target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_3f86649f-aa1b-5f3f-9b24-2a2996b7c540">4] Edwards, History, pp. 147–8.
[5] I am indebted to Tim Grass for his comments on this point: private communication, 5 January 2010. See also Edwards, History, pp. 191–2.
[6] Tim Grass, private communication, 5 January 2010.
[7] Stuart Murray, 2000, Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition, Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press, pp. 157–85. Edwards writes: ‘Anabaptist gatherings probably consisted of informal teaching, prayer, and mutual exhortation in which many participated. Holy Communion was also held frequently. The centrality of preaching in Reformation worship grows out of an assumption that many church members were unconverted, an assumption the Anabaptists did not make.’ Edwards, History, p. 323 n. 15.
[8] Murray, Biblical Hermeneutics, pp. 157–9.
[9] Murray, Biblical Hermeneutics, p. 172.
[10] See for instance the material on the website http://www.anabaptistnetwork.com
[11]My thanks to Tim Grass, private communication, 5 January 2010, for this distinction.
[12] See Christopher J. Ellis, 2004, Gathering: A Theology and Spirituality of Worship in Free Church Tradition, London: SCM.
[13] On this latter point, I am indebted to Tim Grass, private communication, 5 January 2010. See ‘Ultramontanism’, in F. L. Cross (ed.), 1958, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, London: Oxford University Press, p. 1387.
[14] See Duncan Macpherson, ‘Preaching in the Roman Catholic Ecclesial Context’, in Geoffrey Stevenson (ed.), 2010, The Future of Preaching, London: SCM, pp. 27–33. Interestingly, on the day I was writing this (27 February 2009) it was mooted publicly that the retiring head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, might enter the House of Lords. He has since done so, as the first Catholic bishop to become an ‘establishment’ representative of this kind since the Reformation. Free Church leaders such as Leslie Griffiths have already been honoured in this way.
[15] ‘Christ the transformer of culture’ was the fifth model of the relationship of Church to culture outlined by Niebuhr in his classic study: H. Richard Niebuhr, 1951, Christ and Culture, New York: Harper & Row, pp. 190–229.
[16] See Edwards, History, pp. 72–87 (Chrysostom), 100–16 (Augustine).
[17] Edwards, History, p. 166.
[18] Edwards, History, pp. 312–13.
[19] T. H. L. Parker, 1947, The Oracles of God: An Introduction to the Preaching of John Calvin, London and Redhill: Lutterworth, pp. 75–6, cited in Edwards, History, p. 319.
[20] Tim Grass, private communication, 5 January 2010; he also points out that Orthodoxy also has noted exponents of such ‘renewal’ preaching within Christendom, for example St Symeon the New Theologian or St John of Kronstadt.
[21] Edwards, History, pp. 166–7.
[22] Partly through ecumenical bodies, representatives of the Free Churches and the Roman Catholic Church are now involved in State affairs to a much greater extent in the UK than was the case until quite recently (see n. 14 above). It would be unthinkable, for example, to have a large state occasion like the annual Act of Remembrance or a royal funeral without the presence of leaders from all the main denominations and, indeed, the major faiths. This means that ‘Church’ as a whole – indeed ‘religion’ as a whole – not just the Church of England, continues to have a visible role within the State which may give it considerable opportunities when it comes to preaching.
[23] On this last point I am indebted to Tim Grass, private communication, 5 January 2010, and see also John W. Wright, 2007, Telling God’s Story: Narrative Preaching for Christian Formation, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, especially pp. 47–76.
[24]On Chrysostom’s anti-Jewish preaching see Aaron A. Milavec, 1989, ‘A Fresh Analysis of the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen in the Light of Jewish-Catholic Dialogue’, in Clemens Thoma and Michael Wyschogrod (eds), Parable and Story in Judaism and Christianity, New York: Paulist Press, pp. 81–117, here p. 83.
[25] See Edwards, History, pp. 181, 195.
[26] ‘Oration in Honour of Constantine on the Thirtieth Anniversary of his Reign’, in Maurice Wiles and Mark Santer (eds), 1975, Documents in Early Christian Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 230–4.
[27] Edwards, History, p. 139.
[28] Edwards, History, p. 143.
[29] See Duncan Maclaren, 2004, Mission Implausible: Restoring Credibility to the Church, Carlisle: Paternoster, pp. 187–200.
[30] Edwards, History, p. 332.
[31]On MacLeod’s open-air preaching see Stuart Blythe, 2009, ‘Open-Air Preaching as Radical Street Performance’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, ch. 5.
[32] See Stanley P. Saunders and Charles L. Campbell, 2000, The Word on the Street: Performing the Scriptures in an Urban Context, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Blythe, ‘Open-Air Preaching’.
[33] See also Geoffrey Stevenson and Stephen Wright, 2008, Preaching with Humanity: A Practical Guide for Today’s Church, London: Church House Publishing, pp. 22–4.
2
Contemporary Functions of Preaching
Having
