Theo Pleizier - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Theo Pleizier
Journal of Empirical Theology
In the past, research was done in the Netherlands among pastors to study their attitudes and expe... more In the past, research was done in the Netherlands among pastors to study their attitudes and experiences regarding euthanasia. Also, the attitudes of protestant believers have been studied, however very superficially. This paper presents the results of a survey among 736 parishioners of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands about their experiences, views, and understanding of euthanasia and about what they expect from their pastor. Two-thirds of the respondents are positive about euthanasia being permissible in the Netherlands, and half of them consider euthanasia a possibility for themselves. A parishioner’s theological subdenomination (orthodox, evangelical, middle-orthodox, liberal) is related significantly to their views about euthanasia and pastoral care. Most parishioners value a central role for their pastor at the end of their lives, including those who would possibly consider euthanasia. The relevance of this survey is that a better insight in the parishioners’ wishes ab...
40th Meeting, 2005
284 Theological Concepts in Empirical Homiletics F. Gerrit Immink & Theo Pleizier Utrecht Univers... more 284 Theological Concepts in Empirical Homiletics F. Gerrit Immink & Theo Pleizier Utrecht University The Netherlands 1. Introduction Homiletics is a theory of practice. As a theological theory it not only deals with inter-human discourse and psycho-social processes. Although rhetoric, ...
International Handbook of Practical Theology
ADutch newspaper reported thatthe sales of booksonpraying duringthe COVID-19 pandemic has increas... more ADutch newspaper reported thatthe sales of booksonpraying duringthe COVID-19 pandemic has increased compared to the previous year.B ased upon al ist of these bestsellers, the newspaper concludes that bookso np raying are hard to find and that our houseshavestartedtobecome more like monasteries.The crisis of the pandemic has indeeds parked urgent questions for many: 'what is the meaning of life?' 'what if Ib ecome ill?' or 'what happens when Id ie?'.P raying is ac entral feature of religion in general and of Christianityi np articular(Meyer-Blanck2019). This article is interested in exploring the following:When do people pray,what do people pray about,tow hom do people pray and what do people do when they pray? This practical-theological essayonp raying departs from two paradoxical observations.First,there is something distinctly religious about praying yetpraying is not an exclusively religious practice. Empirical studies in secular spirituality show adecrease in interest in prayer (Zuckerman, Shook,a nd Fuller 2017), but praying is not confined to those who affiliate with religion. Post-secular approaches view prayer as The placeintowhich Ipour my despair and out of which Idragmyoften elusive,often reluctant hope; it is the spaceintowhich Ispiral, as well as the connection that rescues me there; it is the transformative work in which Iamcompelled to engage […]. The connection Ifind in this placeis essential to my being, but what it is to/with/by which Ic onnect,Iam not able to say. (Vosper 2014,i ntroduction) OpenAccess. ©2 022T heo Pleizier,p ublished by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsA ttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The practice of Military Chaplains has been studied from various angles (sociological, historical... more The practice of Military Chaplains has been studied from various angles (sociological, historical, ethical) except from an empirical homiletical perspective. What do military chaplains do when they preach, if ‘preaching’ is the correct label for their (religious) speeches. This paper provides a first introduction to study the actual sermons of military chaplains in order to contribute to homiletical theory. It presents the outline of a research design and presents some of its initial results. The paper is based upon 10 sermons by army and naval chaplains within the context of peacekeeping missions. Three concepts emerge from these data, focussing upon the homiletical activity of military chaplains. They redefine the liturgical conditions for preaching, they witness to sources of wisdom, and they dignify the individual soldier in the presence of Christ. The paper closes with a proposal to understand religious discourse in the military context by presenting a tentative typology that i...
