Interpretation and Performance in Christian Preaching

Catalog description

This course explores the role that embodied performance plays in sermon preparation and analysis. It sketches the broad outlines of Christianity's long conversation around the relationship between rhetoric and revelation, drawing on that conversation to evaluate contemporary models of performative theory and practice. Students will engage texts, audio-visual sermon recordings, their own oral interpretations of scripture, and live sermon events as theological resources. For preachers, the course will provide a variety of performative approaches to the work of textual interpretation in a living community. For budding homileticians, the class supplies strategies for analyzing sermon performances and asks that these future teachers of preaching to construct their own working theologies of the sermon event to guide their pedagogical practice. Instructor consent required.