friends Rolf Jacobson, Carolyn Sharp, Brent Strawn, and Christine Yoder. They are among the most important voices in a younger generation of Old Testament scholars. They have been generous in giving me access to their work, their methods, and their thinking that runs well beyond my old-fashioned ways. I am grateful for their work and their friendship.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM GLAD TO THANK THE USUAL SUSPECTS FOR BRINGING this little book to completion. David Maxwell first suggested it to me and did heavy lifting to bring it to fruition. The good folk at Westminster John Knox, notably Julie Tonini, have done their usual careful, patient work, and I am grateful.
Beyond these immediacies, I am grateful to the good company of companions who have not only taught me the urgency of breaking the silence but have stood by me through the process of breaking my own silence. That includes a host of teachers, colleagues, and pastoral companions, among them most especially Gerald Jenkins, who saw beyond my silences. Of course our silence breaking is deeply rooted in the biblical tradition of coming to speech, most notably the Hebrew slaves who refused the silence of Pharaoh. Those silence breakers, however, were only an echo of the God who broke the silence of chaos with a command to the light.
We now live in a barbaric world where the stones cry out against the violence that spirals from the top down. Our work is to join their refusal of silence and their brave insistence on voice.
INTRODUCTION
SILENCE IS A COMPLEX MATTER. IT CAN REFER TO AWE before unutterable holiness, but it can also refer to coercion where some voices are silenced in the interest of control by the dominant voices. It is that latter silence that is the primary focus of the studies that follow.
On April 15, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City, Martin Luther King Jr. gave an address to Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam titled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.
In that address, King not only spoke vigorously against the U.S. war policy in Vietnam, but he also linked opposition to the war to the crisis of race that he had long addressed. I remember that address; like many others at the time, I feared that in linking the war to the racial crisis King was detracting focus and energy away from the race crisis. But, of course, I, along with many others, was wrong. King understood that the war and race belonged to a cluster of issues, all of which flow together in a collusive silence in which public opinion had silently accepted top-down authority. King’s breaking of the silence was a freighted moment in mobilizing sustainable opposition to the war in a challenge to settled authority.
King’s capacity to break the silence that supported the war is representative of many movements that break the silence of long-protected practices of domination and exploitation. Most recently a number of church bodies have begun, albeit belatedly, to speak out against the church’s pernicious, still-in-effect Doctrine of Discovery
that long ago (and until now) cedes the new world
to the old European colonizing powers, a ceding that currently feeds white nationalist sentiment in the United States. Such belated protests that work toward abrogation of that long-standing doctrine
have come with an awareness that we must not be silent. In fact, many groups are now insisting that we must not be silent any longer, such as many liberation movements, among them feminism and womanism in many varieties, queer theology, Black Lives Matter, and voices of and for the disabled. In the Bible, perhaps the most vigorous character in such silence breaking is the importunate (nagging!) widow in Jesus’ parable in Luke 18:1–8. All of these silence breakers have come to see that silence is a strategy for the maintenance of the status quo, with its unbearable distribution of power and wealth. Silence breakers characteristically insist that the old patterns of power must be disrupted and reconfigured. Thus the widow asked for and insisted on justice.
The silencers variously intend to maintain the status quo. In the ancient text the paradigmatic silencer is above all Pharaoh, a metaphor for all silencers, a company that comes to include, in the biblical tradition, kings, priests, scribes, and the crowd
that was uncritically allied with such powers. We know very well in our time, moreover, that many voices are required for the maintenance of a democracy, and so the silencers resort to voter repression and gerrymandering, strategies for silencing those who would disrupt present power arrangements.
Thus, the ongoing historical process can be seen as an unequal contest between the silencers and those who would break the silence in the interest of new historical possibility. The contest is unequal because the silencers have better means of communication and control, not least management and ownership of most of the public media. In the world of the ancient text, public media
meant especially the stylized practices of monarchy and temple. Breaking the silence
is always counterdiscourse that tends to arise from the margins of society, a counter to present power arrangements and to dominant modes of social imagination.
To be sure, the breaking of silence is not always positive and constructive, as some silence breakers may also yield destructive voices; we should not romanticize. A case in point of such negative silence breaking