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When and How Should We Speak of Contentious Topics? Preaching from Year C, February to April 2025
Over coffee after last Sunday’s Eucharist, all the talk was about the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill soon to be debated in parliament. The preacher had earlier encouraged everyone to write to their MP detailing their own opinions. Underlying that call was an assumption that all those present would be against the assisted suicide proposed in the bill. ‘When to be born and when to die is a decision for God alone,’ the preacher confidently declared. No one during the coffee session demurred.
Demurrals, no, but certain hesitations about whether there is only one position a Christian can take on the matter. No one gave voice to the bill’s support, but many suggested they thought the issue very complex, or expressed worry about their own ignorance of this or that aspect of the matter, or again, others thought there might be a loving and appropriate ‘third way’ that neither supporters nor antagonists were prepared to concede, to the detriment, it was said, of those seriously ill and their loved ones. No criticism was made of the preacher for broaching the subject, nor for advocating a specific response, but the exchange suggested few present were likely to put pen to paper.
Thinking on that experience prompts several thoughts. First, we preachers need to be alert to the fact that the Church isn’t aloof from the increasing diversity of opinions on important topics evident in general society. Unanimity is harder and harder to achieve. This reality needs to temper both our assertions from the pulpit and our style of delivery. It may be much harder than previously to take a rigorist particular position from the pulpit, but that doesn’t mean ignoring difficult issues.
Second, that the pulpit retains its ability to prompt significant, and occasionally mind-changing discussion in the congregation. Far from being resented as an imposition of one person’s opinion, those gathered with me last Sunday were empowered by the preacher’s words to share, listen and debate a problematic topic they might otherwise have avoided. It was as if, in Barbara Brown Taylor’s words, they had been enabled to say what they had wanted to say but hadn’t previously known how to. Several sermons in this issue similarly grapple with contentious subjects that might also benefit from such giving voice – ‘fake news’ (David Hinchliffe), paradox (Charles Howell), and social media (Jonathan Lawson), are all topics one could imagine provoking such over-coffee exploration.
Third, contemporary criticism of preaching often dismisses it as an outmoded single-voice methodology that is inappropriate in an enlightened environment of many voices and wide debate, but my Sunday experience questions that. What purports to be open debate often seems to me to be angry voices shouting at the walls of their own enclosed silos. Social media exacerbate this tendency to speak only to those who are like-minded. The sermon, on the other hand, opens a space for the like-minded to consider alternative perspectives. There is something about the serious attention given to the sermon that encourages listeners to make their own contribution, whether that be in action, discussion, reflection or prayer. Good preaching is never a one-way street; it doesn’t require that the hearer should only go in one direction. In the words of Mark Oakley, the authority we give preaching allows the preacher to ‘dispel our illusions’ but with that comes an engaging word of hope that never ‘leaves us disillusioned’.
Professor Schade’s article in this magazine offers many strategies that can be used to advance effective preaching on topics of public concern. Her insistence that helping our congregations to discuss social issues is a crucial part of the preacher’s calling is something for us to take to heart. Such ‘giving voice’ is life enhancing in a social world too often noisily silencing itself into ghettos.
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Issue 195: Speaking of Last Things
