Sermons, Testimony, and Social Epistemology

Another way to look at my doctoral research and its links to the Library and Information Science field is from the perspective of social epistemology. Shera defined social epistemology as “the study of knowledge in society with a focus on the production, flow, integration, and consumption of all forms of communicated thought throughout the social fabric” (1970, p. 86).My research focuses on the Sunday sermon as a significant and prevalent means of communicating messages to a large percentage of the population on a weekly basis. I argue that the Sunday sermon is a major influence in the creation of social knowledge.

However, every Sunday sermon is a unique message created by a unique individual for a unique group of people at a unique point in time so that if it were possible to review every sermon delivered on any given Sunday, one would find an extremely wide range of messages. This diversity of messages certainly reduces the influence of the Sunday sermon on the general stock of social knowledge on a national scale, especially in specific matters. In a broader sense, though, the collective Sunday sermon serves to create the social knowledge that it is good to care about others, that honesty is to be valued, and that one should strive to be trustworthy in word and deed.

A particular facet of social epistemology that I am particularly intrigued with as it relates to my research is the concept of testimony. Robert Audi and his article “The place of testimony in the fabric of knowledge and justification” (American Philosophical Quarterly, Oct. 1997, p. 405) is very informative.

The concepts of testimony can be applied to sermons, lectures, campaign speeches, and any other kind of persuasive communication by which the listener has to decide whether or not to believe the testimony based on the credibility they give to the testifier. The listener has to justify their belief or skepticism based on their personal filters. The testifier, then, has to also communicate believability through sincerity, authority, competence, and so on.

The need to establish and maintain credibility is a major concern for clergy, professors, parents, teachers, coaches, business leaders, etc. This speaks to the findings of Dr. Don Wicks as a reason for why clergy operate from a closed information system at the intersection of the preaching role and theological world. For a clergy person to venture outside of their theological world means to take a risk of losing credibility with the congregation. The believability of testimony depends on the belief system of those hearing the testimony. The testimony has to make sense with the prior knowledge of the listener. So if the clergy person speaks on a topic that is outside the belief system of the congregation, it is likely that the testimony will be received skeptically and the clergy person may no longer be considered credible.

My dissertation informant considered the reaction of the congregation when preparing his sermons. His reaction to the leading of the Holy Spirit was often “Do I really want to go there?” His explanation at the time was that he is not a brash and bold preacher and I left it at that. For future research, I plan to be more attentive to opportunities in the interviews to explore the concept of credibility with my informants.

Credibility is established for the clergy person through the ritual of ordination by which the church declares that the individual clergy member hears and speaks the Word of God. The church expects the clergy member to testify to the message of the church in such a manner as to generate belief in the hearts and minds of church members.

By looking at the worship service from the perspective of the formal testimony concept allows one to see the sanctuary as a court room, the pulpit as a witness stand, and the liturgical garments as judges’ robes. All of these are powerful symbols designed to strengthen credibility, but which can also activate information filters that result in skepticism.

More to follow.

ALISE 2008

I attended the annual meeting of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) in Philadelphia the first week of January. Thankfully, the weather was unusually warm and pleasant.


I went a couple of days early in order to drive down to the eastern shore of Maryland to visit Rev. Eugene and Beverly Rasmussen. Professor Rasmussen was my faculty adviser years ago at Mid-America Nazarene College and started me on the path of sociology studies. It was great to catch up on old times and play a couple of games of Scrabble.



My primary purpose for attending ALISE was to compete in the doctoral student poster competition with 31 other LIS doc students from around North America. While I did not win an award, it was a great time meeting some other students and seeing the various research everyone is conducting. It was especially rewarding to meet T. Patrick Milas from Florida State University whose dissertation research is entitled: "The Role of Faith in Information Behavior: A Study of Theological Research." While his methodology is much more quantitative than mine, it appears that our area of interest is very similar and we are looking forward to opportunities for collaboration in the future. Stay tuned for more postings on the differences and similarities of our research on the clergy profession from the LIS perspective.

Philadelphia is not one of my favorite places to visit, but I did discover the Reading Terminal at 12th and Market and enjoyed browsing the various food stalls and vendors in this expansive indoor market. My colleague, Waseem Afzal, and I enjoyed some wonderful Indian food at Nandee's and I experienced some of the local brew, Yuengling's, at the indoor beer garden.

Paper submitted to the Midwest Sociological Society 2008 annual meeting

I spent my holiday break writing a critical self-evaluation of my dissertation research and I am entering it as a paper in the graduate student competition of the Midwest Sociological Society annual meeting this March in St. Louis. The paper is entitled The Challenges and Benefits of Insider Status: A Critique of a Single-Case Study of the Sense-Making Behavior of a Clergy Member and the Interpretation of Scripture. The article revisits the research methodology question about the proper role of the researcher: detached observer (outsider) or active participant (insider)?

I argue in the paper that something more than a simple either/or answer is required. I make the case that the clergy profession as a field of study is so complex that some degree of insider status, e.g., experience in the field, seminary education, etc., is necessary in order to properly study and accurately represent the participants. In the paper, I demonstrate that the attributes I had in common with my dissertation informant: gender, ethnicity, seminary education, ordination, clergy experience, conservative religious childhood, etc., was a benefit rather than a detriment to the research project. My insider status enabled me to pick up on certain things in the informant's sermons and interviews that likely would have been missed by a detached observer. But my questions regarding these different points did not lead to simple confirmation of my assumptions. Very often the informant's replies served to educate me from a perspective very different from my own and helped the research project to achieve a significant depth of exploration.

As a result of this self-evaluation, I am modifying my research methodology to intentionally include participants as co-researchers through the utilization of the Co-Operative Inquiry Method of Peter Reason. In the self-evaluation, I recognize situations of bias and over-rapport occurred in the dissertation research that fortunately did not undermine the integrity of the project, but is a cause of concern . By asking future participants in the research to review and critique the transcripts of interviews conducted with participants other than themselves, I am hoping that they will help catch me in situations of presumption, bias, over-rapport, and so on. The methodology will also empower participants to educate me on the subtle distinctions of theology and doctrine that may more accurately represent their unique situation and thereby help to clarify the complexity of the field of study.