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Three Sins of the Mainline: “Relevant” Preaching — 1 Comment

  1. An additional comment on this topic:

    Proponents of relevant preaching often cite a quote attributed to Karl Barth, that preachers should preach ‘with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.’ What is most often overlooked is a further qualification given by Barth himself, that preachers indeed ought to take their Bible and take their newspaper, “but interpret newspapers from your Bible.” The Bible interprets the culture, according to Barth; the approach of relevant preaching often gets it the other way round, with the culture being used to interpret the Bible. For more on this see Chapter 3 of Who’s Minding the Story?