{"id":57421,"date":"2021-10-13T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=57421"},"modified":"2021-10-10T17:06:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-10T21:06:59","slug":"research-on-sermons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2021\/10\/research-on-sermons\/","title":{"rendered":"Research on Sermons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

During the COVID lockdown, churches were forced to put their services online.\u00a0 Even after the restrictions were eased and in-person services resumed, many churches continued to stream their services on the internet.<\/p>\n

As a result, thousands of thousands of sermons from all kinds and sizes of churches are online.\u00a0 Which means that researchers can now study them.<\/p>\n

The Pew Research Center<\/a> transcribed nearly 50,000 sermons from 6,431 congregations, then entered them into computers for analysis.\u00a0 A second study<\/a> looked at 13,000 sermons from over 2,000 churches.\u00a0 For legal reasons, the researchers could not use sermons posted on Facebook pages or posted on YouTube, so they drew only on services streamed on church web sites.\u00a0 (In addition to the two links above, here is a link to a series of other\u00a0Pew studies of sermons<\/a>, including those that surveyed the hearers<\/em> of sermons, rather than studying sermons directly.)<\/p>\n

\n

The first study<\/a> found that the median length of sermons was 37 minutes.\u00a0 Catholics have the shortest sermons, with homilies lasting only 14 minutes.\u00a0 Mainline Protestants come in at a median of 25 minutes.\u00a0 Evangelical preachers go on for 39 minutes.\u00a0 Black ministers have the longest sermons, at 54 minutes.<\/p>\n

Research findings are often determined by the tools they use, so the computer analysis did much with word counts, tabulating what words come up most often in churches of various types.\u00a0 Many of those were just ordinary words\u2013\u201csay,\u201d \u201cknow,\u201d \u201clife,\u201d \u201ccome\u201d\u2013or discovery of the already obvious. (evangelicals use \u201chell\u201d and \u201csalvation\u201d more often; mainliners talk about the \u201cpoor,\u201d Catholics use their theological vocabulary such as \u201cEucharist,\u201d Black preachers use a lot of \u201cHallelujahs.\u201d\u00a0 (As always, I wish there would have been a breakdown to the level of denominational differences, so that Lutherans sermons could be analyzed.\u00a0 I suspect they would include Law and Gospel, Word and Sacrament talk.)<\/p>\n

A few word count findings were significant.\u00a0 I was glad to see that 98% of the sermons mentioned \u201cGod\u201d or \u201cJesus.\u201d\u00a0 But I\u2019d like to know which!\u00a0 How many are preaching a generic deity and how many are preaching God incarnate and crucified?<\/p>\n

We also learn that New Testament books of the Bible are mentioned (90%) more often than Old Testament books (61%; some sermons, of course, mention both).<\/p>\n

The second study focused on what, I suspect, many social scientists were most interested in:\u00a0 How sermons addressed politics and national issues.\u00a0 The time-frame included the run-up to the election, so it was found that 67% of the congregations heard at least one sermon that mentioned the elections.\u00a0 Interestingly, only 41% of Catholics did so.<\/p>\n

Of the 71% of evangelicals who mentioned the election, just short of half, 48%, mentioned specific issues.\u00a0 Black ministers mentioned the election as often as Mainline Protestants, at 63%, but most of their emphasis was simply encouraging their congregation to vote.<\/p>\n

As for issues, 44% heard sermons that mentioned racism.\u00a0 But, according to a spinoff<\/a> from the first study, only 4% of the sermons mentioned abortion.<\/p>\n

And despite the media narrative about conservative churches promoting Trump, the research found hardly any endorsement of a specific candidate.\u00a0 There was so little of that, researchers were unable to find a big enough sampling for the computers to track and measure.<\/p>\n

Trying again, researchers took a sample of 535 sermons and read through them.\u00a0 In 61 cases, they felt that the sermon favored either the Republicans or the Democrats, but there was no endorsement of either the party or the candidate by name.\u00a0 But such cases of biased sermons came to only 11% of the sermons sampled.<\/p>\n

I commend to you an excellent article on the study and, more broadly, on the genre of the sermon in general.\u00a0 It appears in the New Yorker<\/em>, of all places, and despite the liberal bias of that publication\u2013see, now I am stereotyping\u2013the article is positive, sympathetic, and informative.\u00a0 Read Casey Cep, What Americans Hear in Church,<\/a>\u00a0who concludes,\u00a0\u201cthe words of sermons matter, even if neither Pew nor the very people who deliver them can ever know precisely how.\u201d<\/p>\n

One final thought:\u00a0 I found the study, while interesting, rather disconcerting.\u00a0 Thousands of pastors\u2013maybe some of you readers\u2013were having their sermons scrutinized without their permission!<\/p>\n

When pastors preach, they are addressing their flock.\u00a0 Sermons are proclaimed in the context of the church, the specific congregation.\u00a0 Not everything pastors say in a sermon might be appropriate for the general public.\u00a0 When you put up your sermon online, your sermon is accessible to that public, for good (perhaps a listener will be converted) or for ill (perhaps a listener will accuse you of \u201chate speech\u201d if you say something he or she disapproves of).<\/p>\n

Insofar as our country clamps down on free speech and religious liberty, this could become a problem, with the internet being used as a means of surveillance of churches.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying don\u2019t stream your sermons, just offering something to think about if things get worse.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0 Preaching in Church<\/a> by Petr Kratochvil via PublicDomainPictures.net, CC0, Public Domain<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because of the COVID restrictions, thousands of thousands of sermons from all kinds and sizes of churches are online.\u00a0 Which means that researchers can now study them. Here are some of the findings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":57428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,42],"tags":[135,9434,1777,2000,11203],"class_list":["post-57421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-social-science","tag-american-christianity","tag-online-church-services","tag-preaching","tag-sermons","tag-study-of-sermons-online-services"],"yoast_head":"\nResearch on Sermons<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Because of the COVID restrictions, thousands of thousands of sermons from all kinds and sizes of churches are online.\u00a0 Which means that researchers can now study them. 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