Editorial It was on March 11, 2020, that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandem... more Editorial It was on March 11, 2020, that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Very soon, all of us were affected by the crisis-and way too many people all over the world were and are infected. Writing these lines in July 2021, we count more than 190.000.000 cases and more than four million deaths worldwide. Whereas the vaccination rate increases rapidly in the 'global North,' there are way too few vaccines in the 'global South.' This is just one aspect showing how the health crisis is interwoven with many other crises in our global societies. In March 2020, Christian congregations worldwide had to go digital or find other ways of praying and preaching. But the crisis was not only a challenge for the forms of preaching but also its content. What could and should be said? How can people be comforted and strengthened without preaching weak and banal 'good news'? And again and again the question: How can we speak of God amid a worldwide crisis? For Societas Homiletica it became clear quite soon that the Budapest Conference would have to be postponed (and-God willing-we will meet in Budapest from August 12 to 17, 2022!). But our International Secretary, Prof. Dr. Theo Pleizier, came up with the idea of organizing an Online Conference on "Preaching in Time of Crisis." The International Board of Societas Homiletica supported this idea, and on August 10-12, 2020, the first Online Conference in the history of Societas Homiletica 'took place.' We are glad and honored to present five outstanding papers delivered at the Online Conference in this Special Volume of our International Journal of Homiletics, two from Europe and three from North America (Canada and the USA). Clara Nystrand from Lund (Sweden) compares sermons delivered in Sweden in the time of the Spanish flu 1918 with sermons delivered in the first phase of the Corona pandemic. Especially the way preachers talk about God and his:her actions differsshowing theological shifts in the past 100 years and asking questions about preaching today. André Verweij, pastor and researcher in the Netherlands, analyzes five Easter sermons delivered in the Netherlands during the first wave of the Covid-19-pandemic and discovers a lamenting mode in preaching, which steers away from interpreting the pandemic's possible 'meaning' or 'message.' Joseph H. Clarke and David Csinos from the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Canada, show how fruitful dialogue between psychotherapy and homiletics can be. They offer insight into "Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy" (ISTDP) and-knowing that preaching is not psychotherapy-present fruitful aspects of a conversation with this school and practice of psychotherapy for homiletics, especially in times of crisis. David M. Stark, teaching and doing homiletical research at the University of the South in Sewanee (USA), speaks about a dual pandemic of COVID-19 and systemic racism. By exploring sermons from a high-church tradition to a virtual congregation Stark suggests to speak about Eucharistic Preaching thus connecting the sermon to its surrounding liturgy. The paper develops this notion further and discovers Eucharistic embodiment as a perspective for preaching and homiletics. In the final article, Edgar "Trey" Clark III from Fuller Theology Seminary in Pasadena (USA), examines protests in support of "Black Lives Matter" and sees these protests as a form of Spirit-inspired proclamation-connecting lament and celebration, particularity and universality, word and deed. [iv] Obviously, the COVID-19-pandemic changed not only the forms and media of preaching, but also its contents-and will have an impact also in the time 'after' the pandemic. We are grateful to the authors, to our peer reviewers, to our Managing Editor Dr. Ferenc Herzig-and we hope that this Special Volume will prove to be a step in the ongoing reform and transformation of our preaching (and that many of us will meet in Budapest next year!).
Essays in Honour of Willem J. van Asselt
Jaarboek voor liturgie-onderzoek, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,... more All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing from the proprietor(s).. M. Josuttis, Der Weg in das Leben. Eine Einführung in den Gottesdienst auf verhaltenswissenscha licher Grundlage.
STJ | Stellenbosch Theological Journal, 2019
Atonement is a central doctrine in Christian theology. Even though preaching is not about doctrin... more Atonement is a central doctrine in Christian theology. Even though preaching is not about doctrines, doctrine does operate in and through preaching. In this essay the relationship between atonement and preaching is explored. Based upon a contemporary theological analysis of atonement by Eleonore Stump, two homiletic aspects of the relationship between atonement and preaching are presented: atonement in preaching and atonement through preaching. As a study in homiletical theology, the essay challenges common binaries in homiletics, such as between proclamation and poetics, and presents a way of dealing with fundamental Christian doctrines in the theory of preaching.
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Advancing theory and professional practice through scholarly and reflective publications
Spiritual care interventions depend upon the context in which care is provided, its institutional... more Spiritual care interventions depend upon the context in which care is provided, its institutional setting and the actors involved. In order to understand the relationship between interventions in spiritual care and the context in which care is provided, we study the spiritual interventions of military chaplains against the background of the armed forces. In our study, we demonstrate that the military context needs its own conceptualization to understand the pastoral practices of military chaplains. This article uses a qualitative comparative methodology and is based upon 13 case studies that have been generated over the course of five years by a team of eight military chaplains within the framework of the Dutch Case Study Project. The analysis results in four concepts that describe the relationship between spiritual care practices and the context of the armed forces in more detail: structuring pastoral availability, positioning within the military environment, existential negotiatio...
De casestudy raakt aan een pijnlijk hoofdstuk uit onze nationale geschiedenis: de inzet van Neder... more De casestudy raakt aan een pijnlijk hoofdstuk uit onze nationale geschiedenis: de inzet van Nederlandse militairen in Nederlands-Indie. De casusbeschrijving laat zien welke specifieke en tijdsintensieve aandacht de begeleiding van de (wegens leeftijd) snel krimpende groep 'oude veteranen' vraagt.
Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics as the theory of preaching. In this article the deve... more Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics as the theory of preaching. In this article the development of homiletics in the Low Countries is explored as a case-study within the dynamics of international homiletical thought. The material for this case-study consists of the doctoral theses that have been published since the turn of the century. The amount of doctoral work in homiletics, the variety of methodological approaches and theological perspectives, provide a viable entrance to homiletics as academic discipline. It will be concluded that homiletics has developed into an international, empirically oriented, culturally sensitive, and theological diverse field. Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics. The transition, as seen through the lens of recent Dutch contributions to scholarly discourse in preaching, has three focal points: pneumatology, language, and empirical research.
How does self-disclosure work in preaching? This study explores that question empirically, using ... more How does self-disclosure work in preaching? This study explores that question empirically, using a variety of data collection methods such as sermon analysis, focus groups, and interviews. Self-disclosure is an ambiguous concept in homiletical and theological literature, and it remains an ambiguous concept when considered from an empirical approach. Our focus is on how self-disclosure works brings to the fore three different homiletical processes: negotiating homiletical space, shaping the homiletical relationship, and performing self-disclosure. This study argues that researching implicit self-disclosure provides a better, though more complex, way of understanding the public presence of the preacher, than an analysis of the explicit use of the first pronoun “I” in preaching.
Christians worldwide listen to sermons. Despite the decline in membership and church attendance i... more Christians worldwide listen to sermons. Despite the decline in membership and church attendance in the Western world, many believers still consider going to church as a vital means to maintain their faith in God. These ordinary listeners have been subject of empirical studies for several decades as the empirical turn in practical theology has also influenced the field of homiletics. My study, though, differs from these studies in at least three respects. First, I used Grounded Theory rather than survey, ethnographic or qualitative-data-analysis methods (section 3). Next, the study deals with theory as outcome or result rather than the starting point of research. The kind of theory generated is both empirically grounded and theologically oriented (section 4). For the purposes of this Yearbook, I close this piece with a few concepts that have been generated in the study and specifically deal with the relationship between preaching and worship (section 5). Chapter 1 of the book present...
Journal of Empirical Theology
In the past, research was done in the Netherlands among pastors to study their attitudes and expe... more In the past, research was done in the Netherlands among pastors to study their attitudes and experiences regarding euthanasia. Also, the attitudes of protestant believers have been studied, however very superficially. This paper presents the results of a survey among 736 parishioners of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands about their experiences, views, and understanding of euthanasia and about what they expect from their pastor. Two-thirds of the respondents are positive about euthanasia being permissible in the Netherlands, and half of them consider euthanasia a possibility for themselves. A parishioner’s theological subdenomination (orthodox, evangelical, middle-orthodox, liberal) is related significantly to their views about euthanasia and pastoral care. Most parishioners value a central role for their pastor at the end of their lives, including those who would possibly consider euthanasia. The relevance of this survey is that a better insight in the parishioners’ wishes ab...
40th Meeting, 2005
284 Theological Concepts in Empirical Homiletics F. Gerrit Immink & Theo Pleizier Utrecht Univers... more 284 Theological Concepts in Empirical Homiletics F. Gerrit Immink & Theo Pleizier Utrecht University The Netherlands 1. Introduction Homiletics is a theory of practice. As a theological theory it not only deals with inter-human discourse and psycho-social processes. Although rhetoric, ...
