Christian Sermons Research Articles

Phenomenon of Fasting in the Early Christian Anglo-Saxon Tradition

: The Old English poem Seasons for Fasting was written in the X century and consists of 230 lines. This article describes it through the prism of fasting in the Old English tradition. Like any other Old English Christian sermon, Seasons for Fasting focused on the moral rules of Christian life. It represented the first procedures for seasonal fasts. The author translated the poem and performed an interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of fasting against the background of the indisputable position of faith in the Anglo-Saxon culture. The Old and New Testaments, as well as the Indo-European myths, showed the deep cultural interconnection of archaic traditions. A detailed idea of divinely revealed truth was reflected already in the earliest Christian texts where references to commandments from the Old Testament intertwined with the moral principles of the New Testament. The goal of the study was to determine the complex nature of the traditional methods used for philological analysis of texts and the semiotic approach to texts. The view of food as sacred and profane was manifested already at the early stages of the religious consciousness development. Traditionally, fasting issues were considered as part of prayer appeals. Seasons for Fasting stressed the New Testament idea that sinners could not enter the Kingdom of God without repentance and awareness of their unrighteous life. The paper highlights the symbolism of fire, mountains, cosmos, sacrifice, submersion, burial, and the Kingdom of Heaven. The article also provides a list of variant addresses to God used in the poem: the Old English period saw a well-developed Christian tradition, which had no direct naming for the devil.

Figurative language and persuasion in CPG sermons: The Example of a Gĩkũyũ televangelist

Abstract As a part of religious discourse, Christian sermons are a “…persuasive discourse par excellence” (Adams 2019:7). This is more pronounced in the Christian Prosperity Gospel (CPG), a system of thought and belief in which preachers The word preacher and speaker are used interchangeably in this paper. attempt to convince audiences to donate to their churches with the expectation that God will reward them with health and wealth. Previous research shows that the use of metaphors and metonymies pervade CPG sermons but an explanation on the mechanisms through which they persuade is rarer. With this in mind and viewing CPG sermons from their persuasive angle; this paper sets out to investigate how metaphors and metonymies are used for persuasion purposes in televised sermons presented in the Gĩkũyũ language Gĩkũyũ is the language of the Agĩkũyũ who are largely found in central Kenya as well as in some other parts of the country. It is a Bantu language classified as a Zone E (E51) language by Guthrie (1971). According to the 2019, Population and Housing Census, the gĩkũyũ is the largest tribe in Kenya at 8,148,668 individuals. The community has dominated in televangelism but the position is changing due to the proliferation of many vernacular television stations. . The data is drawn from authentic televised sermons. The findings indicate that metaphors and metonymies engender persuasion in sermons by affecting the perceived altruism and trustworthiness of a speaker in a sermon. This is done by means of manipulating various forms of distance suggested in the Media Proximization Approach (Kopytowska 2015, 2022). Metaphor is found to affect the axiological, epistemic, temporal and emotional distances while metonymy affects the axiological and spatial distances to activate certain pragmatic presuppositions which make them persuasive in a covert way.

A Study of Pragmatic Acts and Hate Speech Strategies in Christian Sermons in Nigeria

Ideology loaded language may be used as instrument of control and for the production of hate speech and may be linked to the intensity of sectarian violence in contemporary Nigeria. This paper, therefore, evaluates the strategies for hate speech production in Christian sermons using Mey’s (1993) proposal on pragmatic acts, a modification of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) speech act theories. Data, with two sermons from two well-known clerics and obtained from YouTube, has revealed that hate speech were produced through the pragmatic acts of innuendos and name-calling while set-up and co-option methods were deployed for audience participation. Whereas innuendos were linguistically realised as pronouns, name-calling takes the form of adjectives but function as nouns. Set-up and co-option were indirect linguistic strategies meant to empathise and attend to hearers’ face-needs. Pragmatic acts insulate preachers from backlash and highlight Nigeria’s social-political undercurrents. The enactment of hate speech in sermons justifies government initiatives in regulating religious activities.

Postsecular rhetoric of the Pope: a discourse analysis of Pope Francis’ TED Talks

Pope Francis has gained a title as ‘the Pope of Surprises’ for his unprecedented and unconventional papal narratives, personal viewpoints, and equally electrifying mediatised public appearances. One of these surprises was his videotaped appearance on TED. By adopting postsecularism as a conceptual framework, this study examines the dominant discursive features in Pope Francis’ TED Talks. Three main types of narrative features were found: emphasis on the postsecular solidarity between the religious and the secular, negotiating religious doctrinal engagement in public spheres, and finally, de-emphasising the papal magisterial authority. While the surface language of the Pope’s TED Talks operates in a postsecular inclusive discursive spirit, its ontological roots are nevertheless cemented in a Catholic epistemology and a faith-motivated claim for moral theology. The similarities between Christian sermons and TED’s communicative norms and practices make the Pope’s new rhetoric possible without excessive attenuation of the Catholic vocabulary.

