Nehemiah Blake
restoring England’s Christian literary traditionArchive for Prophetic in literature
Are you prophetically illiterate?
The following are the words from the 17 score to Imagine:
Imagine waking up tomorrow morning
and all the music has disappeared.
…What is more you cannot even remember
what music sounded like or how it was made.
You can only remember that it had existed and that it
had been important to you and your civilisation.
And you long to hear it once more.
Then imagine people coming together to make music
with nothing but their voices, and with no knowledge of
what music should sound like.
For Bill Drummond, this leap of the imagination leads into his project The 17. But it is still an act of the imagination. For Nehemiah & Blake, this state already exists in many people with regards to spiritual literacy in the prophetic voice of the Bible. To paraphrase The 17,
You wake up each morning
to a world in which the prophetic word has disappeared.
…What is more, you cannot even remember
what the prophetic world sounded like or how it was uttered.
You can only remember that it had existed and that it
had been important to you and you civilisation.
The question is, do you long to hear it once more?
What Nehemiah & Blake desires to achieve is to bring together writers like you who can answer yes to the question above. And despite your having no knowledge of what the prophetic voice sounds like, to come together and learn to hear and write that word together.
The prophetic voice
“Protesters are everywhere, but I think the world is desperately in need of prophets, those little voices that can point us toward another future. [...] Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one. In many ways, protesters fit into the dominant system, legitimizing the current order with carefully compartmentalized dissent. A one-dimensional society can absorb dissent in a way that even further empowers its domination.”
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution, p.309-10
What is the prophetic voice that Nehemiah & Blake seeks in its writers? Shane Claiborne’s definition sums it up: It’s “those little voices that can point us toward another future” and that go “beyond simply yelling” at the system.