International Handbook of Practical Theology
ADutch newspaper reported thatthe sales of booksonpraying duringthe COVID-19 pandemic has increas... more ADutch newspaper reported thatthe sales of booksonpraying duringthe COVID-19 pandemic has increased compared to the previous year.B ased upon al ist of these bestsellers, the newspaper concludes that bookso np raying are hard to find and that our houseshavestartedtobecome more like monasteries.The crisis of the pandemic has indeeds parked urgent questions for many: 'what is the meaning of life?' 'what if Ib ecome ill?' or 'what happens when Id ie?'.P raying is ac entral feature of religion in general and of Christianityi np articular(Meyer-Blanck2019). This article is interested in exploring the following:When do people pray,what do people pray about,tow hom do people pray and what do people do when they pray? This practical-theological essayonp raying departs from two paradoxical observations.First,there is something distinctly religious about praying yetpraying is not an exclusively religious practice. Empirical studies in secular spirituality show adecrease in interest in prayer (Zuckerman, Shook,a nd Fuller 2017), but praying is not confined to those who affiliate with religion. Post-secular approaches view prayer as The placeintowhich Ipour my despair and out of which Idragmyoften elusive,often reluctant hope; it is the spaceintowhich Ispiral, as well as the connection that rescues me there; it is the transformative work in which Iamcompelled to engage […]. The connection Ifind in this placeis essential to my being, but what it is to/with/by which Ic onnect,Iam not able to say. (Vosper 2014,i ntroduction) OpenAccess. ©2 022T heo Pleizier,p ublished by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsA ttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The practice of Military Chaplains has been studied from various angles (sociological, historical... more The practice of Military Chaplains has been studied from various angles (sociological, historical, ethical) except from an empirical homiletical perspective. What do military chaplains do when they preach, if ‘preaching’ is the correct label for their (religious) speeches. This paper provides a first introduction to study the actual sermons of military chaplains in order to contribute to homiletical theory. It presents the outline of a research design and presents some of its initial results. The paper is based upon 10 sermons by army and naval chaplains within the context of peacekeeping missions. Three concepts emerge from these data, focussing upon the homiletical activity of military chaplains. They redefine the liturgical conditions for preaching, they witness to sources of wisdom, and they dignify the individual soldier in the presence of Christ. The paper closes with a proposal to understand religious discourse in the military context by presenting a tentative typology that i...
Editorial It was on March 11, 2020, that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandem... more Editorial It was on March 11, 2020, that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Very soon, all of us were affected by the crisis-and way too many people all over the world were and are infected. Writing these lines in July 2021, we count more than 190.000.000 cases and more than four million deaths worldwide. Whereas the vaccination rate increases rapidly in the 'global North,' there are way too few vaccines in the 'global South.' This is just one aspect showing how the health crisis is interwoven with many other crises in our global societies. In March 2020, Christian congregations worldwide had to go digital or find other ways of praying and preaching. But the crisis was not only a challenge for the forms of preaching but also its content. What could and should be said? How can people be comforted and strengthened without preaching weak and banal 'good news'? And again and again the question: How can we speak of God amid a worldwide crisis? For Societas Homiletica it became clear quite soon that the Budapest Conference would have to be postponed (and-God willing-we will meet in Budapest from August 12 to 17, 2022!). But our International Secretary, Prof. Dr. Theo Pleizier, came up with the idea of organizing an Online Conference on "Preaching in Time of Crisis." The International Board of Societas Homiletica supported this idea, and on August 10-12, 2020, the first Online Conference in the history of Societas Homiletica 'took place.' We are glad and honored to present five outstanding papers delivered at the Online Conference in this Special Volume of our International Journal of Homiletics, two from Europe and three from North America (Canada and the USA). Clara Nystrand from Lund (Sweden) compares sermons delivered in Sweden in the time of the Spanish flu 1918 with sermons delivered in the first phase of the Corona pandemic. Especially the way preachers talk about God and his:her actions differsshowing theological shifts in the past 100 years and asking questions about preaching today. André Verweij, pastor and researcher in the Netherlands, analyzes five Easter sermons delivered in the Netherlands during the first wave of the Covid-19-pandemic and discovers a lamenting mode in preaching, which steers away from interpreting the pandemic's possible 'meaning' or 'message.' Joseph H. Clarke and David Csinos from the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Canada, show how fruitful dialogue between psychotherapy and homiletics can be. They offer insight into "Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy" (ISTDP) and-knowing that preaching is not psychotherapy-present fruitful aspects of a conversation with this school and practice of psychotherapy for homiletics, especially in times of crisis. David M. Stark, teaching and doing homiletical research at the University of the South in Sewanee (USA), speaks about a dual pandemic of COVID-19 and systemic racism. By exploring sermons from a high-church tradition to a virtual congregation Stark suggests to speak about Eucharistic Preaching thus connecting the sermon to its surrounding liturgy. The paper develops this notion further and discovers Eucharistic embodiment as a perspective for preaching and homiletics. In the final article, Edgar "Trey" Clark III from Fuller Theology Seminary in Pasadena (USA), examines protests in support of "Black Lives Matter" and sees these protests as a form of Spirit-inspired proclamation-connecting lament and celebration, particularity and universality, word and deed. [iv] Obviously, the COVID-19-pandemic changed not only the forms and media of preaching, but also its contents-and will have an impact also in the time 'after' the pandemic. We are grateful to the authors, to our peer reviewers, to our Managing Editor Dr. Ferenc Herzig-and we hope that this Special Volume will prove to be a step in the ongoing reform and transformation of our preaching (and that many of us will meet in Budapest next year!).
