The Prophetic Imagination - Part 1

The history of Biblical prophetic tradition has everything to do with the relationship between the prophet and the Creator God for whom the prophet functions as a mouthpiece. Continued to this day, it’s a tradition that has been fostered by communities throughout history from generation to generation.

Freidrich Nietzsche felt that abstract ideas were easier to understand when they found their roots in individuals. He called these people exemplars. A contemporary exemplar who has continued the Biblical prophetic tradition in our day and who embodies the idea of The Prophetic Imagination, is novelist, essayist, poet and organic farmer, Wendell Berry.

Berry published a book titled "The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture", where he traces the injustices foundational to the initial settling of America and then goes on to outline the ensuing growth of small agricultural communities, the effects of the Industrial Revolution on said communities and the physical, spiritual and psychological unsettling of the American people as they slowly began to be treated less like humans and more like the cogs in a machine. 

Berry traces the rise of a kind of person he calls the Consumer Exploiter, contrasted with the Producer Nurturer. He states that in a perfect world all would take on the posture of a Producer Nurturer and there would be no room for Consumer Exploiters.  

Berry is a believer committed to the idea of a Creator God. A God that he believes he is in partnership with, as a steward of the land and as a partnering voice in intimate relationship with his Creator.

Berry speaks with creativity and imagination. He speaks out against the injustices of our dominant community and through story, poetry, gorgeous lines of inquiry, robust curiosity, poignant dissatisfaction and healthy doubt, speaks into our present moment with a modern fluency that points towards a new freedom and future.

This kind of prophetic voice doesn’t stop with Wendell Berry. It continues to this day carried by other individuals. A tradition that’s still being encouraged by entire communities.

So, what kind of community works to foster a prophetic voice?

 

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