The Preaching Power of Cardinal John Henry Newman

Abstract

Cardinal John Henry Newman is remembered as one of the greatest preachers of the 19th century. His influence is unrivalled as he drew enormous crowds to hear his Sunday afternoon sermons at St Mary’s at Oxford. Yet many historical accounts of his preaching style reveal what may be labelled as serious defects by modern standards. Eye witnesses report him as having little biblical exegesis, reading from a manuscript with his eyes down, speaking quickly in a monotone voice broken up by long pauses and occasionally not even being loud enough to reach everyone in the room. The question raised, therefore, is: what made John Henry Newman such a great preacher? The comments of his listeners and Newman’s own reflections on preaching reveals that one of the chief characteristics that granted Newman such power from the pulpit was not his ability to exegete and exposit a biblical text, but rather his ability to exegete and exposit his audience. Modern preachers can learn from Newman’s example the ability to exposit an audience on two levels: the general and the particular, and to properly rely upon each when drawing the audience into the biblical text in the preaching event.