Academy News

The Academy of Homiletics is excited to announce the speakers for the 2010 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.  We also are including the scheduled highlights for the conference.  The hosting city of Atlanta, with its national heritage in ministry, social justice, and public service, offers a unique forum for our conference theme, The Call to Preach.  With such promise, we look forward to the prospect of a provocative meeting!

Please remember that the Academy of Homiletics will meet this year in affiliation with SBL.  Registration with both conferences will be necessary. However, we have streamlined the process at a reduced rate for our Academy with this link; and therein you also may take advantage of an additional significant discount for early SBL registration by May 31st.

Academy of Homiletics – 2010 Conference Theme and Call for Papers

The “Call to Preach” is riddled by Scripture, riddled with theology, and to be sure riddles our preaching.  One’s theology of preaching is often expressed through a theology of call.  Divine inspiration and divine sanction raise critical questions about call narratives in Scripture. The voice of the pulpit claims authority in the Church for devotional lives of personal faith and public lives of moral action or social justice.  At times, distorted notions of call mark tragic theological and social barriers to pulpit access. Who is allowed to preach?  What is allowed in preaching?  How?   Homiletic methodology and pedagogy wrestle no less with these same dynamics from The Call to Preach. Both our students’ embrace and passive resistance to the tasks of learning homiletics in our classrooms revolve often around sacred appeals to call. The anguish over sermon critique consistently reveals distress to call narratives and divine activity. And yet the in-breaking mystery of revelation in preaching, even with all of our inadequacies, abuses, or frailty, is somehow illumined by the mystery of call. This year’s conference theme and “call” for papers offer no fewer challenges and opportunities to learn, explore, and press our scholarship. We welcome your paper submission to one of the nine available workgroups. 

2010 Conference Program Highlights 

Thursday

4:00 – 6:00 pm     Registration

6:00 pm     Opening Worship.  Dr. Bent Flemming Nielson, Associate Professor, Copenhagen University, Denmark, will preach. 

7:00 pm     Welcome Reception

7:30 – 9:00 pm     Featured Event: "Fireside Chat with the Elders" on the Annual Meeting’s theme.  Participants will be: Christine King Farris, Professor Emerita, Spelman College, sister of Rev., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; David Buttrick, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University; Henry Mitchell, Professor Emeritus, Interdenominational Theological Center; Joan Delaplane, Professor Emerita, Aquinas Institute of Theology. 

Friday

9:00 am     Morning Worship.  Rev. Seung-Nam Kim will preach in the Korean "Chang" folk opera preaching tradition. 

10:00 am     Keynote Address by Rev. James Lawson, civil rights activist, non-violence workshop trainer, and pastor.

11:30 am     Keynote Address by Dr. Diana Hayes, Womanist theologian in the Roman Catholic tradition, Professor at Georgetown University. 

1:45 – 4:30 pm     Workgroups – Papers

6:30 – 7:30 pm     Featured Tour: The historic civil rights church, Ebenezer Baptist Church

7:30 – 8:30 pm     African American Caucus Worship:  The Academy of Homiletics and Ebenezer.  Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor at Ebenezer Church, will preach.

Saturday

9:00 am     Morning Worship.  Dr. Jana Childers of San Francisco Theological Seminary and First Vice President of the Academy of Homiletics will preach. 

10:00 am     Keynote Address by Dr. Jacquelyn Grant, Womanist theologian, Director of the Center for Black Women in Church and Society, Professor at Interdenominational Theological Center. 

11:30 am     Business Meeting

6:00 – 9:30 pm     Reception and Banquet.  Ambassador, Rev. Andrew Young, civil rights activist, politician, and minister, will address banquet attendees.

President, Academy of Homiletics