Reclaiming our Prophetic Duty to Imagine the Kingdom

Victoria Turner on why her new edited book Awake, Emerging and Connected is a collection for now.

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“human transformative activity depends upon a transformed imagination… numbness robs us of our capability for humanity.” (Walter Brueggeman, The Prophetic Imagination: 40^th Anniversary Edition (Fortress Press, 2018), xxxiv).

We in the UK are currently struggling explain the 14% of votes that went to the Reform UK Party. This terrifying number did not return many seats, but that a party formed in 2018 as the Brexit Party, could have such a surprising following was a shock following the polling day. This is an ultra-right-wing party that had to drop three candidates for racist or homophobic slurs, and has anti-migration, anti-environmental and non-inclusive policies. Many of us are finding solace in the rhetoric that surely for most, it was a protest vote.

But we can’t hold our solace here. A protest vote, a vote against the status quo, against the Conservative Party who so badly managed Britain’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and is crippling our much loved National Health Service, and against the Labour Party, struggling with its own fractional disagreements and disengagement from the trade unions and core of its identity, is not for anything. A protest vote tells us that these people want something to change, but why would people throw away their chance to be part, I mean really be part, of that movement for change?

This disconnection from the larger society, from politics, from education, from hope, inspiration, joy, community etc., is what, in its essence, Awake, Emerging and Connected is trying to challenge. Consumerist culture provides constant irritation and distraction that sells release through product. A pessimistic community from this emerges that constantly seeks further stimulant and the quick effects from it. We’re trapped in a cycle of want and sameness. 46 years ago, Brueggeman tackled this idea in his Prophetic Imagination, where he questioned Christianity’s response to consumer culture, predominantly in the US, and our side-lining of God’s prophetic alternative:

“Our consciousness has been claimed by false fields of perception and idolatrous systems of language and rhetoric… There is a depreciation of memory and ridicule of hope, which means everything must be held in the now, either an urgent now or an eternal now. Either way, a community rooted in energizing memories and summoned by radical hopes is a curiosity and a threat in such a culture.” (Brueggeman, 1).

We need a two way process: the creation of systems that will release us from the false pressure of keeping up with consumer capitalism, and empowerment that will liberate our minds and enable us to restore our revolutionary imagination. Acts 2: 17-18 kept appearing for us when we met (in hybrid form) for our conference in Cambridge, ‘Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.’ What could the world look like if we could learn from children’s play, if we could imagine and dream together, dwell with and in each other’s differences? If, instead of stopping at the desire for difference, we dreamt that difference by grasping at alternatives? Delving into theology, histories, literature, indigenous knowledge, and staying with trauma, colonial injustices, realities of extraction and exploitation, the chapters in Awake, Emerging and Connected seriously engage with possibilities of restoration, reconciliation, harmonization and the beautiful hope of the Kingdom. The hope is that these stories, dreams and visions may inspire discipleship through continued seeking of difference and connection, long after the pages of the book are turned.

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Victoria Anne Turner is a Lecturer at Ripon College Cuddesdon

Awake, Emerging and Connected is available now via our website, with a special launch discount until the end of the month.