Vulnerability in the arena of strength

There is an ambiguity inherent in vulnerability as a part of human life. Beyond mere limitation, recent interdisciplinary research shows that the condition of vulnerability also contains essential life-sustaining resources. This ambiguity is particularly interesting in the context of embodied competition, such as sports. The present study of Christian sermons held on the occasion of international sporting events explores to what degree and in what way the homilies mobilize religious resources to shed light on this ambivalence of vulnerability. The study shows that the sermons in general tend to confirm rather than challenge a conventional conceptualization of vulnerability as limitation. However, it also shows a critical potential, explicitly present in some of the sermons, of mobilizing theological and religious resources for providing a more multi-faceted and even affirmative interpretation of vulnerability in the context of competitive sports.

Invoking Humans in Roman-Era Oaths: Emotional Relations and Divine Ambiguity

Abstract This article examines Roman-era oaths invoking nondeities, especially persons. It argues that rather than invoking quasi-deities or persons to be punished by the gods in case of perjury, as usually understood in the past, these invocations could have two concurrent functions: honoring the invoked persons and affirming a statement. Though such invocations had limited legal power, they were commonly practiced throughout the period, as demonstrated in various textual genres, including Latin poetry and rhetoric, texts of the Second Sophistic, Jewish rabbinical writings, and 5th-century Christian sermons. Furthermore, nondivine invocations were frequently combined and mingled with divine invocations, with only theologically inclined authors attempting to define them clearly as a separate category. This interpretation has significance for understanding some equivocal oaths, such as the oath by the emperor, as well as for our perception of oaths in general as a speech act with functions going beyond the affirmation of a statement.

Метафизика пространства как эпистемологическая основа гетеродоксальной теологии и историографии Исаака Ньютона

The article deals with the Newtonian concept of space, which became not only the basis of classical mechanics, but also the central component of Newton’s Christian theology and his non-canonical preaching. The author of the paper analyses the ontological dualism of the thinker. Newton distinguished absolute and relative space, defending the principles of ontological dualism. It is revealed that Newton’s ontological dualism is directly caused by his theological conclu­sions about the presence of God in the Universe. It was characteristic for Newton to combine the ideas in physics and theological metaphysics into one indivisible unity. It is found out that the English scientist regarded the absolute space as in­herent to God, and relative spaces as characteristic of the Universe in which we exist and which we can explore. Newton formulated the basic principles of his “scientific” Christian homiletics, non-canonical and often heterodox from the view of the Anglican religion. It is revealed that Newton’s Christian sermon was intended for an extremely narrow circle of people, mainly his followers Newtonians and the members of the Royal Society. An attempt is made to ana­lyse the effectiveness of Newtonian “scientific” homiletics in the context of the social life of England in the late 17th – early 18th centuries.

Herut and Eleutheria: Specifics of the Biblical Interpretation of Freedom

The concept of “freedom” is one of the most defining in the European cultural and philosophical matrix. It is based on a synthesis of Judeo-Christian ideas, categories of Ancient philosophy and Roman law. An analysis of philosophical and historical sources suggests that this synthesis took place in the Christian sermon of an inner freedom, which is associated primarily with the epistles of Paul the Apostle. It is the paradox of Christian freedom, which is based on the recognition of universal sinfulness as a source of non-freedom, and overcoming it on the basis of love, is the basis for further philosophical transformations of this concept. This internal antinomy allowed the concept of “freedom” to take a central place in the hierarchy of Western social and legal values.

Using Sermons to Study Religions’ Influence on Political Behavior

The effects of religion on political behavior are difficult to study for a number of reasons. One difficulty is that “religion” is not a singular entity and is thus unlikely to have a unidirectional effect on political behavior. Another difficulty is that everyone in a particular place and time might be embedded in the same set of religious practices, such that the counterfactual is difficult to assess. In response to these and other challenges, we suggest opening up the black box of religion in order to examine the influence of its component parts. Specifically, we focus on exposure to sermons. We describe a study about the impact of Christian sermons in sub-Saharan Africa on reactions to inequality. We discuss the approach’s advantages and limitations and discuss how to integrate it with the study of other aspects of religion and how the approach might apply to other domains of political behavior.

