Browsing by Author "Lischer, Richard"

In response to Nassir Ghaemi, an academic psychiatrist who presumes a mental illness and genetic abnormality in Martin Luther King, Jr., this project contends that King was a decidedly maladjusted prophet who dramatized his resistance to the evil triumvirate of racism, materialism, and militarism pervasive in American public life. Using the sermonic trope, “Creative Maladjustment,” a theological reconstruction of King’s prophetic meliorism is sustained in order to reclaim his legacy from the facile memory of the nation. The essential writings, speeches, and sermons of the revered Baptist clergyman source the work, giving insight into his personal thoughts about the method he chose specifically for the purpose of pricking the conscience of the America during the Civil Rights Movement. Relevant commentary and critical analyses of scholars and historians also support the claim of this thesis, pointing to King’s well-reasoned moral stance against social iniquity. The project traces the roots of King’s resistance in the biblical witness of the Old Testament prophets, the religion of the black church in America, and his early humiliations borne of racial segregation. Attention is also given to his intellectual assent to the theory of civil disobedience and philosophy of nonviolence, with critical examination of his conversion to the same. Finally, the project delves into the maturing path of King’s resistance vis-à-vis the widening economic inequities observed across the national landscape and spreading global strife, which formed the basis of his “world house” doctrine. The implications of King’s legacy upon contemporary moral leaders are offered as concluding thoughts.

What follows is a novel. I had a two-fold purpose in choosing to work in narrative. My primary intention was simply to explore the nature of Christian leadership through a narrative lens. More specifically, I have attempted to portray two distinctly different types of Christian leaders in three dimensions and to show how their faith serves them, and how it does not serve them, in their respective leadership roles and in their daily lives.

Secondly, in an age in which the creedal formulations and propositional truth claims that have traditionally defined the Christian faith are under intense scrutiny, it is my hope to show that story may be an effective way to convey the content of Christian faith and the nature of Christian practice to a skeptical audience of readers.

The following thesis considers the benefits of classical rhetoric for contemporary preaching, with special reference to the classical memorization technique known as the method of loci (or Memory Palace). The goal for this research is to discern how the method of loci can help pastors to “preach by heart,” that is, to internalize the sermon such that they can preach it without notes as though it were an extemporaneous Spirit-prompted utterance. To this end, the thesis is structured around two parts. Following an Introduction that sets out the practical challenges to preaching by heart that attend many pastors, Part 1 provides a survey of classical rhetoric, especially the so-called “modes of persuasion” and “canons of rhetoric,” before then turning specifically to the canon of Memoria (“memory”) and its concomitant practice of the Memory Palace. Part 2 applies the insights of the first part to the process of sermon preparation more broadly, and then walks through the practice of the Memory Palace for preaching in particular. A Conclusion recapitulates the argument and demonstrates the method of loci in practice.

This dissertation seeks to disclose the reconciling power of Christian preaching, and examine the homiletical task through the lens of Jesus' command to "love your enemies." Because the heart of Christian preaching lies in the Word of God revealed as the Prince of Peace, Gospel proclamation and reconciliation are perpetually intertwined. God's message of reconciliation has irrupted in history through a Son who not only forbids the killing of enemies, but also commands his followers to love them. Yet, in the wake of history's bloodiest century, Christians continue to sanction divisive, violent responses to those considered strangers and enemies--even those who also claim the name "Christian." The time is ripe for an analysis of the proclaimed Word of God as a potent catalyst for reconciliation.

The church needs a theology of preaching that offers an alternative to the world's language about enemies. My contention is that a theological investigation of enemy-language will have a positive impact on the theory and practice of Christian preaching, while unearthing new possibilities for churches and other faith communities beset by seemingly insurmountable conflict. I challenge presumptions about who our enemies truly are through descriptions of the rhetorical, theological, and homiletical elements of gospel proclamation in communities torn by conflict. What I finally hope to show is that because God has entrusted the church with the message of reconciliation, preaching is then an inherently reconciling practice, unintelligible apart from its nature as an address to God's former enemies. Reconciling sermons address and sustain churches with cruciform speech, or gospel-shaped language redeemed by God's Spirit, through which disciples are summoned to recognize and embody the forgiveness of the crucified yet risen Jesus, and equipped to exemplify, as ambassadors of reconciliation, the radical consequences of Christ's lordship.

