Religion and Rhetoric: Development and Delivery of Compelling Sermons

Abstract

Preaching is the process by which a designated member of a religious community earnestly advocates a specific religious doctrine, spiritual message or position to the rest of the community. It can be anything said openly and publicly to the religious congregation about its faith or how that faith should play a role in the world. Though preaching is by no means specific to one religion, the scope of this investigation is limited to preaching in Christian traditions. Even within the Christian tradition there is a large degree of variety from denomination to denomination...Though my project was not to offer anything ground breaking, it does have the merits of being a modest col1ection of both published sources and first hand accounts that provide a rich and complex portrait of preaching...In addition to my research of published materials, I also conducted eight interviews during my time in Chicago...A subsequent part of this project entailed applying the philosophies and approaches to preaching as well as the expertise of the eight preachers interviewed into several sermons of my own.