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Protagonist Corner
Great Preaching in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
Louis c. Schueddig
Atlanta, Georgia
Growing up in the Midwest in the 1950’s, most Sunday mornings our mother, my sister, and 1 headed to our loeal Episeopal Church while my grandmother, an immigrant from Germany and its Reformed ?rotestant tradition, headed upstairs to her room to listen to foe Protestant Radio Hour. In those days, “The Protestant Hour” was heard on more than 600 stations in almost all fifty states. It was at foe head of its class of religious radio broadcasts that enjoyed foe luxury of free airtime before de-regulation of foe airwaves in the early 1980’s did away with most of them. Itfeatured the best Protestantpreachersofthe second half of the twentieth century, icons like Edmund Stcimie, John Redhead, Robert Goodrich, and Theodore Parker Ferris. Each was given a twelve-week series that generated lasting relationships with listeners. Stcimie, a Lutheran, preached the longest, two full decades, before retiring as Professor of Homiletics at Union Seminary in New York. He was also probably the best in terms of both content and delivery. Atfoeheighto^inlineProtestafo religion in ^ e r ic a these preachers’passionate allegiance to foe power ofthe biblical text provided a platform for helping foe country reflect theologically on World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, the Korean conflict, foe Cold War, foe rise of Communism, foe growth of uburbia,juvenile delinquency, and moral decay across foe U.S., as well as a perceived host of other grave threats to society. There was no partisan divide on these issues in society; foe future ofthe entire world seemed at stake, and for those in foe Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Episcopal traditions, it was for many the only worship experience in foe week, especially for foe house-bound, those in hospitals, prisons, or overseas in foe Armed Forces. “The Protestant Hour” played a unique role in foe history of America in those complex decades. As directorofthe agency that produced “The Protestant Hour,” now heard on more than 200 stations as “Day I,” I transitioned to retirement to oversee the restoration of archived programs from 1945 to 1992, recordings that werc swiftly deteriorating in their original formats. I read 1,998 sermon transcripts, catalogued and summarized each one, and when foe digital restoration was completed, I listened to nearly all the programs. What I learned was just how great Protestant preaching was in that era. Gne of foe more obvious differences from sermons of today was in foe use of storytelling which has become a seedbed for preachers seeking creativity, humor, pathos, and a pastoral human touch in their sermons. In my hearing today, I find foe preacheris stories often launch with a personal anecdote, usually humorous. There is a lot of “let me tell you what happened yesterday when our two year old…,” and you can fill in foe blank. The listener in a post World War 11 America got a good story all right, but it was almost never about foe preacher. In fact, listeners ended up knowing very little about foe person of foe preacher. Vastly equipped with stories from history , literature, science, foe battlefield, gospel hymns, and of course theology, these stories seemed to find their narrative in a reservoir of learning that if brought to foe pulpit today may sound off-putting and stilted; and yet, 1 wonder if the erudition of
Easter 2015
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“The Protestant Hour” preaehers just may have helped the ehureh’s eause In a time of growing soeial disease. ©bviously quoting Plato, Milton, Shakespeare, Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer, and so many others may not fit our eurrent social media culture, but I wonder if it is always necessary for toe preachers of today to personalize stories in ways that can frequently stumble into banality. Biblical storytelling is a homiletical tradition that is never meant to over-shadow toe text. It teaches ways to best amplify toe Scriptures. I sense folks in toe pew really want to get to toe Gospel and have learned so much about the personal life of their preacher that they have grown weary of self-focused sermons that seem to take forever to weave their way to toe Good News. I recently heard,and laterread,asermon that began w itheightp^^rafathattold a personal story that occurred in another congregation, in another town the preacher had served more than a decade ago. In telling the story, toe preacher used toe first personal singular (I) a dozen times. Finally when the gospel reading for the day was presented, you could almost see toe congregation lean in and listen-up. It was as if the sermon finally began. Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other social media seem to demand self-revelation . It might have seemed unseemly in an earlier era to reveal private matters to a congregation as is so common today, but 1 urge preachers to plumb the archives of “The Protestant Hour” programs from those early years to learn better how to take a back seat to toe star of the show, toe Gospel. Next year, 2015, marks the seventieth anniversary of “The Protestant Hour/Day 1.” It has never missed a Sunday broadcast in all those years. It wifi take great effort, as is now being planned, to make those early broadcasts available online through toe Dayl.org website, but when that happens, it will give seminaries, ^e^hers, and lay persons who are hungry for toe best in classical preaching, a resource that represents the finest preaching of a generation. Some wifi argue they are passé, but I argue they are a treasure trove for anyone committed to ^oclaiming toe Good News in ways that can revive and feed hungry souls everywhere.
Note For more information on “The Protestant Hour” archive collection contact the Rev. Peter Wallace, president and executive director of “Day 1,” at 2715 Peachtree Road, Atlanta, Georgia 30305, or at pw؛dlace@dayl.org.
Journalfor Preachers
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