Methodologically, the dissertation pursues a theological analysis of preaching based on the relationship between the God of Jesus Christ and humankind. This reconciliation encompasses all things, past, present, and future. Such an assertion proceeds from a paradox: the world rejects Christ, and yet God has reconciled the world through Jesus on the cross (2 Cor. 5:18). Consequently, as Richard Lischer has said, reconciliation is the "animating principle" of preaching. God's reconciling action in Christ is the essential, constitutive homiletical thrust. Thus, sermonic language must align itself with God's reconciling action in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

The dissertation advances these claims through a theoretical analysis of the "enemy" as it occurs in theological discourse, biblical interpretation, homiletical rhetoric, and constructive theologies of preaching and reconciliation, as well as through theological investigations of the preaching of Will Campbell, and sermons directly related to The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Overall, the dissertation combines the traditional disciplines of homiletics, theology, biblical interpretation, and rhetoric with contextualized field studies of "reconciling sermons." The ultimate hope of this work is to invite the field of homiletics and the church it serves toward a more comprehensive acknowledgement of the crucial, reciprocal relationship between preaching, reconciliation, and peacemaking.

Who we are and the world we live in is only discernable through the stories that shape our lives. Meaning, personality, and identity are each received via story. If one were to attempt to define oneself, such a person could only do so by using a story. One cannot understand personhood or action in the world without the narrative—it is uninterpretable without the story. Anything that we do has a story with it. Anything that we want to do will have a story with it—and when we in pastoral leadership help our people know, see, love, and understand the world and God, we will be telling them a story. In helping people understand their story in light of a larger story—they find the unity of their lives within the structure of the larger story—the story of God.The approach of this thesis has much to do with its storytelling nature. The goal is to use storytelling to communicate theological truth. Formatting the thesis in an imaginative short-story fashion to provide a robust and layered theological framework will lend to exploration that seeks to locate contemporary persons in the story of Scripture. The thesis takes ten central themes or subplots of the Gospel and portrays each in its own short story interwoven into an overarching story. Each section of the thesis focuses on a thematic expression of the Good News in a short-story method. Theological research and analysis for each follows in a 3-4-page essay in which I carefully analyze each story for the ways in which it expresses the theological concept in question. This provides a theological/literary interpretation of the story itself. Along with the 3–4-page essay, I provide a bibliography specific to the literary and theological concept of each chapter. In creating this collection, I hope to provide a unique resource for theological reflection that will be helpful for preachers, congregations, and anyone who’s willing to step into a story.

Prophetic leaders, before and during the Civil Rights movement, were subjected to criticism and verbal and physical abuse. Many of these leaders were Christian pastors who felt a duty to stand up to injustice and inequality. Ethnically, such leaders were not only black but were also white. One such leader is Reverend Edwin King, a white United Methodist pastor from Vicksburg, Mississippi, who was a mentee of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a close friend to late civil rights leader and activist Medgar Wiley Evers. This dissertation studies the leadership of Rev. Ed King as a model for racial reconciliation from 1946 to the Mississippi Church Visits of 1963. It argues that Ed King's efforts in the Civil Rights Movement models a way for racial reconciliation that includes Spiritual and Social Conviction, Intentional Planning, and an Eschatological Perspective of diversity in the Church.

This dissertation outlines what led Ed King to pursue civil rights, why he did not abandon the cause, and how he promoted the message of Christ in an attempt to desegregate white churches in Mississippi and bring about racial reconciliation and justice in the South. It seeks to answer the question "why does racial reconciliation matter in American Christianity in the 21st Century?" Primary source material will come from interviews with Ed King. Other sources will include speeches that Ed King gave on the subject and other documented interviews King participated in on the issues of civil rights and racial reconciliation. This dissertation asserts that pastors, students, church and civic leaders should apply Ed King's model to promote racial reconciliation in American Christian Life as communities become more diverse.