Essays in Honour of Willem J. van Asselt
Jaarboek voor liturgie-onderzoek, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,... more All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing from the proprietor(s).. M. Josuttis, Der Weg in das Leben. Eine Einführung in den Gottesdienst auf verhaltenswissenscha licher Grundlage.
STJ | Stellenbosch Theological Journal, 2019
Atonement is a central doctrine in Christian theology. Even though preaching is not about doctrin... more Atonement is a central doctrine in Christian theology. Even though preaching is not about doctrines, doctrine does operate in and through preaching. In this essay the relationship between atonement and preaching is explored. Based upon a contemporary theological analysis of atonement by Eleonore Stump, two homiletic aspects of the relationship between atonement and preaching are presented: atonement in preaching and atonement through preaching. As a study in homiletical theology, the essay challenges common binaries in homiletics, such as between proclamation and poetics, and presents a way of dealing with fundamental Christian doctrines in the theory of preaching.
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Advancing theory and professional practice through scholarly and reflective publications
Spiritual care interventions depend upon the context in which care is provided, its institutional... more Spiritual care interventions depend upon the context in which care is provided, its institutional setting and the actors involved. In order to understand the relationship between interventions in spiritual care and the context in which care is provided, we study the spiritual interventions of military chaplains against the background of the armed forces. In our study, we demonstrate that the military context needs its own conceptualization to understand the pastoral practices of military chaplains. This article uses a qualitative comparative methodology and is based upon 13 case studies that have been generated over the course of five years by a team of eight military chaplains within the framework of the Dutch Case Study Project. The analysis results in four concepts that describe the relationship between spiritual care practices and the context of the armed forces in more detail: structuring pastoral availability, positioning within the military environment, existential negotiatio...
De casestudy raakt aan een pijnlijk hoofdstuk uit onze nationale geschiedenis: de inzet van Neder... more De casestudy raakt aan een pijnlijk hoofdstuk uit onze nationale geschiedenis: de inzet van Nederlandse militairen in Nederlands-Indie. De casusbeschrijving laat zien welke specifieke en tijdsintensieve aandacht de begeleiding van de (wegens leeftijd) snel krimpende groep 'oude veteranen' vraagt.
Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics as the theory of preaching. In this article the deve... more Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics as the theory of preaching. In this article the development of homiletics in the Low Countries is explored as a case-study within the dynamics of international homiletical thought. The material for this case-study consists of the doctoral theses that have been published since the turn of the century. The amount of doctoral work in homiletics, the variety of methodological approaches and theological perspectives, provide a viable entrance to homiletics as academic discipline. It will be concluded that homiletics has developed into an international, empirically oriented, culturally sensitive, and theological diverse field. Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics. The transition, as seen through the lens of recent Dutch contributions to scholarly discourse in preaching, has three focal points: pneumatology, language, and empirical research.
How does self-disclosure work in preaching? This study explores that question empirically, using ... more How does self-disclosure work in preaching? This study explores that question empirically, using a variety of data collection methods such as sermon analysis, focus groups, and interviews. Self-disclosure is an ambiguous concept in homiletical and theological literature, and it remains an ambiguous concept when considered from an empirical approach. Our focus is on how self-disclosure works brings to the fore three different homiletical processes: negotiating homiletical space, shaping the homiletical relationship, and performing self-disclosure. This study argues that researching implicit self-disclosure provides a better, though more complex, way of understanding the public presence of the preacher, than an analysis of the explicit use of the first pronoun “I” in preaching.
Christians worldwide listen to sermons. Despite the decline in membership and church attendance i... more Christians worldwide listen to sermons. Despite the decline in membership and church attendance in the Western world, many believers still consider going to church as a vital means to maintain their faith in God. These ordinary listeners have been subject of empirical studies for several decades as the empirical turn in practical theology has also influenced the field of homiletics. My study, though, differs from these studies in at least three respects. First, I used Grounded Theory rather than survey, ethnographic or qualitative-data-analysis methods (section 3). Next, the study deals with theory as outcome or result rather than the starting point of research. The kind of theory generated is both empirically grounded and theologically oriented (section 4). For the purposes of this Yearbook, I close this piece with a few concepts that have been generated in the study and specifically deal with the relationship between preaching and worship (section 5). Chapter 1 of the book present...