"Prayer as a cry for justice is real prayer, a spiritual act addressed to a real God who hears. While it is real speech by real people in real hurt addressed to God, it is a public act.
For that reason the transaction spills over into the public realm, whereby the rhetoric of prayer inescapably becomes political talk.
The test of the linkage of pain and political talk is the fact that every such vigorous, concrete prayer is sure to provoke political feedback of a hostile kind from those committed to the status quo."
(Walter Brueggemann, 'Prayer as Neighbour Love', in Truth and Hope. Essays for a Perilous Age (WJK: Louisville,2020), page 171. Emphasis original.
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