Over the past 30 years, the effects of globalization, climate change and multiple military coups have reshaped the Fijian landscape. The “lines in the sand” around issues of land ownership, rising tides and Fijian identity have complicated the relationship between the Fijian Methodist Church and the land which grounds its culture. The historical fissures between the majority Methodist indigenous church and Fiji’s large Hindu population continue to place the rights of first peoples in tension with rights of ethnic and religious minorities, even as the country’s secular government stresses the possibility of harmony. In recent years, the church’s primary responses to these demographic, political and environmental changes have been homiletic and hermeneutic. In spite of declining membership and reduced political influence, the church’s present experience has been re-read as a “New Exodus” journey toward a promised land. This theme of “New Exodus” has become a dominant trope in sermons, church education events and Fijian Methodist self-understanding. A more complicated hermeneutic, however, mines the biblical theme of exile to describe the current situation. In iTaukei (indigenous Fijian) understanding, the ‘vanua,’ or land, connotes the traditional culture of those who live on that land. As change impacts the culture of indigenous village life, the land itself is understood to change. Though 80% of Fijian land is tribally held, many Fijian Methodists experience the land on which they have lived for generations as suddenly unfamiliar. My paper will explore these disparate biblical readings of the Fijian Methodist experience through a homiletic analysis of four Fijian sermons, pointing to the importance of pulpit rhetoric in creating new conceptions of place and direction in a world where familiar markers are washing away.

In recent decades historians have demonstrated that women were preaching in the U.S.A. long before the ordination of women to ministry. Many Quaker, evangelical, and Holiness women were itinerant preachers who traversed the country throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, encountering numerous hardships and obstacles as they went. In this essay I identify and examine three types of transitions in which the Spirit appears to have been “on the loose” so that women were able to claim their preaching vocations: ecclesial and theological transitions, political and geographical transitions, and personal transitions in the lives of the women themselves. I conclude by reflecting on what we might learn from this history for opening the pulpit to preachers on the margins today.

This article suggests that topical preaching can be revisited with integrity in postmodernity. The topical sermon in postmodernity should seek to place texts in conversation with one another in such a way that each text is valued and respected. Instead of allowing only one text to be heard at the exclusion of all others, appropriate topical preaching should model the embrace of otherness and conversation.

No description available.

Toward the end of 2015, 65.3 million people were seeking refuge or were otherwise forcibly displaced globally. This is the largest number since the recordings began around World War II. In Europe more than 1 million people arrived by sea in 2015 – more than four times as many as the previous year.1 The crisis situation stirred public debate as well as church-based initiatives trying to deal with the situation. In order to understand the interaction between public discourse and local preaching a group of homileticians from seven European countries collaborated on an empirical study of how the refugee crisis impacted preaching. In what follows we present the initial results from the Scandinavian countries.

In October 2016 homileticians from seven European countries met in Leipzig in order to reflect on political preaching in the context of the so called European ‘refugee crisis’. This article shows the background of this conference, gives a very brief overview of the perspectives from different countries, and suggests ways to continue European homiletical research on this theme.

Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics as the theory of preaching. In this article the development of homiletics in the Low Countries is explored as a case-study within the dynamics of international homiletical thought. The material for this case-study consists of the doctoral theses that have been published since the turn of the century. The amount of doctoral work in homiletics, the variety of methodological approaches and theological perspectives, provide a viable entrance to homiletics as academic discipline. It will be concluded that homiletics has developed into an international, empirically oriented, culturally sensitive, and theological diverse field. Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics. The transition, as seen through the lens of recent Dutch contributions to scholarly discourse in preaching, has three focal points: pneumatology, language, and empirical research.

The International Journal of Homiletics will publish scholarly, peer-reviewed articles from homileticians around the world and will work on the establishment of an interactive component to stimulate ongoing dialogue among homileticians from different national and cultural contexts. At the same time, our journal is – as stated – not only international, but also ecumenical and even inter-religious. This is reflected in the composition of the editorial board, which consists of Christian and Jewish homileticians from five continents. The journal is co-edited by Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen (Professor of Practical Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and Alexander Deeg (Professor of Practical Theology, University of Leipzig, Germany) with the help of Ferenc Herzig (Wiss. Assistant, Leipzig University), our managing editor.

For our first two issues we chose the theme Preaching in times of transition, and we asked homiletical scholars from different parts of the world to write an article related to this theme and to their specific contexts. We as the editors were happily surprised by the different approaches of our authors: Júlio Cézar Adam presents critical challenges in the current societal and ecclesial situation in Latin America, connecting homiletical reflections with basic Latin American theological insights, especially liberation theology. Instead of importing homiletical models and methods from the ‘North,’ Adam seeks to develop an “incarnational and incultured” theology and homiletics. Johan Cilliers looks back to the great transition in South African history in the late 20th century and reflects on homiletics and hermeneutics in late apartheid times (1987), as well as in the year in which the first democratic elections took place (1994). He presents and analyzes a sermon by Desmond Tutu, showing how preaching can help people enter a new situation without denying the painful past or present-day problems. Addressing one of the most significant transitions in Europe today, Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen presents the results of an empirical study of a significant Christian congregation in Copenhagen that is composed of both refugees from the Middle East and ethnic Danes. Through the use of Søren Kierkegaard’s category of repetition she describes preaching as a genre of both authentic repetition and significant interruption. She broadens the perspective by also stressing the importance of music and liturgy. Michael Marmur, Jewish scholar, teacher, and preacher from Jerusalem, shares insights into Jewish preaching in Reformed contexts today by presenting and analyzing one of his own sermons. Through his analysis he develops the notion of the sermon as a “sanctification of time”. Marmur’s essay connects directly to Donyelle McCray’s article, which concentrates on the spirituality of time and its importance for the sermon’s ecclesiology, pneumatology, and performance. In every issue of our journal we intend to present a homiletical squib – a short and sharp text presenting one idea or insight that is of special importance for the author. Charles Campbell is convinced that “God is not afraid of new things” – and thus preachers should not be afraid of standing with their congregations in the perpetual liminal and transitional movement from the old age to the new creation. Our first issue shows that preaching in times of transition is a theme for homileticians in different contexts all over the world and a fruitful starting point for our discussions. Our second issue will continue this theme and present more voices from other homiletical contexts.

The purpose of this article is to reflect on homiletics and Christian preaching in the context of Latin America, in the current times of transition. In order to provide a better understanding of the approach, initially aspects of the Latin American religious and cultural context will be analyzed. Then there will be considerations on aspects of the development of Christian preaching, creating a space to think about the relationship between Christian preaching and theologies that are relevant to the context, such as liberation theology. Finally a few challenges to Christian preaching in times of transition will be pointed out. Due to the delimitation of the article, it will focus on the homiletic development of the historical Protestant churches on the continent, above all in the Brazilian context.