Alive to the Word. Stephen I. Wright

could, while remaining part of this Church, lead a life of serious holy separation to God became more attractive for the committed believer. This was not self-indulgent reclusiveness, but a genuine quest for God. That quest is reflected in the devotional emphasis of medieval monastic sermons such as those of Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs.[5] In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there is a parallel to monastic preaching in Pietist preaching, especially in that, like the monks, Pietists ‘often functioned as an order within the church’.[6]

A more radical manifestation of a strong community orientation to preaching is found in the groups of the radical reformation such as the Anabaptists. Here again is the key mark of a desire for separation and holiness, not for its own sake but as an authentic expression of the way of Christ in the world. If monastic preaching could be seen as an expression of the desire to gather a community for serious teaching out of the widening number of the baptized, some of the radical reformers seem to have practised a ‘congregational hermeneutic’ in which the role of the appointed leader or preacher was itself considerably diminished in favour of discussion, discernment and mutual correction by the congregation.[7] This may be seen as a rejection of the autonomous individualism of the so-called ‘Spiritualist’ groups, of submission to ecclesiastical tradition in Catholicism, and also of the mainstream Reformers’ continued dependence on doctrinal formulae and theological scholarship.[8] Stuart Murray comments interestingly on the absence of pulpits in places of Anabaptist worship:

Church architecture plays a large role in how congregations operate. Typical state churches were designed to allow the speaker to be seen and heard clearly. Anabaptist meetings, in woods, caves, boats, homes, and open fields, lacked such influential symbolic restrictions. Multiple participation is much more likely in such settings, especially when ecclesiological perspectives support it. Indeed, these widely held convictions make it hard to imagine communal hermeneutics being marginal.[9]

Heirs to this tradition of ‘preaching’ (better, perhaps, ‘non-preaching’) remain to this day and have an important testimony in an age suspicious of authority.[10]

This ‘community interpretation’ approach of the early Christians, monks, Pietists and radical reformers also joins hands with some more familiar and ‘mainstream’ settings of preaching today. While monasticism, notwithstanding its ‘separated’ character, had often been a pillar of Christendom, more contemporary ‘community interpretation’ approaches are marked by a sense that to some degree Christendom is to be resisted.[11] Thus the preaching of many Free Churches is clearly focused on the needs of that particular gathered community. It may take a range of forms – from detailed exegesis of Scripture, to inspiring exhortation and encouragement, to the exercise of strategic pastoral leadership – but it has this in common, that it is addressed to the needs and calling of the Church as a specific called-out group of God’s people in the world.[12] Strikingly, however, the Roman Catholic Church in Britain (as well as the smaller Orthodox Churches) can also be included under this model, as groups seeking to maintain their identity over against the reigning establishment. An important historical antecedent here is the loss of temporal power by the Roman Catholic Church in the nineteenth century, leading to the centralization of authority in the Papacy and the conception of the Church as an alternative society.[13] No less than in Baptist churches or Brethren assemblies, Roman Catholic preaching seeks to nurture the faithful in their particular calling as members of the Church, whether through liturgical preaching linked to the regular celebration of the sacrament, or the catechetical preaching which prepares and instructs new communicants or converts.[14]

      Speaking to the nations

      The dawn, dominance and decline of ‘Christendom’ remain controversial subjects, and analysis of this phenomenon remains (fortunately!) outside the scope of this book. It is vital, however, to underline its crucial importance for understanding the function and setting of preaching through many of the centuries and locations of Christian history. For the central impulse of Christian preaching has always been to communicate the faith now, in the social contexts of the particular time and place, for the people who participate in them. Thus whatever we think of Christendom, this has been the social setting in which many Christian preachers have been called to work.

When Christianity is seen as a publicly acceptable faith, those who preach it have both wider scope and a more delicate and dangerous responsibility than those who operate within the walls of a settled, gathered community. On the one hand, there is the opportunity to address not only individuals and Christian communities, but also the societies of which they are a part and whose structures deeply shape those individuals’ and communities’ lives. There is the opportunity to work towards the transformation of those societies.[15] There is the opportunity to speak to rulers as well as the ruled, indeed to call those rulers to account. Testimony to all this is borne by the sheer size of the basilicas built to accommodate the newly enlarged congregations. Even those who were not present would have felt the influence of what was taught there as it shaped, in various ways, the ideology and practice of the empire. The preaching giants of the early Christendom era, Chrysostom and Augustine, exemplify the enormous influence such preaching may exercise.[16]

Edwards summarizes well the nature of preaching under such a régime, referring to the major religious and social reforms across Europe instigated by the Emperor Charlemagne in the ninth century: ‘A major goal of promoting preaching in the Carolingian reform was socializing new peoples into the Christian faith.’[17] Later, a quintessential example of this kind of preaching was that which became central to the life of Geneva under the leadership of John Calvin.[18] The fact that converted and unconverted were gathered in churches presented a huge opportunity. ‘Those to whom [Calvin] preached were, he believed, either in a fearful plight under the wrath of God for their sin, or they were believers who needed to be encouraged and urged to strain every effort to arrive at the salvation which was theirs in heaven.’[19] The Evangelical preaching of the eighteenth century and later also owed much to the ‘Christendom’ context in which it was born.[20]

An adjustment in the focus and tone of preaching is natural when its setting moves from ‘community interpretation’ to the ‘public speech’ of Christendom. With a much larger group of people, one can probably assume much less in prior knowledge of the faith and the Scriptures. When, by and large, baptism as a mark of ‘belonging’ to Christ and his people precedes an articulate understanding of the elements of Christian ‘belief’ or deliberate Christian ‘behaviour’, there will be a lot of groundwork to lay and go on laying as new generations enter the Church’s life. Thus in early medieval Britain, for a populace which had been ‘Christianized’ yet remained largely untaught, Aelfric led the way in a revival of catechetical preaching – not simply for ‘catechumens’, for that group was now largely non-existent since the rise of infant baptism, but rather for all the people.[21] It became all the more crucial that such instruction should take place, lest the very notion of what it means to be ‘Christian’ should get so watered down as to be meaningless. This, of course, is exactly