When People Are Afraid. I am further struck by the breadth and depth of learning that the preachers bring to the sermons. In addition to their own keen insights, the preachers draw on biblical scholarship, church history, systematic theology, ethics, ecumenical dialogue, philosophy, and psychology to extents that are rarely reached in preaching today. In these regards, the early twenty-first-century pulpit could take clues from these sermons.
As the title of the volume implies, one of the most distinctive aspects of the sermons is their dialogical character. After World War II, the biblical scholar Hans Conzelmann commented that the impetus for Redaction Criticism to Form Criticism as a primary approach to interpreting the Bible was just “in the air.” Something of the same is true for the notion of dialogue in the 1960s, symbolized, perhaps, by the 1963 publication of Reuel L. Howe, The Miracle of Dialogue. Howe—an Episcopal priest, former faculty member at a theological seminary, and founder of the Institute for Advanced Pastoral Studies in Bloomfield, Michigan—symbolized the wider presence of dialogue as a force-field in the culture while he also contributed to that presence by reinforcing the notion that dialogue is central to developing authentic relationships and community.1
In the 1960s, Christian education increasingly moved away from top-down, information-based approaches and more towards discussion and dialogue. This emphasis appeared in other forms of ecclesial life but was slow to come to the pulpit. Dialogues on the Incarnation is a pioneering effort to bring the spirit of dialogue to the pulpit. Most of the sermons feature interchanges between Robert A. Thomas, Senior Minister of the congregation, and a second person—Associate Minister Eugene Kidder, Campus Minister Thomas R. McCormick, or Keith Watkins, a member of the faculty of Christian Theological Seminary who was Visiting Minister Theologian for the academic year 1967–68. Thomas preaches in a solo voice in the first sermons in the series for Advent and Lent and also in the last sermon of each series. His solo-voice sermons are not singular, isolated messages but are intended to introduce the dialogue that takes place not only in the individual sermons but in the messages interacting with one another for the whole of each season. His solo voice at the end is a kind of wrap-up or summary.
Most of the time, the interaction between Thomas and the other preacher for the day has the character of real dialogue, that is, give-and-take, question and response, question prompting question, or affirmation prompting expansion. Listeners have a sense of the sermon moving in the same way that conversations move. At some other times, to be honest, the content of the sermon, while expressed in two voices, is a single line of thought that could be spoken by a single voice without loss of meaning. This slight inconsistency does not detract from the innovative quality of the dialogical approach.
Between the 1960s and today, scholarship in preaching has given almost no attention to the possibility of genuine give-and-take between two voices (or among more voices) in the sermon.2 I am aware of only a few isolated instances of such preaching, often on the part of clergy couples.
However, the early twenty-first century is an ideal time in which to reclaim the kind of multiple-voice preaching demonstrated in Talking About God When People Are Afraid. We are at a cultural moment in which many Eurocentric peoples are rediscovering community. Congregations with multiple ministers—on the staff or containing ministers who are simply members—can easily take advantage of the multiple ministerial presence for dialogical preaching.
Going further, one of the important themes in the emerging postmodern culture in both the wider world and in theology and the church is boundary-crossing, or transgression. While the expert is still respected, there is a growing sense that experts often have limited perspectives, and that people outside of expert status often have important things to contribute to discussion. From this point of view, ministers should no longer think of themselves as the sources of theological insight for preaching. Indeed, increasing numbers of clergy are making use of sermon feed-forward groups in which ministers meet with lay people as part of sermon preparation.3 It is a short small step from clergy and laity thinking together about the sermon in the study to clergy and laity speaking with one another in the pulpit.
To be sure, everything in this volume should not be a spark for preaching in the present. Most of these sermons lasted about half an hour—one or two perhaps as long as forty minutes. Few congregations in the historic denominations today are prepared to make this kind of investment in the sermon. Moreover, the sermons are written in a style that is as much literary as oral-aural. Indeed, some of the sermons are almost essay-like style in a way that would sound stilted in the pulpit today. While the sermons are exceptional in theological penetration, the preachers seldom address listeners directly, in the way that would be typical of active dialogue today. Indeed, I am struck by how often the sermons are almost third-person in their rhetorical orientation.
Moreover, the preachers do not make use of many stories to help the sermons come alive and to help listeners connect the big ideas of their sermon. The preacher today wants to make greater use of narrative. To make an obvious point: these observations reinforce the value of the volume as a resource for the study of the history of preaching. While we can learn things to do from these messages, we can also note qualities that are better adapted. In both cases, Talking About God When People Are Afraid is an excellent resource for the preacher today.
Ronald J. Allen
Professor of Preaching, and Gospels and Letters, Emeritus
Christian Theological Seminary
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Tom McCormick for the extended conversations about University Christian Church that we shared while this book was taking shape. Because his ministry at the University of Washington and his membership in University Christian Church have continued throughout the half century since we participated in this “experiment in preaching,” his insights and encouragement gave me the sense of freedom to continue the project. At a later stage, Judy Thomas Christianson and Paul E. Kidder, who were youth in the church when we preached these sermons, responded positively to my publishing these examples of their fathers’ work.
Even more, I have depended upon my daughter, Marilyn P. Watkins, who was in the sixth grade during the year that we lived in Seattle. Following graduation from college, she established her permanent home in Seattle and except for the years when she was doing PhD studies at the University of Michigan has lived in Seattle ever since. She and her late husband, Cy Ulberg, were active members of University Christian Church and this was the congregation where their family received their spiritual nurture. When visiting her through the years, I have attended worship with her and thus continued my association with the gradually diminishing number of people who heard these sermons so many years ago.
Marilyn and I have often talked about Seattle, especially the University District, and about the ministry of her church in this community. She has helped me understand the changes that have taken place during more than five decades of passing time. Her comments were especially helpful as I drafted the essay that introduces this “experiment in preaching.” Her work for many years as policy director for the Economic Opportunity Institute in Seattle is in its own way an expression of values exemplified by University Christian Church and affirmed in sermons such as those in these Dialogues on the Incarnation.
Soon after completing the transcription of these sermons and drafting an essay describing the context within which we had performed our “experiment in preaching,” I asked my colleague and friend, Ronald J. Allen, to read them and offer his comments. He encouraged me to complete the project and seek publication, and he has advised me along the way. I am grateful for his support in the publishing process and his willingness to write the Foreword which sets forth so clearly the reasons why these sermons from long ago deserve to have a continuing life.
During that tumultuous year in Seattle I wrote a book entitled Liturgies in a Time When Cities Burn (Abingdon, 1969). The statement I used in my dedication holds true even now: To the members and staff of University Christian Church, Seattle,
