Moral Imagination for Preaching God’s Stated Dreams
by Larrin Robertson
The fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a crucial moment in the movement toward Civil Rights to which King gave himself. King became America’s leading prophetic voice for justice in part due to the abilities he exhibited in his demand that America’s version of morality progress with immediacy toward God’s stated dreams.[1] Intended to advance upon the ideals of the dream King announced at the August 28, 1963 March on Washington, the Poor People’s Campaign sought to redirect the moral consciousness of America, and a demand for corresponding political and legislative activity. Though the assassination of King slowed the movement, the dreams he announced remained in the ethos of other prophetic voices and proliferated through multiple lenses and succeeding generations. Once again, however, America’s moral consciousness has been disturbed.
The current iteration of the Poor People’s Campaign, imagined anew by Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis and Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II and labeled “A National Call for Moral Revival”, seeks to drive America toward achieving the aims of King’s dream as conveyed by King’s earlier Campaign. Specifically, the Poor People’s Campaign intends to unite “tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation, and the nation’s distorted morality.”[2] Through a multidisciplinary approach that exposes and seeks a corrective to this “distorted morality,” Barber can often be heard consistently grounding his work in the moral imperatives of scripture, specifically in the first Testament of Christian scripture, which is akin to those found in the Hebrew Bible (or, the Tanakh). With this approach, Barber challenges “distorted morality” in a way that preachers who honor these sacred texts must find appealing. It is here, within sacred texts, that contemporary preachers can find the same moral imagination which inspired King and even now centers the interaction between the pulpit and the public square.
Frank A. Thomas captures the importance of, and identifies a methodology for, preaching that arises out of moral imagination.[3] Thomas defines moral imagination as “the ability of the preacher, intuitive or otherwise, in the midst of the chaotic experiences of human life and existence, to grasp and share God’s abiding wisdom and ethical truth in order to benefit the individual and common humanity.”[4] Taken with my view of God’s stated dreams, one sees the need for preaching that holds God as source and subject, and human experience as object. Moving beyond definitions to the need and method for application is required as much of the preacher as it is of those with a desire to make manifest this moral imagination.
Thomas notes: “The moral imagination of America is dominated primarily by the idolatrous and diabolical imagination.”[5] Specifically, he names four elements of the American experience that give rise to the need for preaching which calls forth a refocused morality to confront and counteract, and eventually dismantle and destroy, this notion of what is moral.[6] These four elements are: America’s view of itself, selective (thus false) liberty, imperfect pursuit of unity, and idolatrous ethnic supremacy and inequality. As I understand it, Thomas calls for the preacher to proclaim God’s stated dreams, dreams which forsake America’s moral imagination; indeed, imagination claiming to be moral when it is, in fact, idolatrous and diabolical, is sinful and represents the preacher’s target—a target to be hit consistently and efficiently with God’s stated dreams as the weapon of choice. Herein, again, is the preacher’s authorization to move beyond defining the need toward the development of a method.
America’s distorted moral imagination, and specifically the four deleterious notions mentioned above, requires a response from the contemporary pulpit, a response steeped in the pulpit tradition which promotes God’s concern for salvation and justice. These ideals are essential for preaching out of moral imagination, and they are neither antithetical nor counter-intuitive representations of God’s stated dreams. Indeed, God’s concern for salvation and justice is the essence of the preacher’s reliance on God’s announced vision.
Preachers whose dreams for America surpass the current expression of America’s imagined morality preach to elicit a responsive movement toward God’s stated dreams. The preacher’s task is to persuade listeners to choose to join this movement. The elements of classical rhetoric best position the preacher to condition the audience to hear and respond to the imagination proclaimed. While this brief essay does not permit a detailed review of these elements, Lucy Lind Hogan and Robert Reid alert the preacher to how the issue of connection impacts the viability of what has been dreamed.[7] In other words, the rightness of proclamation out of moral imagination alone may not be enough to persuade a people to act.
What is necessary is a sense that the moral imagination out of which the preacher preaches has so overwhelmed the preacher that the imagination becomes a speech product. Whether of the prophet Jeremiah,[8] the apostle Paul,[9] Jarena Lee,[10] Sojourner Truth,[11] or Jesus the Christ,[12] the words used to advance God’s stated dreams must first have convinced the preacher that for her or him there can be no purpose for life other than the proclamation of what has been imagined. Then can the effort to persuade others toward the achievement of God’s dreams be most impactful.
Hogan and Reid remind of Quintilian’s notion of oration as “a good man speaking well” and they caution that good reasons must accompany good words spoken.[13] The reasons provided for moving beyond imagination toward action must be such that listeners have but one obvious choice—preservation of the self as a member of the beloved community within God’s stated dreams, and not as a singular, isolated agent. Listeners must recognize the tenuous essence of evil and its ability to entice and entrap those who act absent of full community benefit and participation. However, an encounter at the intersection of good speech and moral action must not be left to chance. The preacher’s duty is to provide reasons as to why what has been well stated is also worth waking up for, and to then advance toward the dream.
Finally, the moral imagination for preaching God’s stated dreams requires moving from event to action. In support of what has been proclaimed of God and on God’s behalf, I return to Thomas’ definition of moral imagination to identify the preacher’s objective: to state concretely how the stated dream can “benefit the individual and common humanity.”[14] Individuals may accept preaching out of moral imagination when they recognize that God’s stated dreams impact their lives directly—when they recognize that they are divinely enabled to positively impact their neighbors. Again, it must not be left to chance: the connection must be made that the realization of moral imagination depends on the activities of those who will benefit from living God’s stated dream. Thus, action will be taken when the weak believe they have become strong enough, when the poor believe they have what it takes, when the silenced find and exercise their voices, when those who have been held down and kept back believe they have been liberated.
I contend that the furtherance of this cause rests upon the willingness and ability of America’s preachers to be identified with God’s stated dreams. The reclamation of this prophetic impetus will decenter America’s inclination for self-approval and create space necessary for righteousness and justice within civil discourse. Only then will America’s idea of morality become ground that can be claimed as high and holy.
Notes
[1] Inspired by Rev. Dr. Alise Barrymore’s use of the “God’s dreams”, I define “God’s stated dreams” as God’s ideals for humanity announced and interpreted biblically for the purposes of proclamation and application of principle.
[2] Poor People’s Campaign. https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/ (accessed May 20, 2018).
[3] Frank A. Thomas. How to Preach a Dangers Sermon, (Nashville: Abingdon Press), 2018.
[4] Ibid., p.xl.
[5] Ibid., xxxii.
[6] Ibid., xxxii.
[7] Lucy Lind Hogan and Robert Reid. Connecting with the Congregation: Rhetoric and the Art of Preaching, (Nashville: Abingdon Press) 1999. For more on conversational preaching and preaching in community, see also: Karla J. Bellinger. Connecting Pulpit and Pew, (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press), 1989; and Mary Alice Mulligan, Diane Turner-Sharazz, Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm, and Ronald J. Allen. Believing in Preaching: What Listeners Hear in Sermons, (St. Louis: Chalice Press), 2005.
[8] Jeremiah 20:9
[9] 1 Corinthians 9:16
[10] Jarena Lee. The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, a colored lady: giving an account of the call to preach the gospel, (Providence, RI: Brown University Women Writers Project), 2007.
[11] See, Sojourner Truth and Olive Gilbert (ed.). The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a bondswoman of olden time: with a history of her labors and correspondence drawn from her “Book of Life”, (New York: Oxford University Press), 1994.
[12] Luke 4:18-21
[13] Ibid., p.94.
[14] Thomas, p.xxiv.
