What role should the church play in the world today? This is the question esteemed theologian Walter Brueggeman strives to answer in his work Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church. His most recent collection of essays calls the church to 'set itself in tension with the rest of the world.' Instead of drawing inward, Brueggemann asks the church to publicly choose a different way---to 'courageously defy political polarization, consumerism, and militarism.' By demonstrating a different way, the church can lead the world forward 'and adversaries can be turned to allies and to friends.'
Brueggeman is the William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.