Plowshares or swords? End-of-the-world rhetoric in a politically divided world

A presidential election year, when apocalyptic rhetorical bombast can be at its most cutting and binary, provides an ideal socio-political setting to assess and challenge the standard accounts of political realism. Insofar as appeals to end-of-the-world rhetoric in Scripture are often enough used by...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Brenneman, James E. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2023
In: Review and expositor
Year: 2023, Volume: 120, Issue: 4, Pages: 267-276
IxTheo Classification:CG Christianity and Politics
HB Old Testament
NBQ Eschatology
NCD Political ethics
Further subjects:B Isaiah 2:2-4
B Apocalyptic
B nonviolent politics
B political realism
B Joel 3:9-17
B end-times
B end-of-the-world binaries
B preaching conflicting biblical texts
B false prophecy
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:A presidential election year, when apocalyptic rhetorical bombast can be at its most cutting and binary, provides an ideal socio-political setting to assess and challenge the standard accounts of political realism. Insofar as appeals to end-of-the-world rhetoric in Scripture are often enough used by politicians backed by their various religious constituencies in making their opposing cases, opposing apocalypses in the Bible provide an ideal literary context to assess and challenge the standard accounts and efforts to unify texts in Scripture that are on-their-face contradictory. Since preachers in pulpits are often the primary interpreters of Scripture to their church-going publics, how might a preacher preach the famous contradictory “plowshare” passages in the Bible (Isa 2:2-4 and Joel 3:9-12) in a season of heightened political tension, indeed, any time when faced with contradictions in the Bible? This article argues for a nonviolent political realism as a political theology for addressing such end-of-the-world binaries that have and continue to threaten real and unleashed violence upon the world.
ISSN:2052-9449
Contains:Enthalten in: Review and expositor
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/00346373241259742