Reviews for Why Preach: Encountering Christ in God's Word

The average rating for Why Preach: Encountering Christ in God's Word based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-01-08 00:00:00 Steve Antley This is the best book on preaching I have ever read. It got off to a slow start for me. The first chapter, a discourse on theological anthropology, was not what I was expecting and did not really provide me with any new insights. The remainder of the book, however, was phenomenal. The author proposes that preaching is primarily the facilitation of an encounter with Jesus Christ which makes it a different exercise than teaching or catechizing. Preaching is especially different from moralizing, which Cameron really sees as a kind of anti-preaching. Preaching uses stories to lead people to deeper awareness of the story they are living and the presence of Chirst in their story. Preaching should be convsersational without being silly, for ultimately it is a generative activity - a dialogue through which people are renewed and reborn. The author is a Dominican and through this book he brings honor to the order of preachers. He is not narrow in his range of influences/references. They include: Augustine, Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Newman, Balthasar, Benedict XVI, John Paul II, Giussani and other CL thinkers (Albacete, Caron).

Review # 2 was written on 2015-07-14 00:00:00 Don Knox This book asked all the right questions and gave very unsatisfactory answers. That strength in itself, however, makes it a worthwhile read in an age where preaching is a custom "More honor'd in the breach than the observance." Cameron encourages his reader, when preparing his homilies, to ask 'How is Christ happening to me now?', 'In what way is Christ breaking in on my life at this moment?' It is a method very much rooted in the thought of Fr. Luigi Giussani, which I appreciate, yet nonetheless this is one of those books where I found myself yelling at the pages in disagreement. His approach, to my mind, did not take sufficiently into account the rich Catholic tradition of scriptural exegesis, viz. the "four senses" of Scripture still spoken of in the Catechism, and thus I imagine the end result of Cameron's suggestions would be homilies that, while certainly more engaging and meaningful than most, would still fall far short of the great sermons of the Fathers and saints.