Four tiers in preaching, denominations, other…
Two brief reflections on my post a month back about four tiers or levels in Christian/theological publishing.
First: I think the tiers/levels I identify there apply to preaching as well. But because preaching is different from writing and especially from the genres and audiences each publishing tier has in view, the levels apply differently. Put another way, it is appropriate and good that there is a scholarly level of writing that very few can or ever will read. It is neither appropriate nor good for there to be preaching like that. Perhaps, I suppose, a chapel connected to Oxford or Harvard could justify that sort of preaching—but even then, it should drop down to a level 3 or even a pinch lower.
The exception proves the rule, in any case. Preaching, in my view, should never be above level 2; and the best preaching hovers between levels 1 and 2. Preaching should not assume a college degree; should not assume much, if any, background knowledge; should not assume much, if any, familiarity with popular culture; should avoid jargon; should avoid mention of ancient languages; should not name drop authors; should not make erudite allusions to great literature. Instead, it should be intelligible, accessible, and immediately relevant to a high school dropout in her 60s who never reads and doesn’t watch much TV, whether Netflix or the news.
Does that mean such a sermon will lack substance, heft, weight, meat, sustenance? No. But it does mean faithful preaching, week in week out, is very difficult indeed.
Second: A friend sent me a link to someone on Twitter—his name is Patrick K. Miller—riffing on my four tiers in relation to both church conferences and church traditions/denominations. I don’t have a Twitter account so I’m not able to look at the whole thread, but (a) the conference tiers seemed both apt and funny, while (b) I don’t think the ecclesial analogues quite worked. Here’s why.
It’s true, in 2023, that American Christians self-sort into churches based on education, class, wealth, and culture. That’s a sad fact. Protestants with graduate degrees like high liturgy; whereas evangelicals on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum are more likely to attend charismatic, storefront, or prosperity churches. Granted.
The author’s implication, however, is flawed. I take Miller to be suggesting that the market comes for us all, churches included, and it’s best we accept this self-sorting and (for eggheads like me) avoid condescension. Agreed on the latter, less so on the former. Why?
Because this self-selection by class is neither inevitable nor universal. It’s contingent. It’s a product of a very particular moment in a very parochial ecclesial subculture. Catholicism and Orthodoxy and Anglicanism are all flies in the ointment here (I often group these together as “catholic” traditions). Both past and present, these traditions encompass high and low, rich and poor, over- and under-educated. Nothing could be “higher” liturgically than these communities, yet the type of person who regularly attends them is not indexed by income or number of diplomas.
It isn’t natural, in other words, it isn’t just the way of the world for well-off folks to go “high” and less-well-off folks to “low.” In fact, this very distinction doesn’t exist in many parts of the world. Go to Catholic Mass or Anglican liturgy in Africa and you’ll see charismatic gifts alongside smells and bells. Eucharistic liturgy is the common inheritance of all God’s people down through the centuries, not just the sniffy or effete. We err when we take our current passing moment as a kind of timeless law. Infinite sectarian fracturing, by doctrine and stye and personal preference, is not the rule in Christian history. Religious liberty plus capitalism plus consumerism plus the automobile plus evangelicalism plus populism plus seeker-sensitivity-ism plus so many other factors—all contingent, all mutable, all evitable—brought this situation to pass. We need not accept those factors. We can reject and oppose them, seek to overturn them.
We are not fated to the present crisis of Christian division. Our churches should not cater to it as a given, but fight it as an enemy. Self-sorting by class is only one way this enemy manifests itself. Let’s not pretend it’s a friend. Expel the evil from among your midst.
