…and the hospital of preaching
Being on sabbatical gives a great opportunity to read those things which have been carelessly tossed in the “read it some time” pile. It also provides the opportunity for a preacher to hear others preach. To be perfectly honest, the experience of the latter has been mixed – with everything from the cluttered and ill-prepared, to the thoughtful and meticulous. Sometimes it is inspirational, sometimes it is pedestrian, and sometimes it is just plain bad.
With all of that circulating in my mind, I turned to one of the journals in my ‘read it on sabbatical’ box, and to an article by Thomas Troeger in particular. In it, he talks about our failure to understand each other as one of the most significant threats to the human race. Our fragmented epistemology means that we are getting less and less capable of reaching across divides precisely at the moment when it is getting more and more important to do so. Added to that is what he calls a ‘cognitive imperialism’ which insists that there is only one way of knowing things. He would see new atheists like Richard Dawkins as being prime examples of this. Set against such a background the preacher’s challenge is considerable:
When preaching has intellectual and emotional integrity, the church becomes a hospital for fractured epistemologies.
Writing as a preacher, and more recently as a listener, I would have to say that the word ‘when’ in that sentence carries far more weight than its four letters might suggest. How do we ensure that preaching has that emotional and intellectual integrity? Here are some initial thoughts.
- Emotional integrity requires that the complex is not made simple in the interests of neatness.
- Emotional integrity means that a preacher should not use her or his privileged position as the speaker in an arena of listeners to play on the emotions in any cavalier way.
- Intellectual integrity requires that preachers do their homework in terms of both source material and receptor culture.
- Intellectual integrity means that as much as questions should be tackled, answers will not always be given.
- Biblical interpretation should breed biblical interpretation, which means that there must be a degree of transparency about how the preacher has got from text to sermon. Show me what you mean and why.
What would you add to this list in order to help preaching combat cognitive imperialism?
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