Ethical Approaches to Preaching
Choosing the Best Way to Preach About Difficult Issues
Imprint: Cascade Books
Different ethical situations require different homiletical responses. John McClure organizes recent literature on ethics and preaching into four ethical approaches. Does your situation require public moral leadership? Then a communicative ethic is best. Does your situation require the development of countercultural moral character? Then a witness ethic is best. Does your situation require ethical consciousness-raising and organizing for social justice? Then a liberationist ethic is best. Does your situation require genuine moral conversation and the discernment of shared commitments in spite of our differences? Then a hospitality ethic is best. Each ethical approach is briefly and carefully explored, correlated with appropriate contexts and situations, and demonstrated with model sermons. The result is a useful handbook for quickly discerning what ethical approach is needed, how to preach that approach, and what to expect as a result.
John S. McClure is the Charles G. Finney Professor of Preaching and Worship at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He is the author of Otherwise Preaching: A Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics (2001) and Speaking Together and With God: Liturgy and Communicative Ethics (2018).
“Ethical Approaches to Preaching could not come at a better time as preachers grapple with how to address the concerns that matter to their listeners, their communities, and a hurting world. With methodical clarity and a helpful organizational framework, McClure gives preachers a guide to thinking through four different approaches to social issues, as well as how to apply the approaches in a given situation. This is an essential handbook for courageous, prophetic, and prudent sermons!”
—Leah D. Schade, author of Preaching in the Purple Zone
“Clear and concise explanations of preaching as ‘theo-ethical Christian practices.’ This handbook is one of the best resources to learn how to preach on ethical issues in a contextually appropriate way. The author’s sermons on immigration and carefully selected ‘situational sermon examples’ are practically helpful in teaching and learning various ethical approaches to preaching.”
—Eunjoo Mary Kim, Iliff School of Theology
“In a time when responsible, clear-headed Christian ethical praxis and reflection have never been more crucial, this is a book that belongs on every preacher’s desk. . . . McClure devotes chapters to each of four distinctive approaches to Christian ethics in the pulpit: communicative ethics, ‘witness’ ethics, liberation ethics, and ‘hospitality’ ethics. . . . McClure not only lays out the primary theological/theoretical commitments and aims of a specific approach to ethical reflection, but proposes concrete practices for active ethical engagement beyond the church walls, as well as key homiletical strategies commensurate with the approach under discussion.”
—Sally A. Brown, Princeton Theological Seminary
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