Talking About God When People Are Afraid
Dialogues on the Incarnation the Year That Doctor King and Senator Kennedy Were Killed
Edited by Keith Watkins
Foreword by Ronald J. Allen
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
The Dialogues on the Incarnation presented in this book show a group of four preachers as they endeavored to help the people in their church make theological sense at a time when optimism and fear were intermingled. Although the details of life in the early 2020s differ from those in the 1960s when these sermons were delivered, preachers today face a similar challenge--to proclaim a Christian vision that interprets the interior experience of listeners and the dynamics of the outer world where strife, epidemic disease, and global warming dominate the news. These sermons show how preachers can draw upon their own insights and upon biblical scholarship, history, theology, ethics, philosophy, and psychology as they proclaim their gospel message. In the year when Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated, these dialogues were described as "an experiment in preaching." They now are published, nearly sixty years later, to encourage and instruct a new generation of church leaders to continue the pastoral challenge of talking about God when most people are afraid.
Keith Watkins is a minister ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and was one of the four preachers participating in the Seattle Dialogues. He recently published The American Church That Might Have Been: A History of the Consultation on Church Union. Now retired from the faculty of Christian Theological Seminary, he writes on American religion, the environment, and bicycling.
“The reader of this book is swept up into the story and sermons of a group of socially conscious and theologically thoughtful preachers rethinking their practice of preaching from the inside-out. This book is one of those rare gems that takes us into a distinctly creative moment in the history of preaching, through the autobiographical lens of an eyewitness and participant observer. Reading it gives the impression that a missing link has been chronicled in the evolution of genuinely contextual and dialogical preaching.”
—John S. McClure, Charles G. Finney Professor of Preaching and Worship, Vanderbilt Divinity School
“Written in an earlier period when protesters were challenging institutions of power, these sermons ask questions relevant today, particularly for white Americans grappling with their own complicity in perpetuating racial inequality. They remind us of the message of liberation at the heart of both biblical and American traditions, and point to our responsibility to challenge authorities that maintain wealth and privilege by oppressing our neighbors.”
—Marilyn P. Watkins, Policy Director, Economic Opportunity Institute