Preaching Death, Preaching Life: A Phenomenology of the Sermon in an Anti-Black America

This paper examines the sermon as a racial and phenomenological event. This paper explores how sermons preached by white clergy before congregational participation in lynchings functioned as performative sites where theology, embodiment, and temporality were co-constituted. By juxtaposing these sermons with Martin Luther King Jr.’s homiletic practice, this paper highlights the sermon's capacity to form, de-form, and reconstitute communal subjectivity. It considers how preaching operates not only as theological discourse but also as a ritual that materializes racialized temporality and collective affect. Ultimately, this paper interrogates what the sermon does to and through its hearers in the production and contestation of anti-Black life.