Walter Brueggemann (1933–2025)
The International Jacques Ellul Society joins a vast throng in mourning the passing on June 6, 2025, at age 92, of Walter Brueggemann—and gratefully celebrating his scholarship, friendship, and a life well lived.
Walter Brueggemann was one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles. He earned ThD and PhD degrees and taught on the faculties of Eden Theological Seminary (1961–86) and Columbia Theological Seminary (1986–2003). He was an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. As a scholar, his primary method was rhetorical criticism of the text. His magnum opus, Theology of the Old Testament (1997), is a rhetorical-critical look at the Old Testament through the lenses of “testimony, dispute, and advocacy.”
Many came to know Brueggemann through his book The Prophetic Imagination, first published in 1978, which went on to sell a million copies, go through two more editions, and be translated into six languages. Brueggemann defined a prophet as one who “nourishes a consciousness and perception alternative to that of the dominant culture.” Prophets create that imagination first by critiquing the regnant world opposed to God’s will and second by energizing God’s people to a new way of life and being.
Among his many other works, his Message of the Psalms (1984) proposed a new way of organizing and processing the psalms. Another classic The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (2002)—was the first study to treat the land as a serious subject in biblical theology. His brief Sabbath As Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (2014) was a brilliant exposition of a biblical theme and its relevance to our times. In 2016 Brueggemann published another extensive and remarkable book, Money and Possessions, ranging through both Testaments.
Those of us in the world of Jacques Ellul studies have special reason to appreciate Professor Brueggemann, not only for the many ways his own works have challenged, encouraged, and instructed us, but for his affirmation of the importance and insight of Ellul’s biblical studies over the decades. In his review of Ellul’s study of Second Kings, Politics of God, Politics of Man, Brueggemann wrote, “This is bold exegesis and at many points most suggestive,” “powerful,” and “passionate”—even while “risky” and sometimes “subjective,” “one-dimensional,” and “problematic on methodological grounds.” This sort of critical engagement was, of course, precisely the sort of serious response Elul invited in his prophetic vocation.
Brueggemann was a friend and supporter of the IJES through the years and delivered (through his son, John, due to Walter’s illness) a keynote address at our 2016 conference, on “The Ancient Conflict Between Techne and Metis.” It was a study in First and Second Kings of “the capacity of the prophetic figures to operate with and play upon the wisdom of the peasants (metis) in a way that bamboozles royal techne—of how royal power sought to deny the folk epistemology of the prophets.”
Ted Lewis (1958–2024)
The Society expresses its profound sadness at the passing of Ted Lewis, IJES board member (2013–17) and executive director (2017–24). Ted entered our world some fifteen years ago as a result of his work as acquisitions editor for Wipf and Stock Publishers. What had been a trickle became nothing less than a flood of reprints and new editions of Ellul books. Ted led many projects to translate and publish Ellul’s works in English, laboring ceaselessly to acquire permissions from French and American publishers, negotiating with translators and authors of new introductions, and raising funds for these projects. To all of this he added important secondary literature about Ellul. All Ellul readers and scholars owe him a massive debt.
Apart from his work in the Society, Ted was a restorative-justice practitioner, trainer, and consultant. He served on the executive committee of the National Association for Community and Restorative Justice. His MA (University of Minnesota) focused on the sociology of religious-based conflicts and iconoclasm. His favorite Ellul book was The Humiliation of the Word.
Jean Ellul (1940–2023)
The IJES community extends its sincere condolences to the family of Jean Ellul, who passed away on October 30, 2023, leaving his wife, Sivorn; his four children, Wim, Eric, Véronique, and Jérôme; and his siblings Yves and Dominique. Jean suffered a stroke several years before his passing but maintained his sharp mind and sense of humor to the end. He welcomed then president David Gill to his home for a three-day visit in July 2023.
Jean was the eldest of Jacques and Yvette Ellul’s four children. He earned a doctorate in anthropology and conducted research in Cambodia, where he met his wife, Sivorn. Later in his career he was a high school teacher. After the death of his father in 1994, Jean was always eager to protect and promote the legacy of Jacques Ellul. In 2020 he gave his enthusiastic blessing to Patrick Chastenet and David Gill as they launched the Association internationale Jacques Ellul and the International Jacques Ellul Society. May the family be comforted in his memory, and may he rest in peace.
Albert Borgmann (1937–2023)
Albert Borgmann seldom if ever referenced the work of Jacques Ellul, yet many of those influenced by Ellul felt a certain kinship with him.
