Talking About God When People Are Afraid: Dialogues on the Incarnation the Year That Doctor King and Senator Kennedy Were Killed

The Dialogues on the Incarnation presented in this book show a group of four preachers as they endeavored to help the people in their church make theological sense at a time when optimism and fear were intermingled. Although the details of life in the early 2020s differ from those in the 1960s when these sermons were delivered, preachers today face a similar challenge--to proclaim a Christian vision that interprets the interior experience of listeners and the dynamics of the outer world where strife, epidemic disease, and global warming dominate the news. These sermons show how preachers can draw upon their own insights and upon biblical scholarship, history, theology, ethics, philosophy, and psychology as they proclaim their gospel message. In the year when Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated, these dialogues were described as ""an experiment in preaching."" They now are published, nearly sixty years later, to encourage and instruct a new generation of church leaders to continue the pastoral challenge of talking about God when most people are afraid.

Keith Watkins is a minister ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and was one of the four preachers participating in the Seattle Dialogues. He recently published The American Church That Might Have Been: A History of the Consultation on Church Union. Now retired from the faculty of Christian Theological Seminary, he writes on American religion, the environment, and bicycling.

Ronald J. Allen taught preaching and Gospels and Letters at Christian Theological Seminary for thirty-seven years. He is the author of many books, including I Will Tell You the Mystery (Cascade, 2019). He edited the two-volume work on theologies of preaching: Preaching the Manifold Grace of God (Cascade, 2022). Volume 1 focuses on historical theologies, and Volume 2 focuses on contemporary theologies.