Walter Brueggemann - Fidelity And The Seduction of Certitude

There are two introductions that go on several minutes, just to warn those who want to get right to the lecture and question.

I have mentioned before that I'd intended to spend last year going over the work of Reinhold Niebuhr but was so taken with the revelation of the First Testament and its continuation into the Second one by Walter Brueggemann that I have concentrated on his ideas about that, for the most part.  Of all the great theologians and scholars and commentators that I've read since the mid-1990s, his are especially useful to understanding the texts and using them to understand our times and ourselves.   His critique of the American Imperial system, how it relates to corporate-consumerist ideology and habits, the corruption of our lives and minds is worth spending a few years on because nothing that I wasted my time on from the secular left and even much of that which was somewhat valuable has been more radically effective in forcing a change in me of both my thinking and my practice.  I can say that the past year and a half of reading him and listening to him and writing about what he said has changed me more for what feels like the better than just about any other writer or speaker.   It forced me to finally face the inadequacy of the secular left and not only its inadequacy but the harm it has done because, in the end, its basis is the same one as the American imperial system and that of all other corporate establishments.

I'm beginning to read more from other theologians, scholars and thinkers and will probably not be posting as much concentrating on Walter Brueggemann but I expect I'm not going to ever be far from the next book, lecture, sermon or article of his from now on.