Societas Homiletica – day three!

Duke Chapel. Or Cathedral?

Sunday meant late morning. The Church Service started only at 11 am. Some of the participants went to a Southern Baptist church for worship. Others to the chapel on campus, Duke Chapel. (With the size of a cathedral.) I decided to take part in the latter.

The Church was almost full. There was a choir singing and a well prepared sermon by the dean of the chapel. The congregation is interdenominational. Mainline. One thing happened, which I have never experienced. After the service, that took approximately one hour a short communion service started in a small side chapel. We were around fifty persons gathering there. Starting with the Eucharistic prayer with a liturgy similar to the one we have in Church of Sweden we shared the body and blood of Jesus Christ and all was done in fifteen minutes. I saw that many of us Swedish participants took part in the communion. I guess we are used to weekly Eucharist. It was a precious moment although I prefer to have the Eucharist included in the main service.

The side chapel where we celebrated Holy Communion.

The rest of the day was filled with a key note address, workshops and paper presentation. The terminology is interesting. Even if the presenter don’t have a physical paper in her or his hand, it is still named a paper presentation. This happened for instance when Lis Valle shared a video with the heading

Queering Preaching

It was a moving recording of a service where she, as a sermon, had danced a burlesque dance. Rather provocative but also touching. Why is it that some artistic expressions are welcomed in church but others are not? Food for thought!

In the same session Anuparthi John Prabhakar spoke about the Dalit community in India and how worship in this context looks like. A group that traditionally have been prohibited to worship in the temple, because they were untouchable. They had their own religion, using the shade under the trees as their temples. The Deity could possess any person and use this person as a priest – not like in a Hindu temple, where only the Brahmins could talk. So, the religion became very corporate and democratic. When Protestant mission came they built churches and ordained pastors, which meant they were copying the Hindu style, which made the Dalit community uncomfortable. John’s suggestion was that the Church must reconnect to the Dalit roots.

Both the Queer and the Dalit example is about exclusion or inclusion. How do we preach in a way that not only welcome people but also affirms?

The day ended with group reflections. So helpful to reflect together with homileticians from all over the world. The conference and the conversations give me much material to bring back to my own teaching at the Institute.