Preaching in a Changing Culture: An Interview with N.T. Wright...Continued from page 1

We have problem that people a hundred years ago didn’t have at all. People now are very used to very slick, high tech, quick-fire mass media. A hundred years ago people didn’t have radio, didn’t have TV’s. They were used to reading long sermons, used to sitting through long sermons, although they may have suffered through some of them. There was a sense that intelligent people – and even not so intelligent people -- were prepared to try to listen because that was all the entertainment there was. Now people have their appetites so geared to the half-minute sound bites, and preaching just ain’t like that! I think we shouldn’t collude with that, but at the same time we have to preach in a way that holds people’s attention. Otherwise we’re just wasting time.

Preaching: You mentioned that in previous generations people were used to reading and listening to long sermons. It seems that the sermon itself has lost its place in the culture. There was a time, less than a century ago, that the New York Times in Monday editions would print excerpts of the sermons from the city’s major churches.

Wright: That would happen in the early years in the twentieth century in England when the Herbert Hensley Henson, the Canon of Westminster, would have his sermons printed in the London Times on Monday mornings. Then he was Dean of Durham through the First World War and they didn’t print his sermons; I think he was a bit miffed about that.

I think there was a transition for us in the UK around that time, and certainly today if you want to publish a book of sermons, unless your name happens to be Rowan Williams [Archbishop of Canterbury] then you probably better not admit that they were sermons. Turn them into chapters of a book and that’s different.

Preaching: You are so widely known within the church because of your writing, and as a bishop you have an administrative responsibility as well. Recognizing the diverse roles in which you serve, what do you see as the place of preaching within your ministry?

Wright: It is hard to say -- to me that is r

ather like saying, “Can you describe the place of the circulation of the blood in your overall life?” It is something that is happening, it has been happening for 35 years. Even when I have been on sabbatical I still preach from time to time. If I have been away from the pulpit for a long holiday, for a month or so, there is almost a sigh of relief when I get back to writing and preaching a sermon again. There is that sense of: this is what I am supposed to do. Now I am nearly sixty, and I can honestly say that preaching has been part of my vocation, I was made to do it. I think I have been prepared to do this all my life.