Ethical Approaches to Preaching: Choosing the Best Way to Preach About Difficult Issues

By John S. McClure

Different ethical situations require different homiletical responses. John McClure organizes recent literature on ethics and preaching into four ethical approaches. Does your situation require public moral leadership? Then a communicative ethic is best. Does your situation require the development of countercultural moral character? Then a witness ethic is best. Does your situation require ethical consciousness-raising and organizing for social justice? Then a liberationist ethic is best. Does your situation require genuine moral conversation and the discernment of shared commitments in spite of our differences? Then a hospitality ethic is best. Each ethical approach is briefly and carefully explored, correlated with appropriate contexts and situations, and demonstrated with model sermons. The result is a useful handbook for quickly discerning what ethical approach is needed, how to preach that approach, and what to expect as a result.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781725274556

John S. McClure

John S. McClure is Charles G. Finney Professor of Homiletics and Chair of the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. A former president of the Academy of Homiletics, his writings include The Four Codes of Preaching and Claiming Theology in the Pulpit (with Burton Z. Cooper).

Book preview

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Communicative Ethics

Communicative ethics is a mode of procedural ethics focused on identifying the best intersubjective process for achieving moral consensus.¹ Although German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas is often credited with shaping this ethical approach, it has a long parallel history within communication theory, the development of democratic practices, debate, rules of order (such as Robert’s Rules), and theories of conflict resolution and transformation. Communicative ethicists are pragmatists. They are looking for moral norms that will work for as many people as possible, across all conceivable lines of difference.

A communicative ethic is an intersubjective ethic. It relies on determining and understanding the best arguments put forward by groups of people who occupy clear subject positions within the social order. For the communicative ethicist, the propositions and proposals that are debated must be rational and publicly verifiable. Moral discourse can only be conducted among and by those who are self-reflective social actors—those who see themselves as carving out and living into certain positions on ethical issues that are publicly identifiable and rationally defensible.

Communicative ethics is focused on searching for and applying universally acceptable moral norms. Because of this, when preachers adopt this approach, their understanding of their audience must expand dramatically. The congregation extends far beyond the people sitting in the pews on Sunday morning. Preachers who are communicative ethicists envision their congregation as public and, at least theoretically, universal in scope. The ultimate goal for the communicative ethicist in the pulpit is to articulate moral norms that can be considered, at least for the time being, as right for as many people as possible.² This requires a journey beyond the preacher’s and congregation’s own relatively small world and into other social locations, situations, and lifestyles. The preacher must be broadly consultative and empathic, asking what might be right for persons occupying widely divergent subject positions: different political parties, distinct geographic regions, diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, various cultures and subcultures, differing gender identities, and contrasting abilities and disabilities. Because broad moral consensus is sought, preachers who adopt this approach to ethics take it upon themselves to read widely, listen carefully to public debates, and consult others who are significantly impacted by particular ethical