Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: The Prayers of Walter Brueggemann--Softcover

Walter Brueggemannâ·¯is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, he is regarded as the premier Old Testament interpreter and biblical theologian. Among his many publications are Prophetic Imagination and Old Testament Theology.

Brueggemann (Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA) is a classic in his own right. His Theology of the Old Testament is widely read in many seminaries, and his Old Testament studies and original theology are closely followed. This is the first collection of his original prayers, and as such it is likely to be as attentively read as his previous works. Brueggmann's keen and sensitive intelligence is not best displayed here, and his ear for language in these prayers, typographically set out as though they were poems, is better than tin but not golden. Still, these prayers are the sincere outpourings of a man of deep faith, and his theology in them is of a piece with that in his earlier celebrated works. For most collections. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Walter Brueggemann, whose thoughtful and reflective works on the Hebrew Bible have ensured that the term "Old Testament theologian" is not an oxymoron, offers distilled wisdom from his 35 years of teaching in Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth. At the seminaries where he has taught, professors traditionally open their classes with prayer-a practice that for some might devolve into a quick nod to convention, but Brueggemann has always presented the opportunity to involve students more intimately in the assigned biblical texts. This marvelous little book of Brueggemann's start-of-class prayers will have readers cheering, especially when he writes that "much public prayer in the church is careless and slovenly, and... what passes for spontaneity is in fact a lack of preparation." Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.