Summary
The three prophetic tasks are the US biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann’s account of what faithful speech must do in a crisis: tell the truth where ideology rules, grieve where there is denial, and hope where there is despair. He set it out in ‘Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks’ (2014), written for the Christian church.
His model is the Hebrew prophets’ response to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, “a huge upheaval of every dimension of Israel’s life”. He argues that 9/11 dislocated the United States similarly. For Brueggemann these are acts of faith, bound to love of God and neighbour, more than a method.
Rationale
Brueggemann says ideology lets “a predatory society” seem normal; Part 1 says dominant dispositions make arrangements “feel natural or inevitable”. His sequence adds what ours lacks: grief, before any hope.