Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Dave Loffman: Sermon to the poets

Dave Loffman's sermon on the poet

An important anti-establishment tradition is sermonry in England with congregations as audiences: John Wycliffe and his Lollards, Robert Browne and his Brownists, George Fox, Roger Williams , Richard Clyfton , John Wesley, Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, John Tillotson, John Howe, Robert South to name but a few. The Dissenters revolted through the act of preaching: the Behemenists, Diggers, Familists, Seekers, Quakers, Shakers, Unitarians, Ranters, Adamites, Presbyterians, Divorcers, Puritans, Remonstrants, Muggletonians, Grindletonians, Soulsleepers, Arminians and Welsh Blasphemers.The nonconformists were rebels yelling, they were part of a cultural revolution that went hand in hand with seventeenth century republicanism. Sermons are a literary form like any other. Think of the beauty and power of the Sermon on the Mount , think of Martin Luther King's great sermon. Think of James Brown's sermon in the Blues Brothers, Billy Graham preaching in front of the crowds. Sermons ar...