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BOOK REVIEW: JOHN S. MCCLURE

THE INTERDENOMINATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CENTER

BOOK REVIEW: JOHN S. MCCLURE

OTHER-WISE PREACHING: A POSTMODERN ETHIC FOR HOMILETICS
ST. LOUIS: CHALICE PRESS, 2001, $26.99

SUBMITTED TO DR. WALLACE S. HARTSFIELD II

IN PARTIAL COMPLETION OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
CAM 856: BIBLICAL PREACHING IN THE POST-MODERN WORLD

BY

ANTHONY D. CLINKSCALES

ATLANTA, GEORGIA
FEBRUARY 17, 2010

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BOOK REVIEW: JOHN S. MCCLURE

John McClure acknowledges that 21st century homiletics has evolved through
various schools of thought regarding preparation for and the presentation of Christian
proclamation. McClures organization affords readers the facility to follow logical
progressions through homiletical schools of thought that have led to 21 st century
postmodern thought in biblical hermeneutics and homiletics. McClures erudition in the
field is affirmed by his extensive references to related scholarship; he summarizes
several authors arguments and relates the summaries in this thorough discussion. For
McClure, a postmodern ethic for homiletics requires and awareness and sensitivity to
the movement, other-wise homiletics. Essentially, other-wise homiletics exemplifies
homiletics that is other-inspired and other-directed. Moreover, this homiletic
movement is influenced on one hand by post-Marxist forms of critical reason and
ideological suspicion, while on the other hand influenced by poststructuralist and
deconstructionist models of textual criticism and subjectivity.
McClure organizes this book in essay-like chapters following a preface and
introduction that aid the reader by stating his purpose and methodology, and offering
working definitions of essential terms related to homiletic deconstruction and
Emmanuel Levinas. McClure affirms that preaching is leaving itself in order to find
itself through the deconstructions of the four overlapping authorities that are
fundamental to Christian faith: (1) the authority of the Bible, (2) the authority of
tradition, (3) the authority of experience, and (4) the authority of reason.
Deconstruction exposes dangerous binary operations that can exist at the heart of
ontologies as well as non-foundational systems of thought, which can engender social
closure, oppression, and suffering. In addition, deconstruction exposes subtle
dialectical or therapeutic forms of thought that can be used to mask true critique.
McClure uses Jacques Derridas term, erasure, to describe the negative term in a
dialectic that needs to be reformulated, reoriented, or replaced. In essence, McClure
suggests that deconstruction, a form of critique, proceeds rationally and philosophically
with an aim toward ethical conversion (metanoia) and rebirth in preaching. McClure
clearly states that he seeks to show that Levinas ethical deconstruction of ontology and
human discourse, rooted as it is in the interruption of the totality of Being by the face of

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the other, permits both a radical critique of homiletics and the sustained development of
an ethical-theological homiletic theory. Having stated his purpose, McClure proceeds
to expound on the four authorities that undergird Christian faith in each chapter.
In chapter one, Exiting the House of Scripture: Preaching and the Centripetal
Canon, McClure argues that the authority of the Bible is primarily centripetal power
(exousia) and centrifugal power acting on the world; it pulls those within its orbit
inwardinculturating, shaping, forming, and constructing identity. McClure suggests
that this feature, also praised by John Calvin, is the reason why many preachers like to
view the Bible as Scripture in that it has the potential of renewing the Christian
communitys identity and reviving Christian institutions and practices in a fragmented
culture. For McClure, the late modern situation indicates that the Bibles authority is
increasingly associated with its world-exiting function, not its possibilities for
intertextual or radical orthodox identity-formation. Nonetheless, McClure quotes
Wesley A. Kort stating that the challenge for biblical interpretive work in a postHolocaust generation is how to give up positions and identities even the positions and
identities of critical detachment and iconoclasm, in a culture of possession and
narcissism. Thus we have the tension between reading the Bible in order to foster
identity and reading the Bible as subversive of identity. McClure suggests that the Bible
deconstructs itself, including its own revelation, grammar, language, and systems of
denotation in such a way as to place the exegete into a certain proximity to the texts
others. In other words, when we read the text of a book or the textuality of daily life, we
are always identifying with characters or themes and making decisions about where we
stand in relation to the actions or arguments presented. McClure raises the question:
From what position can we (the readers) read words that self-erase toward what is
otherwise than language (and Being) itself? McClure discusses various approaches and
dialectics, which guide readers in the direction of being intentional about Biblical
authority and aware of the Biblical connotations and denotations embraced.
In chapter two, Exiting the House of Tradition: Preaching and Countermemory,
McClure shows how memory and tradition in preaching become countermemory and
countertradition. McClure begins his argument by asserting that preaching is a living
practice of memory and negotiates the memory between an ancient canon and the lived

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experience of succeeding generations. Focusing on the sermon preparation process,