Of the three main approaches that emerged during the classic European period of the development of the philosophy of technology—the analytic (centered in England and North America), the phenomenological (centered in Germany), and the sociological (centered in France)—Borgmann continued and deepened the phenomenological as it was initially found in Heidegger. His direct relationship with Ellul’s sociological criticism was slight. Yet his phenomenological description of what he termed the “device paradigm” (see Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life) can be read as revealing another way in which Ellul’s La Technique colonizes and distorts material culture. Ellul focused on the distortions of economy, politics, and human relations; Borgmann added the colonization of our quotidian lifeworld of consumer goods. Borgmann’s persistent theme was the ways in which techno-material culture was cutting us off from another reality—or more simply, reality.
I (Carl Mitcham) discovered Borgmann when reading his small article on “Orientation in Technology” (Philosophy Today, Summer 1972). Shortly after, we met in person at the first North American philosophy and technology conference organized by Paul Durbin at the University of Delaware in 1975. It was there that Albert and I initiated a friendship that spanned almost fifty years. During that time I took nourishment from his measured criticism and patient work for renewal, manifest not just in his writing but in years of dedicated teaching at the University of Montana and a life of political engagement in his adopted home. Born in Freiburg, Germany, of Catholic parents, as a young student he immigrated to the United States, married, had a family, and became intentional rooted in Missoula, Montana.
In what is perhaps his last published article, “The End of Technology and the Renewal of Reality” (Glen Miller et al., eds., Thinking through Science and Technology: Philosophy, Religion, and Politics in an Engineered World), Borgmann describes “technology as the term and the force that is characteristic of the modern era and that began with the Industrial Revolution. But as an animating power it may well have both crested in power and reached the bottom of possibility. . . . As an animating force that gets us out of bed in the morning and makes us go after more comfort and consumption, it has reached its end, except of course for the poor in this country and around the globe, for the people who are lacking the basic comforts of life. But for the upper and middle classes of the advanced industrial countries, the renewal of the world cannot come from one more iteration of the pattern of comfort and consumption.”
For Borgmann, “The three best-organized and visible enterprises of renewal are the new urbanism, the artisan economy, and organic farming.” How many people are devoted to these tasks? “You can piece together some information from scattered sources, a task beyond my time, I say with sadness. But the mutual awareness of constructive people may yet rise, and if it does, their impact on politics and culture may bring about a wider and deeper renewal of reality.”
Marva Dawn (1948–2021)
Longtime Ellul scholar, IJES friend, and Ellul Forum contributor Marva Dawn died on April 18, 2021, at her home in Vancouver, Washington, with her husband by her side. Marva was a prolific author and indefatigable teacher and preacher around the globe. She wrote more than twenty books, which were translated into French, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, among other languages. All the royalties from her books she directed to support various non-profit organizations. She was also fluent in American Sign Language. Although she had health challenges for decades, she was a force of nature, humble but brilliant, insightful, and unfailingly kind and generous. She was a freelance teacher with the organization she founded, Christians Equipped for Ministry.
Marva did her undergraduate studies at Concordia University in Chicago, and earned master’s degrees at Pacific Lutheran Seminary, Western Evangelical Seminary, the University of Idaho, and the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame she earned her PhD in Christian ethics, with a thesis on the New Testament concepts of the “principalities and powers” and with special reference to Jacques Ellul’s writings on the subject.
Among her books is Sources and Trajectories: Eight Early Articles by Jacques Ellul That Set the Stage, translated and with commentary by Dawn. These essays were written by Ellul mostly in the 1940s. Marva Dawn was much more than a promoter and scholar of Jacques Ellul’s legacy, but those of us in the International Jacques Ellul Society especially mourn her loss while gratefully celebrating her life and work.
Raymond Downing (1949–2020)
Raymond Downing, a longtime member of IJES, passed away on January 20, 2020, after a six-month bout with cancer that had first attacked him in 2017. Ray earned his MD at New York Medical College in 1975. Ray and his wife, Janice, also a doctor, provided healthcare to people in Appalachia, the Navajo Indian Reservation, and with the Mennonite Central Committee in Sudan and Tanzania. For many years he was a practicing physician and instructor in the Department of Family Medicine, Moi University School of Medicine, Eldoret, Kenya.
While trained in Western technological medicine, Ray’s approach to healthcare came first out of his Christian faith in the Anabaptist/Mennonite mode, following Jesus and serving those in need. Ray was always exploring how the biblical stories of healing and disease might have insights important for our modern challenges. Second, Ray was shaped by listening to the voices and attending to the concerns of the underserved and often ignored. Third, Ray had deeply immersed in the critique of technology and modern biotechnology provided by Jacques Ellul and Ivan Illich. He was a brilliant critic of the narrow, scientific-technical methods of today’s Western medicine, while also recognizing its benefits. Ray was the author of several books, including Death and Life in America: Biblical Healing and Biomedicine; Biohealth: Beyond Medicalization; Imposing Health; and Global Health Means Listening.