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This chapter discusses the key findings of the second section of this book about the genealogical travel writings of the Hadramis. The focus of this section is mainly on the Hadrami sayyids who combined their genealogies with other textual genres such as mysticism, history, and law. This chapter discusses how the Hadrami canon that evolved in the diaspora articulated a universalizing narrative of Prophetic mission in a language of names. It also considers the genealogies of the Hadrami diaspora as traveling texts that enable persons to travel transculturally.

Paul writes within the biblical tradition, regarding the state as God’s minister for God’s purposes: therefore the state’s authority is legitimate but open to prophetic challenge. Paul urges Christians to pay tax and respect the state’s right to execute “wrath.” Probably he also urges wealthy Christians to benefaction, thereby seeking the good of the city. All this is with a view to the new age that Paul believes is dawning in Christ. Much rhetoric of Pauline proclamation—Jesus as “lord” and “son of God”—resonates with Roman imperial rhetoric: such resonance does not necessarily imply confrontation and may imply approval. Suggestions that Christians’ claims to heavenly “citizenship” were denials of their Roman citizenship involve a failure to understand metaphor. Mere constraints of language obliged Paul to use at times the same vocabulary to speak of the divine as did others. Paul writes only once directly of the Roman state (Rom 13.1–7), and there he is generally positive.

For Ludwig, Berrigan’s major contribution to Catholic social teaching is also his recovery, rehabilitation, and renewal of the prophetic voice and of prophetic action. In his chapter, Ludwig begins with an examination of Berrigan’s theological method. He finds, in short, that “Berrigan’s method is experiential and historical, heavily dependent upon scripture, and orientated toward decision and action.” He is particularly appreciative of Berrigan’s emphasis on the social dimensions of theology, which serve to temper the “hyper-individualism” of the American cultural ethos. Berrigan, according to Ludwig, has been a major force in making non-violence normative in Catholic social thought. More so, through his efforts to directly challenge the war-making state, Berrigan – and those who have acted with him – have introduced “resistance” as a vital component of Christian non-violence.

In this chapter, Brown argues that, in their opposition to the inertial thinking characteristic to the conventional mind, and in arguing for a humane, Christian alternative, Berrigan and Lonergan have a basic affinity. Each in his own way is prophetic, visionary, and radical in trying to promote a cognitive and moral breakthrough in human history. Berrigan, of course, in Brown’s view, is obviously prophetic, visionary, and radical, but Lonergan is also in a less obvious way. Brown nails down this thesis by showing how Lonergan’s early philosophy of history underpins and informs all of his later work, and how his economic theory attempts to provide a more adequate alternative to both conventional capitalist and conventional state socialist alternatives. Lonergan’s radical, philosophical, theological, social, and historical theory compliments Berrigan’s radical prophetic politics and resistance, and vica versa.

This study begins in chapter 1 with an examination of Justin Martyr's understanding of the Spirit. The objective of this analysis is twofold. The first objective is to provide the reader with an example of the pneumatological milieu that existed at the commencement of Irenaeus’ writing. The second is to provide a basis from which to compare and contrast Irenaeus’ pneumatology and Trinitarian logic.Over the last hundred years scholars have debated the degree to which Justin Martyr distinguished the activity and identity of the Word and the Spirit. This chapter shows Justin's regular failure to distinguish the activity of the Spirit from that of the Word, which reveals the presence of a binitarian orientation or logic. On two occasions Justin subordinates his Trinitarian convictions to his binitarian logic producing a binitarian account of the Godhead, a Spirit-Christology predicated upon an angelomorphic understanding of the Word and Spirit, in which he does not distinguish the identities of the Word and Spirit. These occurrences ought to be understood as reflecting the transition of earliest Christian theologies from binitarian to Trinitarian theological accounts, for while Justin's commitment to Trinitarian belief is firm, his logic is not well enough developed to support his convictions.

This chapter stresses the fruitful interplay between philosophy and prophecy, and the way in which Berrigan mediates the prophetic tradition to the contemporary scene and a unique and compelling way. Self-appropriation, which starts intellectually, and is rooted in the desire to know must complete itself in commitment, in love, and the works of love. Christian philosophers work in a context in which they acknowledge the integrity and critical autonomy of intellectual inquiry, identify philosophical inquiry as a component of a more comprehensive project of self-transcendence and service to the ends of love, and identify the bases of the works of love as a necessary inter-relation between contemplations and engagement. For the Christian philosopher, it is important to call on the prophetic tradition as a resource in doing philosophical work, to critique systemic violence, to do philosophy of religion, and to do one’s work in a university which may be overly-identified with secular culture.

In this chapter the general issues of interpretation involving the differences and similarities between the Qur’an and the Old and New Testaments are critically discussed. Allegory and typology are discussed as overall hermeneutic categories and as ways of describing and approaching the Bible and the Qur’an. Reflections are offered here on the nature of the “Prophetic discourse” represented in the Qur’an, and questions of genre and contemporary approaches to scriptural reading are put forward. The appellatory nature of Prophetic speech in the Qur’an offers some of the clearest points of comparison and contrast with biblical texts, along with narrative passages and their relation to history.

