Defamiliarizing preaching : a homiletical investigation into the renewal of preaching in the South Korean context

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The preaching ministry has been facing the crisis of boredom and banality in sermons.Although homiletics scholars have tried to overcome this problem, especially scholars wholean towards the New Homiletics, the problem of boring preaching seems to remain. Havingthis in mind, the researcher has tried to find a way towards the renewal and refreshing ofpreaching, especially in the Korean church context, through overcoming and complementingthe limitations of the New Homiletics. The research has resulted in presenting'defamiliarization, the theory of Russian Formalism, as a solution to the problem.Boredom resulting from preaching occurs for several reasons. In this dissertation, familiarityand repetition are presented as among these reasons. In the preaching context as a long-termministry, familiarity and repetition are structurally incurred. It means that the situation is asfollows: a preacher delivers a sermon to the congregation based on the Bible text – from justone textbook – for a long time. In other words, it is the same preacher, the same hearers andthe same text. In addition, the Bible presents similar stories, as in the Gospels. And manypreachers have favourite parts in the Bible from which they preach. In these contexts,occurrence of familiarity and repetition cannot be avoided. Therefore, to refresh and make thesermon 'strange' is an essential need. Defamiliarization may provide a good method.To clearly apply defamiliarization to preaching, the researcher investigated the notion of'impeding perception and tried to find various ways to apply defamiliarization in preaching,with the focus on both the device and the content of preaching. The reason was the need toovercome and complement limitations and weak points identified in both the New Homileticstheory and in Russian Formalism. The suggestion is that a preacher who wants to refreshpreaching to escape the problems of boring preaching should not focus on aspects oftechniques for defamiliarization only, but should also attend to aspects of the content ofpreaching. In addition, the preacher would need to alternate various means to achieve theeffect of impeding perception to prevent the methods he uses from also becoming familiar tothe congregation through repeated use. In this sense, the essential aim of preachers who seekto refresh preaching should be to focus on the story of the Bible, which is strange andmysterious in itself, while using the methods of defamiliarization.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University