In the context of Hartmut Rosa’s understanding of resonance, I would like to explore two questions: The first is: How does the preacher facilitate preaching that resonates? The second question is closely related to both the theological character of proclamation and the way the word “resonance” is usually understood in English as something that finds agreement between two parties or something that rings true. In this sense, the Gospel has a significant dissonant aspect; it lays a claim that does not necessarily “resonate” in this sense. How then should we preach towards resonance if the Gospel presents itself in a dissonant way? To address these two questions, I will turn to Jewish theology or Jewish hermeneutics and more specifically to Jewish theologian Michael Fishbane’s idea of sacred attunement as a way towards homiletical resonance.
Brazil is a society forged in the violence of many forms of colonialism, with preaching, to a large extent part of the project of domination and establishment not only of a religion, but also of a culture and a society. Faced with this reality, if we understand resonance not as a category or a resource, but as a way of relating to the world in favor of a good life, Brazil is a place where resonance almost always falls silent. How can preaching be a way of relating to the world and of resonance? What preaching resonates (in) Brazil? Reflecting on a preaching that resonates (in) Brazil requires the careful exercise of looking at the reality we live in from what is authentic and eccentric (outside the center), from what has remained on the margins of established powers and knowledge, even if in a fragmentary way. It is about articulating processes of decolonization of bodies, knowledge and powers in preaching. This communication intends, therefore, to problematize the possibilities between Preaching, Resonance and Decoloniality, thinking of preaching as decolonial, experiential and corporal spirituality, a preaching that resonates buen vivir, the good life, in this context. In methodological terms, in addition to presenting and relating the key concepts, the aim here is to look at the context, especially aspects of decoloniality based on examples from culture (cinema and music), as well as observe examples of preaching that express and resonate this spirituality of buen vivir.
The focus of this article is to examine the importance of “mutuality” and “resonance” for preaching. I will explore the interplay of the metaphors of space, sight and sound drawing on Eastern linguistic wisdom and a historical review of how homileticians that have contributed to these ideas over the last 30 years. A biblical exegesis on the parable of the Good Samaritan will be used to showcase preaching that resonates in mutuality. The importance of developing a ecological preaching will highlight the insights of mutuality and resonance.
Materiality resonates in many ways, it shapes liturgical practices, roles and confessional identities. This empirical research focusses on questions about the materiality of biblical texts – in a broad sense – like books or PowerPoint slides used in services. How do preachers, listeners and other service participants interact with the materiality of the Bible and biblical texts? Which role does its materiality play for embodying different liturgical practices, like preaching, reading, listening and singing? How does it interact with bodies, artefacts and buildings? Further there are specific confessional aspects of Reformed and free church services. Which concepts of resonating materiality and performance strategies ground each specific liturgical understanding and preaching? How does old and new biblical materiality shape religious identity, and in which way emotions resonate with it? In this article, first findings based on empirical case studies are presented and related to a typology of biblical materialities, their performances and resonance.
This paper discusses the elements of mystery in preaching that resonate, answering how the preaching event reflects the aspects of uncontrollability and transcendence. The research approach is to engage the theology of the Word and pneumatology through the angle of the Scripture. God’s Word, used to create the universe and sustain all things, is inherently powerful enough to resonate and transform. Also, when the Holy Spirit is at work in a preaching process, a connection is established between the Spirit that searches the deep things of God, the preacher that explains spiritual reality with Spirit-taught words and the listeners that discern both. When this connection occurs, there is resonance. Since resonance does not foreclose the human elements, it is recommended that preachers practice the use of verbs, engagement of artful phrases and oral elements. Listeners should also be encouraged to open up to experience resonance.
The field of homiletics has become a very complex field that studies the many aspects, dimensions, theologies and dynamics of preaching. This essay provides an approach to construct a map of the multi-faceted field of preaching by distinguishing between three levels, namely ‘homiletical reasoning’, ‘homiletical phenomena’, and ‘homiletical issues’. The concept of resonance is applied to understand the variety within and the relationships between the levels that make up the map of preaching. In the second part of the essay, the proposal for the map is tested against the future developments in the field of preaching as they emerge in the digital age. The essay concludes with a reassessment of the role of the preacher in the many practices of preaching.