Kázání pro dominikánky v klášteře u sv. Anny na Starém Městě pražském na začátku 18. století

This article deals with a collection of four printed Christian sermons brought out between 1706 and 1721 and intended for Dominican nuns receiving the habit at St. Anne Convent in the Old Town of Prague. It focuses on these sermons from a historical perspective as well as a theological perspective and points out topics that keep occurring regularly in the texts – particularly the self­-presentation of the entering girl’s family (reading their coat of arms, important events from the family’s history), enclosure and spiritual life in the nunnery. First, the article follows a collection of three sermons written up by Dominican order preachers, especially a sermon designated for Ludmila Markvartova from Hradek. By way of these examples the article refers particularly to common topics of monastic life. Second, this essay analyses a sermon written up by the Jesuit Vaclav Nerlich and intended for Johana Agnes Baptistina Minetti. This lecture differs significantly from the previous three sermons by its deep and detailed form but also by its theological tone (the typical Jesuit approach to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary). It becomes apparent that these sermons intended for nuns served not only as a presentation of spiritual topics but also as a celebration of their families. However, the exact circumstances of their origin remain uncertain.

Создание пограничного культурного кода в иконографии святых Георгия и Христофора как особый тип металингвистической христианской проповеди

Создание пограничного культурного кода в иконографии святых Георгия и Христофора как особый тип металингвистической христианской проповеди

Представление о душе и теле в древнеанглийской традиции

The author examines the 10 th century ancient English poem Soul and Body through the prism of the soul, spirit and body in the Old English tradition, which has survived in two versions. The first, which was part of the poetry book Exeter Book, is a short version of the conversion of the unfortunate soul to the flesh. The second version is an expanded version of the poem, listed in the Vercelli Book along with Christian sermons and poems, also represents the con- version of the tormented soul to the flesh, as well as a monologue of the saved soul. However, unfortunately, the speech of the redeemed soul was not fully preserved due to damage to the Vercelli Book collection. This article provides an author's translation of the second version of the poem. The article focuses on the dualism of René Descartes. Thus, an extended version of the Old English poem Soul and Body precedes the dualism of René Descartes, whose main ideas are the duality of the ideal and the material, the independence of the soul and body. The philosophy of René Descartes is to accept a common source – God as the creator who forms these two independent principles that we find in this poem. The spirit, as shown in the work, is the divine principle in man, created in the image and likeness of God, and appears as the highest part of the soul, and the soul, in turn, is the immortal spiritual principle. In the framework of the Judeo- Christian culture, a central doctrine of the presence of the soul arose, suggesting the elevation of man over all other living beings due to the presence of it. According to religious ideology, a person’s position in the dolly and mountain worlds directly depends on the purity of the believer’s soul, on his refusal from sinful thoughts and deeds. As soon as the Judeo-Christian teaching is fixed as the main religion, a person endowed with a soul is considered as the only ration- al creature created in the image and likeness of God. The existence of the soul is not limited only to the Judeo-Christian idea of the world around us, for example, the Quran also contains the idea of the unity of man and soul, and, undoubtedly, the soul of a righteous Muslim ascends to heaven after death.

The discourse of divorce in conservative Christian sermons

ABSTRACTWork on religious discourse is still limited and linguistic research on preaching scarce. The present study makes explicit the ways that pastors in the conservative Protestant Christian church preach about divorce. Relying on a corpus of sermons on divorce from SermonAudio, this study employs theoretical and methodological principles derived from corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis. In so doing, it explores in what terms pastors frame and approach the topic of divorce and what their language reveals about how they want their listeners to perceive divorce. Findings point to two dominant Discourses of divorce in popular conservative Christian sermons: Divorce as a Highly Restricted Space and Divorce as Male. These Discourses frame divorce in terms antithetical to the reality of divorce and likely bolster statistics on divorce in the Christian church. This study challenges existing linguistic work on sermons which often concludes that contemporary preaching has largely departed from presenting absolutes.

