what is a prophetic voice?

At the beginning of his landmark book The Prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel asks, “What manner of man [or woman] is the prophet?” Heschel’s question animates each of the Prophetic Voices films, asking the viewer to consider what a prophet is, what a prophet does, and the difference that a prophet makes - by voice or stance - to her or his era and to those beyond. In the Biblical tradition, a prophet is one who speaks on behalf of God and, according to Heschel, experiences “divine pathos” - the emotions and reactions of God - in response to the words and actions of humankind.
Biblical prophets critique the foibles and willful misdirections of humanity, while casting a vision of how the world could and should be under the authority of God.
Few Biblical prophetic utterances are as well-known today as the timeless words of the prophet Amos, famously quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington, to “let justice roll like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:24). Similarly, many unfamiliar with the Bible itself may know the timeless injunction of the prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Justice, righteousness, love, and mercy are almost always at the heart of the prophetic message, both in Biblical times and today.
In this section, we consider what it means to be a prophetic voice and how each of the figures of these films - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, and Abraham Joshua Heschel - were prophetic voices for their time.
1 Looking back on these films and the related study guides, what commonalities do you see among these five spiritual giants of the twentieth century? What motivations or perspectives do they share? How are they different?
2. In his introduction to The Prophets, Heschel states that “[p]rophecy is a way of thinking as well as a way of living,” and that “the most important philosophical problem of the twentieth century [is] to find a new set of presuppositions or premises, a different way of thinking.”
After watching these five films, how would you describe the prophet’s way of thinking? How is it different from that of others?
3. In Spiritual Audacity, the film about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi James Rudin corrects the mistaken view that a prophet is someone who only sees into the future:
“When you say ‘prophet’ to a person they think someone who predicts the future. It’s prophetic. That's not what a Hebrew prophet was; the Hebrew word is navi meaning truth-teller, facing the truth, coming to a community and telling the community things it doesn't always want to hear. Prophets are not popular. “
Similarly, Heschel wrote that the Biblical prophet “was an individual who said NO to his [or her] society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, and syncretism.”
Rather than being some sort of fortune teller or soothsayer, the prophet was and is a critic of his or her society, calling out the injustices and evils that the society wrongly condones, and calling that society back into right relationship with God.
After watching these films, would you agree that this is a primary role of the prophet? What other roles - in addition to societal critic - might a prophet take on?
Make a short list of the kinds of roles a prophet might play, including that of social critic.
4. Prophets have paid and often do pay a steep price for speaking their truth. Many Biblical prophets were exiled, imprisoned, threatened with death, or ostracized from their communities. The prophet Jeremiah, who attacked the apostasy of the people of Judah and warned of future calamity at the hands of the Babylonians, also lamented the price to be paid as a prophet of the Lord:
I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, “Violence and destruction!” For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. (Jeremiah 20:7-8, NRSV)
The prophet Elijah escaped the soldiers of the wicked Queen Jezebel by hiding in a cave, where God came to him as a “still small voice.” And Jonah infamously sought to run away from God’s call until he was swallowed by a whale. Prophets have never had it easy.
In the modern era, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi paid for their activism with their lives, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison, and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu faced nearly constant threats of violence. In the Prophetic Voices series, apart from Bonhoeffer, both Dorothy Day and Reinhold Niebuhr were on the FBI “watchlist” for decades, and Day was arrested and imprisoned several times.
Do you think there must always be a cost paid for being a prophetic voice? What other costs might be associated with speaking truth to power? And if there is most always a cost, does that mean the majority of people will never offer that kind of voice?
5. The films in the Prophetic Voices series look at five prophetic individuals in the Jewish and Christian traditions. From the content of these films, how would you describe the idea of the prophetic voice in these two traditions, especially since they share so many similarities?
6. From the films and your own reading or study, who do you identify as key prophetic figures in the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament? What might they share in common? In what ways have these figures served as models for more contemporary prophets in our own era?
7. Which of the five prophetic voices profiled in this series was most familiar to you? Who was least familiar? Which figure had the most impact on you personally? In what ways did they impact you, and why?
8. Apart from the figures in these films, who else would you consider a prophetic voice in modern times? In American history?
9. Do you think a prophetic voice must be a religious person—someone coming out of an established religious tradition or practice? Who do you consider a prophetic voice who does not come out of a religious tradition?