Category Archives: Preaching

Art and culture, Political life, Preaching

The Left’s rhetorical problem

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Sorry Dan and all: I didn’t get home until about 7pm, freshly exfoliated from the sleet, and so didn’t make it to any of the nearby Christian antiwar protesting. (But better sleet than snow, or it would look like Massachusetts here. Oh, sorry Dan.)

I did watch a report of the National Cathedral service and congregant reactions on a local news broadcast. OK, they were short clips, but I recognize the a certain rhetorical style far too common in the left-of-center: I call it Medicated Ambiguity. I think it is a learned style and it is high time to unlearn it.

Enter a Concerned Individual, who might be a Cleveland Park fortysomething father of toddlers or the Presiding Bishop of a Major Religious Organization. He or she has something terribly important so say because times like these call for important discussions. The delivery, however, suggests the speaker has been dosed with 10mg of Valium. You know the kind of slow, tender, unmodulated delivery of which I speak.

Now, I’m not making this up. I was listening to a podcast (direct link to MP3) of the Katharine Jefferts Schori on a bus this week on my way to Temp Job and I nearly fell asleep. Is that her plan? (“Akinola‘s asleep! Push him in a sack.”) I have little idea what she was trying to communicate.

With Hubby’s help, I have identified this style as a misuse and caricature of a typical public radio announcer’s style, where, with well-chosen words, editing, and in a format demanding reflection, it works. Since speaking styles are learned, especially our public voices, have we ceded to NPR our rhetorical norms? Our tone? Our timbre? Our RP?

A radio announcing tone — certain not that one, done badly — does not simulate verve, encouragement, resolve, or real concern. Mixing the two makes its user seem woolly-headed, effete, unconnected and powerless, and thus untrustworthy for anything more difficult than a wine-and-cheese. Who needs the bulldog Right to make Liberals out to be latte-sipping nincompoops? Far too often, we project it verbally. (Not that the neocons and theocons don’t have rhetorical problems. Hubris has made some of their top celebs speak with the charm and subtlety of a Vandal attack. Let’s see what they do with that.)

An irony is that while last night’s action from the Cathedral to the White House looked like something out of the 1968 playbook, it most surely didn’t sound like it. It’s time to say it like we mean it, and that will take some work.

A good place (I think) would be to listen to recordings of compelling speakers. (That was a required assignment in my seminary preaching class.) Suggestions anyone?

Bible, Preaching

HRC starts preaching, Bible resource

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The Human Rights Campaign — the largest US lesbian, bi, trans and gay organization for civil rights; headquartered in my neighborhood, by the way — has started up a Revised Common lectionary-based resource, as reported by the United Church of Christ News (link):

The Human Rights Campaign has launched a weekly online preaching resource to provide insights into the Bible from a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and straight-supportive perspective.

“Out in Scripture” is being touted as the first and only major online preaching resource devoted to helping clergy with planning gay-affirming sermons and spiritual discussion groups. The website’s developers say they hope it will prove valuable in building welcoming and inclusive congregations.

An interesting strategy, seeing as GLBT rights — GLBT well-being, really — is so often assaulted from pulpits without much critical resolve about how contorted, culture-biased or hypocrital the theology behind it is. Pro-GLBT secularists are more likely than not to make a “Christian=antigay” calculation, and where does that put Christian and other faithful persons who can see a healthy and responsible way for GLBT persons within their faith. (Note there are parallels with Christianity and ecology as perceived “enemies” too.)

I’ve signed up to get mailings about it. WIll keep you posted.

That link again: Out in Scripture (HRC) link fixed

Preaching

Easter with the Swedenborgians

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My constant and local-to-DC readers might be interested to note that I will be preaching this Sunday, Easter, at the Church of the Holy City (Swedenborgian) at 11 am. The church is at the southwest corner of 16th and Corcoran Streets, NW, Washington.

Parking is poor, but there is easy S2 and S4 bus access from McPherson Square (from the south, less than 10 minutes) and Silver Spring (from the north, thirty minutes or more) stations, or walk about six blocks east from the north exit of the Dupont Circle Metro station.