This paper will compare the homiletical training of lay preachers and ordinands in Switzerland and Germany. It asks what educators and churches consider a necessary basic training for members of the congregation to be able to adapt from pew to pulpit and preach with resonance. First it will offer background information about the evolving ministry of lay preachers in the Swiss Reformed Church (SRC), and then compare the programs. The comparison is initially on the formal level of curricula, then looks at some exemplary methods, and thereafter describes explicit learning outcomes, while deducing implicit one’s. The paper also seeks to enquire whether some core methods are recognisable in the process. It argues that the homiletical training programs that are analysed rely on what I call the mutuality effect, and in their core are resonance-oriented and strongly context-based.
Podcasts have proliferated since the coronavirus pandemic. This also applies to religious or religion-related podcasts. While the monologue sermon seems to be losing its appeal in many places, the number of people listening to religious podcasts is growing rapidly. And while sermons in Protestant churches in Germany and Switzerland are currently becoming shorter and shorter due to the presumably decreasing attention span of listeners, religious podcasts often last an hour or longer. This astonishing fact is reason enough to take a closer look at the podcast phenomenon in general and religious podcasts in particular. However, this paper is not about religious podcasts as such, but about the extent to which religious podcasts can be interpreted as forms of communicating the Gospel and as a further development of the sermon in a digital culture. What are the main factors that contribute to the appeal of religious podcasts? And what can we learn from religious podcasts for the potential resonance capacity of the sermon?
One of the outstanding challenges for homiletics in the contemporary West is how to articulate the mystery of preaching within a disenchanted culture. Contending with what Charles Taylor terms “the immanent frame,” the ever-present temptation for homileticians is to resort to reified theories of preaching which hide the Church from the presence of God. But, by examining preaching through the lens of resonance theory and sacramental theology, this article proposes that an alternative theology of preaching is possible. By exploring Alexander Schmemann’s vocational definition of eucharist as a relationship of mutuality, the author proposes that preaching functions within the liturgy as “eucharistic dialogue”: an act of mutual blessing between God and the Church which enables the divine life of the world to become visible in the present. Consequently, it argues that the dialogical nature of the sermon actualizes the world as dangerously real, even in a Secular Age.
This article examines four Christmas sermons for their strategies in connecting listeners with the mystery of the incarnation. This analysis of the sermons leads to three categories that describe the ways in which preachers attempt to make the connection. These are 1) ‘Identification with the story characters,’ 2) ‘Experience of the heart as access to the mystery,’ and 3) ‘Pondering Scripture.’ The latter two are closely related. The experience-oriented preaching style in the four sermons offers perspective for homiletic reflection today. The experience of the heart is nourished by a pondering of the Scripture. In the sermons, the preachers urge listeners to imitate certain characters from the biblical story. To gain a better understanding of the complexities of such identification, homiletics needs to be informed by literary scholarship.
This article captures a panel discussion at Societas Homiletica’s conference in Groningen in June 2024, in which we ask, are we really willing to listen to young people? As the church and the academy adapt to shifts in society, it has become apparent that practitioners, teachers, and researchers of preaching need to pay attention to marginalized persons and communities. Children and youth, however, remain sidelined in academic homiletical research and the practice of preaching. Each of the four authors, who hail from different contexts (Norway, Sweden, USA, and Canada), contributes to this article by drawing from their respective research into preaching and worship that foreground the experiences, perspectives, and needs of young people. We conclude by identifying themes emerging from our conversation and challenges our research poses to homileticians and preachers.
This paper proposes a collaborative preaching model for healing from collective trauma. From the context of Indonesia, a community living with collective trauma, the model integrates trauma-aware preaching, a conversational preaching model, and two local Indonesian traditions as its framework. This paper (part of which was presented by the author at the Societas Homiletica Conference in June 2024) then reports on the practical implementation of the model as designed and conducted by a sermonic conversation group.
In Andrew Root’s analysis of the crisis mainline churches in the Western world encounter today, he attends to Hartmut Rosa’s social theory of acceleration, alienation and resonance, using these concepts to address the struggle for relevance of local congregations and pastors, within a secular context. Root shows in what ways the multifaceted concept of resonance can give rise to hope, trust and action, empowering churches, while living in an immanent world, to embrace an alternative narrative-shaped map, shaped by the community’s strong evaluation. In this article, a summary of Root’s creative reception of Rosa is followed by an attempt to appropriate Root’s ecclesiology of hope towards the practice of preaching. The concept of ‘preaching as waiting’ is sketched in which the uncontrollability of the preaching event paves the way for a homiletical encounter with the openness of the unseen, both in the life of the preacher and the lives of the listeners. A recent sermon on Psalm 85, preached in a local congregation in The Netherlands, is presented as an example of ‘preaching as waiting’ in homiletical practice.
