Along the Way: Radical Faith

by

Oboedire | June 7, 2025

Walter Brueggemann and I never met in person, but we developed a friendship through email exchanges that began in January 2023. We found ourselves to be kindred spirits in a number of ways. I thank God that our paths crossed.

When I learned of his death on June 5th, I was sitting in my chair reading Brian McLaren’s book, Everything Must Change. The news of Walter’s death and the message of Brian’s book combined to impact me immediately, with ripple effects that I am sure will expand in the days to come. This post is an early field report of the convergence of those two things.

Some of you will know that I have been writing about our being in a new time of awakening. One sub-theme is my belief that business as usual is over. Our axial age  has moved us (as such ages always do) into a liminal space that offers us only one viable invitation: to experience a new creation, where the old must pass away in order for the new to come (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are in new-wineskin making time.

In the moment of receiving the news of Walter’s death and reading the book of Brian’s discernment, I realized they both are responsible for bringing me to an embrace of radical faith. Both of them have influenced me by their advocacy of it. [1] But more, they both have said that our commitment to radical faith has not been radical enough.

I will not attempt to dissect their belief into respective sources. Their particular views are now one message for me. A message that I will describe (initially and partially) in two ways.

The first way is that while many of us have not denied the Message, we have domesticated it. We have taken Jesus’ core proclamation, the kingdom of God, emptied it of his content (the reign of God) and refilled it with fallen-world content (imperialism).  The outcome leaves both Church insiders and outsiders deceived, because kingdom language continues to be used but in counterfeit ways. [2] [3]

This counterfitting of the Gospel gives rise to my second point, which Walter and Brian have also helped me see: there must be resistance to the domestication, but it will require prophetic imagination to do it. This was clearly Walter’s hallmark message, and one Brian says influenced him decades ago.

Prophetic imagination is a two-word summary of radical faith, a summary that is made up of many ingredients: inspiration, intelligence, intuition, innovation–all expressed with conviction and courage. It is an imagination which must be “born anew” first among those of us who are Christ followers and leaders in the Church.

But here’s the thing: if we default on God’s call to be prophetic in ways that are called for, “the rocks will cry out,” and some already are–the nones-and-dones being a critical mass of them. A journey to the common good (Brueggemann), a great migration (McLaren) is already underway. The Church (of all people) is in many ways coming late to the dance. God is doing a new thing (Isaiah 43:19), and God’s question through the prophet is the one Walter and Brian have re-asked in our day, “Do you see it?”

Sitting in my chair, receiving the news of Walter’s death while holding Brian’s book in my hands, re-raised the question for me. Through grief and grit, the Spirit asked me the question afresh. And with the combination of tears and tenacity (which Walter and Brian have also helped me to have), I want to be among those saying, “Yes, we see it,” and then using our lives helping others see it too.

Rest in peace, Walter. Ride on, Brian.

[1] Their commitment to radical faith is found throughout their writings. But my two recent reads are locators, which I am sure “prepared the soil” of my soul for my experience on June 5th that I am writing about in this post. I used Walter’s book, A Way Other Than Our Own during Lent, and I read Brian’s The Secret Message of Jesus, along with Everything Must Change.

[2] Walter’s book, In God We Do Not Trust exposes the falsification, as does Brian’s recent book, Life After Doom.

[3] The theological essence of the counterfeit message is rooted in the Seven-Mountain Dominionism – a heresy from which multiple deceptions arise, the largest being Christian Nationalism, the MAGA movement, and the New Apostolic Reformation.

The Rev. Dr. Steve Harper is a retired seminary professor, author of more than 30 books, and a worldwide expert in Wesleyan spirituality. This post is republished with permission from his blog, Oboedire.