Open, Preaching

Copyright, licenses and sermons

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Nancy at DanceLessons wrote today about the need of small congregations who use the sermon manuscripts of ministers with permission and attribution. Good for her. These churches — many of whom I have in mind when I write this blog — have a need. So do published preachers, the a big reason for getting those sermons out is to promote an idea, a congregation, or the preacher.

The best reason to use an existing licensing scheme is because preacher and re-user would have a common understanding of the rights conveyed. This would probably help promote fair sermon sharing on both sides.

I think the best license is the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) license, though others might no be so demanding of the Share Alike component. OK: that would be two, easy to conceive options.

Here’s what the by-nc-sa means, from the Creative Commons site (link to descriptions of others licenses):

“This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd [nd is No Derivatives — Ed.] license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.

Choose by-nc-sa license”

Some current Unitarian, Universalist, or Unitarian Universalist by-nc-sa content licensers follow — so feel free to make mutually-shared derivative works!

  1. Making Chutney
  2. Pearlbear’s Blog (assuming we can share her with the UCC for the time being)
  3. Facilitating Paradox
  4. Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Muskegon, Michigan
  5. Five sermons from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ottawa, Ontario
  6. First Unitarian Society, Madison, Wisconsin

Four points.

  1. I think the option to make derivative works is important since few published sermons are good-to-go as-is, and this leaves open the permission to make a recording of the service, or even translations.
  2. This license allows the author to retain those rights you would need to sell the work to a commercial entity. That should quell those “I could make a million dollars off this sermon” fantasies, and keep you from feeling the chump if a commercial publisher takes your works and runs with it. (Which also seems unlikely.)
  3. There are multiple versions — via evolution — of each license so go read the original if you’re really going to use a licensed resource. I know this undercuts my simplicity argument, and I hope all who license thus will upgrade to the 2.5 version.
  4. Also, I think some of what I’ve written would benefit from a more permissive license and other things I’m reserving rights, so I’m thinking of a scheme of two or three licenses for this site. If you want to use something one here, email me and I’ll work on that item’s license.
Bible, Preaching

June 19 preaching

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A reminder to my Loyal Readers, I’ll be preaching at the Church of the Holy City (Swedenborgian) this Sunday. That’s 1611 16th St. NW, Washington, at 11:00 a.m. Metro to Dupont Circle north exit and walk four blocks, or take the S2 or S4 bus to Corcoran Street.

In the “more” I’ve put the texts I’m preaching (in the public domain World English Bible) and the psalm (Coverdale version) but that’s not necessarily the versions I’ll be using on the day.

I’ll be saying more about this sermon later this week. Call the blogging a quick kick in the rump to get me going.

Continue reading June 19 preaching →

Preaching, Worship

Unitarian Universalist ministerial vesture continued

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Most recently, Matthew Gatheringwater said:

Wouldn’t your argument work better, however, if it related to a pre-existing uniform vesture among Unitarian Universalist ministers? By adopting a style of vesture that is uncommon if not singular among Unitarian Universalist ministers, aren’t you in fact emphasizing your distinctness, rather than your uniformity?

old nameplate showing me in gown, collar, bands, and hood.

Uh, what I wear for the most part is pretty common, apart from the collar and bands, and even these are still found in some of the eastern Christian churches in the UUA, and the kindred Non-Subscribing Presbyterians in Ireland. But since I tend to think of myself as a Christian first, and a Unitarian Universalist (institutionally; I’m not a unitarian at all) second it is I had a more Protestant “uniform” in mind.

I’ve only known one person to really dislike the bands, and a few others said they make me look Scottish. (“No, not Ish, just Scott, thank you.”)

See these pictures from the 1998 Service of the Living Tradition. (I was going to make a bunch of links, starting from the earliest web coverage of GA, but you get the point. I just wish the godawful stole parade, seen in others years, would end.)

Irony alert: the largest group of hood-and-gown wearers in the UUA are the older humanists.

I’ve put up the old nameplate of this blog because it is the clearest good-hair-day image I have of me in my garb. (I’m still looking for the original to adapt to the current color scheme, so I can bring it back to the front page, and retire the image of me from 1977ish to my bio page.)

Were you (y’all?) thinking I meant something else?