--Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
I think this insight is important for progressive Christians trying to resist the purity psychology that operates within progressive Christianity in their efforts to lift up "the least of these."
Social justice activism without doxology--without what Thomas Merton described as "the contemplative core" of activism--is tempted in two different ways. On the one hand is burnout, cynicism and despair. On the other hand is bitterness, anger and violence, which fuels the creation of another oppressive order to oust the current one. Victims become victimizers.
In short, the pursuit of justice--prophetic utterance and action--must attend to the spirituality of the conflict with the principalities and powers in order to resist and combat the attendant temptations. Let me restate that so the point is clear: We must attend to the spirituality of the conflict--and not just the external, political particulars--in our resistance to the principalities and powers.
Prophetic utterance and action focuses on the politics, the raw empirical facts of injustice. Doxology--along with other spiritual disciplines such as prayer, silence, fasting, and Sabbath--focuses upon the interior spiritual life of the Christian fighting for justice, the fight to love and extend grace toward self and others in the heat of the fight.
