COVID-19-pandemic: the crisis was not only a challenge for the forms of preaching but also its content. What could and should be said? How can people be comforted and strengthened without preaching weak and banal ‘good news’? And again and again the question: How can we speak of God amid a worldwide crisis? For Societas Homiletica it became clear quite soon that the Budapest Conference would have to be postponed (and – God willing – we will meet in Budapest from August 12 to 17, 2022!). But our International Secretary, Prof. Dr. Theo Pleizier, came up with the idea of organizing an Online Conference on “Preaching in Time of Crisis.” The International Board of Societas Homiletica supported this idea, and on August 10–12, 2020, the first Online Conference in the history of Societas Homiletica ‘took place.’ We are glad and honored to present five outstanding papers delivered at the Online Conference in this Special Volume of our International Journal of Homiletics, two from Europe and three from North America (Canada and the USA). Clara Nystrand from Lund (Sweden) compares sermons delivered in Sweden in the time of the Spanish flu 1918 with sermons delivered in the first phase of the Corona pandemic. André Verweij, pastor and researcher in the Netherlands, analyzes five Easter sermons delivered in the Netherlands during the first wave of the Covid-19-pandemic and discovers a lamenting mode in preaching, which steers away from interpreting the pandemic’s possible ‘meaning’ or ‘message.’ Joseph H. Clarke and David Csinos from the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Canada, show how fruitful dialogue between psychotherapy and homiletics can be. David M. Stark, teaching and doing homiletical research at the University of the South in Sewanee (USA), speaks about a dual pandemic of COVID-19 and systemic racism. In the final article, Edgar “Trey” Clark III from Fuller Theology Seminary in Pasadena (USA), examines protests in support of “Black Lives Matter” and sees these protests as a form of Spirit-inspired proclamation – connecting lament and celebration, particularity and universality, word and deed. Obviously, the COVID-19-pandemic changed not only the forms and media of preaching, but also its contents – and will have an impact also in the time ‘after’ the pandemic.

COVID-19-pandemic: the crisis was not only a challenge for the forms of preaching but also its content. What could and should be said? How can people be comforted and strengthened without preaching weak and banal ‘good news’? And again and again the question: How can we speak of God amid a worldwide crisis? For Societas Homiletica it became clear quite soon that the Budapest Conference would have to be postponed (and – God willing – we will meet in Budapest from August 12 to 17, 2022!). But our International Secretary, Prof. Dr. Theo Pleizier, came up with the idea of organizing an Online Conference on “Preaching in Time of Crisis.” The International Board of Societas Homiletica supported this idea, and on August 10–12, 2020, the first Online Conference in the history of Societas Homiletica ‘took place.’ We are glad and honored to present five outstanding papers delivered at the Online Conference in this Special Volume of our International Journal of Homiletics, two from Europe and three from North America (Canada and the USA). Clara Nystrand from Lund (Sweden) compares sermons delivered in Sweden in the time of the Spanish flu 1918 with sermons delivered in the first phase of the Corona pandemic. André Verweij, pastor and researcher in the Netherlands, analyzes five Easter sermons delivered in the Netherlands during the first wave of the Covid-19-pandemic and discovers a lamenting mode in preaching, which steers away from interpreting the pandemic’s possible ‘meaning’ or ‘message.’ Joseph H. Clarke and David Csinos from the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Canada, show how fruitful dialogue between psychotherapy and homiletics can be. David M. Stark, teaching and doing homiletical research at the University of the South in Sewanee (USA), speaks about a dual pandemic of COVID-19 and systemic racism. In the final article, Edgar “Trey” Clark III from Fuller Theology Seminary in Pasadena (USA), examines protests in support of “Black Lives Matter” and sees these protests as a form of Spirit-inspired proclamation – connecting lament and celebration, particularity and universality, word and deed. Obviously, the COVID-19-pandemic changed not only the forms and media of preaching, but also its contents – and will have an impact also in the time ‘after’ the pandemic.:Editorial .............................................................................................................................................................. iii Preaching in Times of Pestilence – 1918 and 2020 Clara Nystrand ................................................................................................................................................. 1 Preaching in a Lamenting Mode: Easter Lockdown Sermons in the Netherlands André Verweij ............................................................................................................................................... 13 Steer into the Storm: Dynamic Psychotherapy for Preaching in Anxious Times Joseph H. Clarke and David M. Csinos ................................................................................................. 23 Eucharistic Preaching as Early Response to a Dual Pandemic David M. Stark ................................................................................................................................................ 33 Protest as Preaching: The Pneumatic Proclamation of Black Lives Matter Edgar “Trey” Clark III ................................................................................................................................. 43

In 2020, the year the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the Swedish Covid-19 response differed radically from the general policy of total lockdown and strict enforcement of Covid-measures and regulations recommended by the WHO. Instead, Sweden strove early on to achieve herd immunity, with no mandatory measures to limit numbers in shopping malls, buses, and other public events, nor mask requirements. Hence, during the height of the pandemic, Swedish Covid-19 policy was a highly debated issue in the international media, within academia and the World Health Organization. The aim of this study is to examine the international media discourse on the Swedish Covid-19 strategy in the international print media. The focus has been on newspapers from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The research has been done by investigating how Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy is discursively constructed, through major themes and sub-themes that have emerged. Additionally, the differences in discourse between Dutch, English and American media have been explored. As well as the use of language, ideologies, and linguistic devices within the international discourse have been investigated. A total of 178 articles, published between the period of 1 January 2020 until 6 February 2022, have been collected and analyzed. This study uses Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) as main method and has been inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). A coding frame has inductively been created, by having used a sample of 20 newspaper articles in a pilot study. The software of NVivo has been used for the coding process. The major themes that emerged from my analyses of media discourses are: Anders Tegnell, Strategy, Trust and Image of Sweden and Swedes. My study found that media discourses on the Swedish Covid-19 policy are not positive. Rather these tend to be negative or at best neutral. Images of Sweden tend to vary in tandem with increase or decreases of Covid-19 infections and/or deaths. As the Swedish strategy became more or less aligned with the ‘norm’ of the WHO, the coverage of Sweden in media declined and lost its newsworthiness.