James Harris
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Beyond The Tyranny Of The Text
$25.99Add to cartPreachers and students of preaching need help communicating hope! They want their sermons to communicate the promises of scripture, so that people can envision a new world in which their lives will be transformed. Preachers want to experience a new sense of freedom in their preaching, and to extend liberation based on their reading and interpretation of the scripture.
James Henry Harris introduces interpretation theory and continental philosophy as a resource for preachers to resist and overcome interpretive oppression, and lays out a new theory of scriptural interpretation. He analyzes philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics as a helpful guide for modern preachers, and incorporates in his analysis of the lived experience of the Black church. Harris highlights the preaching of several 19th and 20th century Black women, including Jarena Lee, Maria Stewart, and Mary Evans.
Beyond the Tyranny of the Text develops a five-part method for preaching that stretches from preparation to proclamation, and demonstrates how this method for interpretational creativity emerges from fidelity to the text. Harris demonstrates his method with sermonic exegesis of the Book of Jonah. With this new process of reading, rereading, un-reading, writing, and un-writing the text, the author offers wisdom and tools for reflection and illumination.
At its core, Beyond the Tyranny of the Text challenges the field of homiletics and all preachers to un-write like Jesus Christ: to get in front of the text, to understand preparation and preaching as a creative and transformative enterprise.
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Word Made Plain
$27.00Add to cartPreaching mediates the word of God into a cultural matrix. And no American preaching has done so more effectively and powerfully than African American preaching, claims noted homiletician James Harris. Known for its rhetorical strength, social-justice orientation, and dead-on connection to the community’s lived experience, black preaching is here analyzed and proposed as a model for all preaching.
Harris grounds black preaching in the self-understanding of the historic black church and its most prominent preachers, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Samuel Proctor. Harris also explores the hermeneutical and aesthetic dimensions of preaching, especially at the intersection of sacred text and the broader culture. He then lays out the specific distinguishing characteristics of black preaching, including verbal cadence and rhythm, use of gestures, and, most thoroughly, the narrative model of the sermon. His last chapter, “Preaching Plainly,” provides specific instructions on how to put the sermon together employing this model. -
Preaching Liberation
$26.00Add to cartIn Preaching Liberation, Harris is not talking about Liberation Theology but about the power of the Word Of God to transform and liberate the listener. Harris examines preaching in the African-American traditon and how the idea of liberation is deeply rooted in that tradition. 136 pages from the Fortress Press Resources for Preaching series
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Pastoral Theology : A Black Church Perspective
$29.00Add to cartPastoral theology is liberation theology because it is grouned in paxis. Its focus is comprehensive and specific. It deals with developing and implementing policies and programs in the church and community that convey the meaning of Christianity in practical life situations.