Hartmut Rosa has shown that the fundamental conflict of modernity lies in the categorical confusion of two concepts: accessibility and availability. In sermon preparation there is a tension between the controllability of the text and the uncontrollability of a resonant relationship with the meaning of the text. In my search for the homiletical implications of Rosa’s resonance-theoretical view, I investigate the sacramental view of Scripture as set out by Hans Boersma. I offer in the epilogue of this article three coordinates to stimulate a resonant relationship with the text in the process of sermon preparation.
This article addresses gaps in historical scholarship on Princeton Theological Seminary’s first Black Graduate, Theodore Sedgwick Wright (1797–1847; class of 1828), by analyzing selected records of his speeches between 1834 and 1837. The article also contributes to recent homiletical scholarship on the sociological concept of resonance. It shows how Wright deployed rhetorical questions and prosopopoeia– a rhetorical device in which a speaker speaks in the voice of another person or group– to generate resonance between the Christian tradition, movements calling for the abolition of slavery, and diverse audiences. Compared to other pre-Civil War Black church leaders, Wright’s biography has received meager attention within and beyond the theological academe. Consequently, the text also includes a biographical section and charts pathways for further research on his contributions to US religious history and African American preaching traditions.
This article investigates experiences of choral evensong in the Netherlands, focusing on the role of sermons, in light of Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance. The study explores how attendees experienced this Anglican prayer service, known for its music and contemplative atmosphere. Notably, many respondents contrasted evensong with their past experiences of preaching, often recalling sermons in a negative way. For some, the absence of a sermon in evensong encouraged their return to church after a period of non-churchgoing. Using Rosa’s resonance theory, the article highlights the potential of choral evensong to facilitate resonant relationships. The main question of this article is as follows: What is the role of the sermon in the Dutch appropriation of choral evensong? Three sub-questions are addressed: (1) Is there a practice of preaching during choral evensong services in the Netherlands and, if so, at which moments in the liturgy? (2) What meanings do the respondents attribute to the experiences of evensong, and what is the role of the sermon? (3) How can these findings be interpreted in light of Rosa’s theory of resonance?
This study deals with the interface between decolonised hermeneutics of lived religion and ecological sustainability. It demonstrates that preaching becomes a transformative medium for ecological consciousness and justice when conceptualised through a decolonised framework. Beyond technological interventions, transformative shifts in values, behaviours, and policies have been recognised as essential for addressing ecological crises. In this regard, religion has emerged as a crucial force capable of inspiring and sustaining these deeper transformations toward ecological sustainability. However, despite the expanding scholarship at the intersection of religion, ecology, development, and sustainability, there remains a lack of clarity regarding how religion concretely contributes to ecological sustainability and which theoretical frameworks or contextual epistemologies best explain its role in this process. Drawing on Grab’s decolonised hermeneutics of lived religion, the study situates preaching as a contextual narrative capable of shaping environmental values and activism. The paper demonstrates that preaching, when decolonised, functions as a theological act of resistance against exploitative theologies and the commodification of nature, repositioning preaching at the centre of reimagining a participatory, justice-oriented, and earth-conscious future.
Contested narratives around fossil fuel extraction and the exploitation of Earth for human purposes pose challenges for preachers seeking to bring God’s word to bear for all of Creation. This essay explores the author’s experiences with preaching, teaching, and researching homiletics in three stages of her ministry – protesting fracking in Pennsylvania, teaching seminary students about witness and testimony in the coal regions of eastern Kentucky, and studying the stories of preachers for a project entitled Compelling Preaching for a Climate-Changed World. The author reflects on what she has learned by asking four key questions: What is it like to be you in this place? Whose story do we tell? Who gets to tell the story? How will that story be told? These questions enable preachers to engage in deep listening to a variety of voices, including our other-than-human neighbors in God’s Creation, and to discern how we can proclaim the gospel of liberation for a suffering world.
This essay examines Fannie Lou Hamer’s work as a model for sustainable, communal eco-futures, focusing on her leadership of the Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC) as a form of proclamation. By situating Hamer as both exemplar and methodological resource, the essay explores how her vision of collective land ownership, food sovereignty, and economic justice offers a framework for preachers engaging eco-justice and climate change in their sermons. Centering the FFC, the paper asks what ethical and practical commitments are required of those preaching eco-justice, and what must be considered to faithfully address the expansive impact of environmental justice from the pulpit.