This conclusion asks questions: Does a minister remain silent in the face of injustice? What happens to important ministerial concepts such as “freedom of the pulpit”? Can a pastor balance the prophetic with pastoral duties? Can he/she ignore the inclusive message of the Christian Church for fear of losing a pulpit? These ministers did not remain silent in the face of injustice. They believed in “freedom of the pulpit.” They did not ignore the inclusive message of Christianity. Many lost their pulpits and some were never given pulpits. As James Wall, a southern white minister who served as editor of The Christian Century magazine expressed, “These ministers carried a heavy burden and many were truly prophets without honor in ‘their own country. In answering a questionnaire, ministers responded that faith in the Christian message and their witness to racial atrocities were the two most important factors influencing their actions.

This chapter sets out the monograph’s central thesis: that acts of reading and interpretation (both of scripture and the social, cultural, economic and environmental ‘signs of the times’ that presage the coming apocalypse) are not only intimately connected to evangelical identity, but are also crucial sites of personal agency. In a predetermined world in which history has been written in advance and cannot be altered by human will, the capacity to read, interpret, and anticipate the future becomes a means of acquiring agency. Thus, prophetic knowledge becomes a unique form of empowerment. However, the individual exercise of interpretive agency is carefully regulated by the religious community at large: contemporary prophecy experts, such as LaHaye and Jenkins, seek to police the interpretive activities of their readership by only sanctioning specific readings of prophecy which they deem correct.

The social theology of representative nineteenth century churchmen, Patrick Brewster, Robert Burns, Robert Buchanan and Norman Macleod are examined to show that the claim that Brewster was, in Donald Smith's words “the unique exception” to the failure of the Scottish Church's prophetic role in the middle of the nineteenth century. Brewster's role is shown to be less effective than has been thought due to his inability to compromise and his personal arrogance. Burns, Buchanan and Macleod are shown to have gradually understood that structural changes in society were as important for the improvement of social conditions as the religious conversion which had been assumed to be essential to that improvement.

Using Charles Taylor’s A Catholic Modernity? as its starting point, David Cochrane explores the evolving role of Catholicism in Ireland over the last half century and concludes that the disentangling of the Church from the dominant political and cultural institutions of society has paradoxically extended many of the very values Catholicism celebrates. Due to the severing of its close traditional connection to the State, the Church has rediscovered its original mission to provide a prophetic spiritual voice, especially in favour of the poor, and to align itself more closely with the concerns of its founder, Jesus Christ.

This chapter takes a number of priests with a public profile and examines the extent to which they are prophetic voices or complicit functionaries. Choosing the French priest-writer Jean Sulivan (1913-1980) as a comparator, Eamon Maher examines the published work of Joseph Dunn, Vincent Twomey, Mark Patrick Hederman and Brendan Hoban, before concluding that they all share the prophetic tendency of raising uncomfortable and often unpopular issues while remaining within the institution. He further argues that being so closely aligned to the Church makes it difficult, and professionally dangerous, for priests to criticise certain practices within the institution. However, while retaining a huge love of, and devotion to, the main tenets of Catholicism, these men nevertheless feel obliged to point out things that are going wrong, even when expressing such views can often involve them in conflict with their superiors at home and in Rome.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book immerses itself in the history of American Jews and traces how the American experience shaped the identity of American Jews; how this identity is intertwined with the political theology of Prophetic Judaism; how the political theology accounts for an outward orientation that is more cosmopolitan than tribal; and how this foreign policy orientation shaped American Jews' responses to the Jewish Problem and the Jewish Question. As a work of history, this book is deeply informed by the historical record and draws from memoirs, archives, secondary research, and interviews. As a work of interpretation it is informed by what the social sciences and humanities tell us about the relationships between various kinds of political communities and their relations with others.

This chapter offers a manual for understanding the foreign policies of the American Jews, exploring how their beliefs were an outgrowth of, primarily, the American experience, and, secondarily, the world. It begins by situating American Jews in historical context, contrasting their history with that of the Jews of Western and Eastern Europe, and highlighting how the American experience explains American Jewry's affinity for liberalism and non-Orthodox Jewry. These commitments explain the rise and endurance of the political theology of Prophetic Judaism, which, in turn, explains American Jews' cosmopolitan sensibility when addressing the Jewish Problem and the Jewish Question. The chapter ends with a discussion of the foreign policy of a transnational people and considers how the foreign policy process is informed by the linking of identity, interests, and institutions.

This chapter introduces the main elements of Douglass’s “black prophetic Christianity.” It also briefly summarizes how Douglass brought his faith to bear on his public activism against slavery and racial inequality.

This chapter presents “A Prophetic Dream,” a Russian folktale by Matvei Mikhailovich Korguev about a merchant’s son who marries a sorceress, with whom he conspired to eliminate the rightful heir to the throne of the tsar so he could become one himself.

Abraham Lincoln believed that dreams had some predictive capacity—that, perhaps, in dim ways, they could reveal the future. Several stories survive of dreams that he had that portended his death. This chapter delves into the history of those dreams, showing how some are true and others are likely fabrications. Why do Americans believe stories that seem so unlikely to be true? Because extraordinary stories about Lincoln tend to confirm for Americans that he was a great man—perhaps even embued with supernatural favor.