McClure looks at how preachers use the biblical words and their contexts in unique
waysappropriating at least four forms of memory: kerygmatic memory, mimetic
memory, historicist memory, and countermemory. Kerygmatic memory relates to how
preachers designate and identify themselves and the community regarding canonical
denotations, the ancient kerygma, and our position within tradition and context. The
preacher readapts the habits, customs, legends, and rituals that developed around the
sacred words of scripture. Mimetic memory, or imitation, in preaching allows preachers
to use the biblical text as an analogy or equivalent model to be imitated within our
contemporary context. According to McClure, the preacher relies on three competencies
when utilizing mimetic memory: first, the preacher must have the capacity for
identifying action in general by means of its structural features; second, the preacher
must have the capacity for identifying the symbolic mediations of action in both ancient
and contemporary contexts; third, the preacher must have a capacity for narration.
Historicist memory is a direct result of the printing culture, and strives to recollect and
reconstruct the past. In a sermon, the congregation is invited to live in some continuity
of intention and purpose with reconstructed faith communities from the past.
Countermemory, which arises out Descartes suspicion of all traditions and canonical
theories undergirding historicism, wants to radicalize the function of memory as a
whole and to suggest how new kerygmatic themes and mimetic rituals and practices
might emerge in ministry and preaching. McClure affirms a type of genealogical
countermemory acknowledged by Michel Foucault that corresponds with Levinas
appeal for a disruptive reading of the suffering and vulnerability of the marginalized and
disenfranchised. Foucault encourages a role that points toward an ethical function for
memory.
In chapter three, Exiting the House of Experience: Preaching and Fragmented
Subjectivities, McClure acknowledges that preaching has had to respond to the
hegemony perpetuated by misrepresentations of biblical language and speech.
McClure reads the fragmentation and de-essentializing of experience in
poststructuralism as an invitation for preachers to overcome the fear of otherness and to
feel more deeply the proximity of actual human bodies as the proximity of the glory of

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the Infinite. McClure argues that Levinas idea of proximity requires that we get into the
lives of people through a specific, local, and embodied interaction, rather than
generalizing their experience toward either humanist or Biblicist rhetorical constructs of
the hearer in preaching. For McClure, Levinas idea of proximity disallows any
homiletical attempt to identify, where that means narrativizing hearers lives into either
biblical or culturally typical plotlines or character-types in ways that allow
metanarratives to subsume the multiplicity and strangeness of living. Several
liberation theologians are cited in this chapter along with their commentary to drive the
authors point. Essentially, preachers have to be clear about the impact of the
deconstruction of humanist experience as an authority for their preaching. Chapter
three headings include the following: De-authorizing Authoritarianism; Common
Ecclesial Experience; The Deconstruction of Humanist Experience and the Politics of
Identity; Standpoint Theory and the Struggle for Subjectivity; Fragmented
Subjectivities; Homiletics and Real Bodies; Poststructuralism and Testimonial
Preaching; and Preaching from and for Solidarity, Collaboration, and Affinity with
Others.
In chapter four, Exiting the House of Reason: To the New Homiletic and
Beyond, and chapter five, Other-wise Homiletics: Reason and the Other, McClure
explores the relationship between the deconstruction of reason and homiletics,
including the homiletic movements, ideas, and theories that have emerged over the past
century. Chapter four focuses on the New Homiletic movement in the 1970s and 1980s
as an attempt to resuscitate homiletic reason in the wake of the ethic-undermining factvalue split forced on preachers by logical and scientific positivism during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapter four headings include the following:
Representation and Representationalism; Broadus and Propositional-deductive Reason;
Ontological Reason and the New Homiletic; The Death of God; Toward a Christian
Ontology of Symbols: The Hermeneutic Turn; Buttrick and Phenomenological Reason;
Process Epistemology; and Moving On.
Chapter five is an exploration of the work of various other-wise homileticians
who employ nonfoundational epistemologies and forms of communicative reason.
Within the overarching category of communicative reason, three important variations

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are identified: critical homiletics, cultural-linguistic homiletics, and testimonial

homiletics. In chapter six, Other-wise Preaching, McClure pulls together a practical
vision of other-wise preaching. Chapter five headings include the following:
Communicative Reason; Critical Theory and Critical Homiletics; Habermas and
Homiletics; Feminist Ethics: From a Cognitive to Relational Basis for Knowing;
Feminist Epistemology: De-essentializing the Knowing Subject; Cultural-Linguistic
Homiletics and Moral-Practical Reason; Supplement: Levinas and the Epistemology of
Witness; Witness and Forensic-Fiduciary Reason; and Moving On. Chapter six
headings include the following: Preaching from Ethical Commitment; The Social
Gospel; Liberation Theology; Christus Victor Theology; Theology of Victimization;
Exegeting the Centripetal Bible; Listening to the Textual Margins; Learning
Deconstructive Critical Practices; Experiencing the Centrifugal Tradition of Exegesis
and Interpretation; Speaking with Others; Feedback/Feedforward: Letting Others into
the Decision about What to Preach; Reshaping Memory; Coming alongside of the Other;
Erasure-testimony: Preaching the Word as Perfectly Open Sign; Other-wise Ethos; and
Other-wise Pathos.
McClure offers a masterful contribution to the field of homiletics and
hermeneutics. McClure has helped those of us who seek to be informed of the
contemporary approach to biblical preaching in a post-modern world by taking readers
through the various schools of thought leading to postmodern thought and discussing
the various problems encountered by past and present theologians, homileticians, and
practitioners. After clearly stating his goal and game plan, that is, his purpose and
methodology, the author consistently introduces relevant terms that help to explicate
other-wise preaching. At times, his discussion seems too comprehensive, however,
McClure does a tremendous job in making this discourse palatable to advanced readers.
McClures lexicon and deliberation are deeply entrenched in philosophical, theological,
and ethical rationalization; readers should be familiar with key concepts and theories
regarding these fields prior to reading these essays. Nonetheless, having a dictionary of
theological terms and a collegiate dictionary nearby would be helpful in following
McClure. Postmodern thought has been a long time coming and is a direct result of
biblical Weltanschauung, the ever-changing worldviews regarding biblical

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interpretation. This major contribution will help homileticians to put their biblical
exegesis in perspective, and perhaps be moved to consider the hermeneutical approach
of others including global, racial-ethnic, gender-defined, local, liturgical, and other
contexts. Throughout his book, McClure offers extensive book recommendations for
further studies. I highly recommend this challenging, but much needed text.