Феминистская интерпретация христианских священных текстов и современная феминистская христианская проповедь

Феминистская интерпретация христианских священных текстов и современная феминистская христианская проповедь

Are We Speaking the Same Language? The Influence of Scripture Translations on How Christians and Muslims Talk about God

The publication of the Turkish Common Language translation in 2001 ( Kutsal Kitap) helped Protestant Christians in Turkey develop their own unique subdialect of Turkish for discussing religious and theological topics. Consequently, there is now a kind of language barrier between Christians and the average Muslim. I evaluated a variety of written texts and oral discourse produced by Turkish Muslims as well as translations of the Qur’an. With regard to the names and forms of address used for God, I found that usage in Turkish closely correlates with the Arabic of the Qur’an. I also found that dialogue in Christian sermons and texts also closely corresponds with the translation choices made in the 2001 Turkish Bible. I conclude that where subdialects are sufficiently diverse, a different translation for each dialect or social group will be helpful for the society as a whole.

The Sociopragmatics of Preaching in an American Christian Sermon

The Sociopragmatics of Preaching in an American Christian Sermon

Ethnicity and the Pragmatic Strategies in American Christian Sermons

This study is concerned with the pragmatic aspects in American Christian sermons by White-American and African-American preachers. The study aims at detecting the noticeable differences between preachers in terms of the pragmatic strategies and tracing the social variable of ethnicity. The data under scrutiny are selected from official websites in forms of videos transcribed by the researchers and then analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The two types of analysis help the study to arrive at a variety of conclusions, the most central of which is there are considerable differences between the White-American and African-American preachers regarding their use of the pragmatic strategies. It also concludes that the social variable of ethnicity affects the African-American preachers more than their counterpart.

Perceptions of danger and co-occurring metaphors in Buddhist dhamma talks and Christian sermons

AbstractThis article focuses on an analysis of the perception of danger in a sample of conservative Evangelical Christian sermons and Thai Forest Tradition dhamma talks. Through the analysis of keywords, frames, conceptual metaphors, and patterns of agency in the use of metaphor, it seeks to explore how one Christian believer and one Buddhist practitioner conceptualize their ways of being religious. We argue that this specific set of dhamma talks has a primary focus on an individual actively progressing within the practice of meditation while interacting with elements that may be beneficial or harmful to that progress. In contrast, this particular sample of sermons has a primary focus on two groups or categories of people, fallen sinners and true Christians, and their strictly defined hierarchical relationship to God. Aspects of this relationship are often defined in terms of power, fear, and danger, with shifting intersections between active behavior and being acted upon by greater forces or powers. We conclude that a cognitive linguistic approach to analyzing perceptions of danger within a specified genre of religious discourse can be useful in producing a picture of how an individual religious believer within a particular context and moment in time views reality, their position within it, and their progression through it.

Textual migration in Ebenezer Obey’s juju music

ABSTRACTThis study examines textual migration as one of the principal sources of Ebenezer Obey’s juju music in the framework of free borrowing that characterised the oral composition and performances of Yoruba traditional chanters. In indigenous Yoruba societies, in which there was no patent law governing artistic productions, free borrowing allowed chanters to pick song items from different sources within the context of performance to deck up composition. Obey has expertly made use of this artistic graft herein referred to as textual migration. The study has identified three major sources of textual migration deployed by Ebenezer Obey. The first is from Yoruba oral genres such as oriki (praise poetry), incantatory poetry, festival songs, itan (story) and myths. The second is from Christian oral genres and heritage such as hymnal composition and Christian sermons or evangelical discourses. Obey’s third textual migration derives from Yoruba folk music and older forms of popular music in Yoruba and other parts of the world. Intertextuality and the concept of polyvocality would be used to analyse Obey’s song-poetry. Intertextuality studies interactions between and among texts with a view to establishing the modality of relationship between such texts. Polyvocality is a conceptual notion that posits that individual speakers’ utterances are overpopulated and are largely drawn from various sources that individual speakers might not consciously notice. These theories are therefore appropriate analytical tools to study the artistic graft that operates in Obey’s music.

Broadway Musicals and the Christian Sermon: Communicating Moral Reasoning, Church Values, and Prosocial Behaviors

ABSTRACTThis article considers the influence of Broadway musicals on the spiritual growth, prosocial attitudes, church values, and moral reasoning of adults when used in Christian congregational worship. Can a church structure and use Broadway musicals in sermons to encourage its lay congregation to identify moral reasoning and recognize core church values and prosocial ideas through sermons based on Broadway musical theater? We applied humanistic psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning and development considered along with the church's stated core values and prosocial behavior to test if these themes were reflected in the rhetoric of sermons based on Broadway musicals presented from 2008–2015. Findings indicate that this series was well received by the congregation and leadership. Suggestions for further research and church applications for Christian education are given. This research highlights the importance of church archives and library support for the further development of information about the church and its role in society.