Awake in Gethsemane

The spectre of cheap grace has haunted White ecclesial bodies since Bonhoeffer charged the bourgeois and comfortable in his short but memorable ministerial and academic career. Judson’s prophetic book is a bold restatement of the radical claims of Bonhoeffer’s legacy. Judson outlines the significance of a critical understanding of lament as the means for demonstrating greater equity in models of reconciliation and justice making for the contemporary church.

~Anthony G. Reddie, Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture, Regent's Park College, University of Oxford

'A reformation is afoot,' Tim Judson writes, a reformation in the Western church toward 'recovering lament.'  Awake in Gethsemane takes part in this reformation, using key insights from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology to root this renewed impulse toward lament in the person of Christ and the nature of the church. In his last days, Bonhoeffer expressed profound gratitude for the insight that 'one becomes a human being, a Christian' through faithful solidarity in suffering, a solidarity often expressed in lament. That Judson attends to this insight with such rare learning and sensitivity will evoke gratitude among many who value Bonhoeffer's work.

~Joel Looper, author of Bonhoeffer’s America: A Land without Reformation

In our politically fraught, post-pandemic world, Tim Judson’s exploration and commendation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s use of lament seems overdue. Judson calls out the Western church for failing to name and mourn suffering, to lament, and calls it what it is: a failure to support the most vulnerable among us. His careful exploration of Bonhoeffer’s intersecting theological, christological, ethical, and liturgical understanding of lament holds the church accountable and offers a much-needed word of hope.

~Lori Brandt Hale, Professor of Religion, Augsburg University

Lament is a fruitful concept and practice, one that needs the sort of attention that Judson gives it. Judson shows just how much Bonhoeffer can contribute to the topic of lament and just how relevant Bonhoeffer’s life and work continues to be in today’s world. Further, Judson’s work makes an important contribution to the church’s theological, ethical, and liturgical imagination, offering lament—if appropriately deployed and understood—as a way that the church can respond to racialized violence in particular.

~Preston D. S. Parsons, Review of Biblical Literature

Judson lays out a bracing and persuasive vision of the church as a community who, with Christ, laments for the world, and in joining the world’s lament seeks to name and resist all sources of suffering (even and perhaps especially when we find that we ourselves are the sources of the world’s suffering). Although I occasionally felt that Judson’s expositions of Bonhoeffer distracted from his constructive goal, he has made it abundantly clear that Bonhoeffer deserves to be a central conversation partner for those of us who want to recover a more robust practice of lament for Christian churches. And for those of us who did not yet know we needed to recover lament, Judson reminds us to wake up and pray.

~Brian Hamilton, Florida Southern College, Reading Religion

Judson shows just how much Bonhoeffer cancontribute to the topic of lament and just how relevant Bonhoeffer’s life and work continues tobe in today’s world. Further, Judson’s work makes an important contribution to the church’stheological, ethical, and liturgical imagination, offering lament—if appropriately deployed andunderstood—as a way that the church can respond to racialized violence in particular.

~Preston D. S. Parsons, St. John the Evangelist, RBL

Judson lays out a bracing and persuasive vision of the church as a community who, with Christ, laments for the world, and in joining the world’s lament seeks to name and resist all sources of suffering (even and perhaps especially when we find that we ourselves are the sources of the world’s suffering).

~Brian Hamilton, Reading Religion