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(D) Post-Christian preaching?

The centrality the act of preaching, of the sermon, characterizes nearly all post-Christian common worship. Of course, I acknowledge that not all post-Christian congregations will include sermons in their worship services; in particular, post-Christian congregations within the Quaker tradition of the unprogrammed meeting will not have sermons per se. However, a key characteristic of the post-Christian congregation is that is has been shaped by the Christian notion of the importance of the Word and the service of the Word; and the post-Christian congregation is trying to figure out what the significance of the “word” means when is when there is no longer consensus on the divinity of that “word.”

(Parentehtically, I also acknowledge that many post-Christians will find continued importance and relevance in the Service of the Table, i.e. communion or eucharist. However, as someone who has been deeply influenced by Quaker thinking, I won’t participate in or officiate at standard communion rituals, so I feel utterly unqualified to speak about the possibility of post-Christian service of the table.)

As an exoteric, easily accessible ritual, it is easy to argue that preaching deserves to remain at the center of post-Christian worship. We might well ask, then: What differentiates post-Christian preaching from other preaching in liberal Christian traditions, where preaching is also the central act of worship? In order to answer this question, I will look specifically at Unitarian Universalist traditions, although most of what I have to say will also apply to other post-Christian groups.

We Unitarian Universalists often characterize ourselves by our insistence on the use of reason in religion. But we mean reason in a very specific way; not, for example, the kind of reason that results in technological progress. I would suggest that preaching in our tradition aims to lead us to meditative thought as a means to redemption; in distinction to Christian traditions where thinking alone is inadequate.

Let me be more specific about what I mean by meditative thought. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1999), in his essay “Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine,” tells how in nineteenth century theology “the concept of gnosis meant the false doctrine that man [sic] can bring about his salvation from mortality and fallenness by means of his own striving for knowledge and elevation to divine truths.” (p. 79) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1838/1961) intended this kind of meditative thinking and speaking when, at the end of “The Divinity School Address,” he spoke of the virtues of preaching, exhorting his listeners to a certain kind of preaching:

What hinders [you] that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation of men [sic] or your own occasion lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and revelation? (p. 111-112)

This is the heresy of gnosis as Gadamer has described it; insofar as it is preaching, it is institutionalized in the voluntary association of the congregation, but it may also occur elsewhere.

But what is it that results from meditative thinking? Gadamer (1999) ends his essay as follows:

The Christian concept of gnosis can justly be applied to this [meditative] thinking. Yet it is not through the revelation of an otherworldly God, but through the deepening and spiritualization of one’s own earthly human being that the path of redemption opens up. The great spiritual breath that raises the lost soul to mystical union with the ultimate ground blows through the whole. (p. 89)

Using Gadamer’s conception of meditative thinking, common worship can be seen to hold the speech of preaching in a context where the preaching prompts and becomes the meditative thinking of the worshipping congregation. The preparation required of those who want to listen fully to the word of meditative thinking is a self-discipline that leads to meditative thought. We can engage in this preparation through a suitable private devotional life, or through small group work. The fact that common worship requires such self-discipline and meditative thinking will in turn shape how we engage in private devotions/meditations and small group work.

But meditative thought goes beyond just this. Gadamer (1999) relates meditative thinking to practical wisdom (the Greek term is phronesis), and to politics as a practical wisdom that cares for the wider community (Greek polis). Robert Bellah (1998) contends that “shared values and principles don’t necessarily motivate people to do anything.” Whatever happens through worship and preaching must do more than share values: “a vital experience of common worship can send a congregation out into the world with a determination to see that those values and principles are put into practice.” This must be the ultimate goal of the phronesis of preaching: to create a vital experience of common worship that in turn sends individuals out into the world to live their faith in action.

From this we can attempt a theoretical grounding for post-Christian preaching. Post-Christian preaching results in a kind of shared meditative thought, which in turn leads to practical wisdom (phronesis) and action in the community (polis). This definition needs to be fine-tuned and expanded, but it will serve the purpose of demonstrating how preaching-based worship is an act of the whole congregation that in turn leads to action by individuals in the community.

Obviously, the above discussion entirely ignores the possibility of a post-Christian service of the table (i.e., some kind of post-Christian communion). That possibility will have to wait to be explored by those for whom the service of the table is of central importance.

Next: Some challenges for post-Christian worship