Predigt als Sprachgeschehen gelebt-religiöser Praxis

Both preaching and listening to sermons means acting in complex lifeworlds through language. Experiencing a sermon is the result of numerous factors such as patterns in religious culture, expectations concerning churches and pastors or the specific way in which listeners deal with religious symbols. Insights from homiletics, phenomenology, social sciences, linguistics and other fields provide a multifaceted horizon for research into these processes. Based on this, Peter Meyer develops his approach, analyzing the lived experience of sermons by qualitative empirical methods and through a cross-cultural comparison. This opens the field of preaching for discourses in the theory of religion as well as of language. Choosing the USA as a basis for comparison allows for an in-depth analysis of the religious vitality of sermons. As a result, the religious functionality of preaching today is open to theological questions. Thus the chances and limitations of church and religious practice in the context of preaching become clearer.