Who and What are Prophets

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Who and What are Prophets?
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The Term Prophet

• Religious def A person who speaks by divine
  inspiration
• Interpreter through whom the will of God is
  expressed.
• Secular def The chief spokesperson of a movement
  or cause.

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Prophecy

• the message of the prophet
• Based on the belief that the spirit of God is
  present and active in the world.
• Calls peoples attention to this presence so that
  they can respond and cooperate with the spirit.

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The Prophets Message

• It is not fortune telling.
• It is a call to respond to an injustice.
• This message can be positive (non-threatening)
  and negative (threatening)
• Counter-cultural
• Challenging

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5 Dimensions of the Prophetic Ministry

• A Ministry of Reminding
• A Ministry of Interpretation
• A Ministry of Protest
• A Ministry of Advocacy
• A Ministry of Envisioning

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Reminding

• Makes the invisible visible, and the inaudible
  heard.
• Example of Injustice Global hunger and poverty
  are clearly not a top priority for the U.S.
  government or the American people (lack of
  political concern)
• Reminding requires us to remember and constantly
  remind ourselves, our government and others of
  the plight of the poor.

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Interpretation

• Explaining the meaning and moral claim of those
  who suffer.
• Explaining the causes of the plight.
• As Dorothy Solle says, are the poor of the world
  those we let starve?

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Protest

• We are also called, on occasion, to say NO!
• The three most powerful social movements in this
  country in the past fifty years began as protest
  
• civil rights, Vietnam, womens liberation.
• We have probably often blessed injustice by
  giving it the consent of our silence. We must
  learn to say NO!

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Advocacy

• when we present our vision of the fundamental
  option for the poor to our political leaders and
  ask, demand for change.

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Envisioning

• a vision of the world that is holistic, truly
  global, a utopia
• so that it will stimulate the social imagination
• breaks the old pattern of response
• enables us to formulate creative new policy
  option.

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List some ways in which you and Loyola Academy
can be prophets in today's world.