Lucas Osiander (1534-1604) was an influential preacher of the Lutheran orthodoxy. As a Wuerttemberg court preacher and superintendent, he played a central role when the country was established as one of the leading Lutheran forces in the Empire. Osiander preached to a wide audience in a time when sermons were a privileged form of communication and when preachers could address and negotiate the central interests in society. Using confessionalization theory, Sivert Angel studies Osiander's preaching in its political and theological context and shows how Osiander as a preacher could exert political influence. By analyzing Osiander's sermons in light of his own homiletic, the author describes how Osiander's role as a preacher may be traced in his sermons' rhetoric structures and in his use of theological concepts. The discussion of Osiander's theory and practice of preaching documents the ways that Osiander's sermons reinforced the existing political and social order and portrays central aspects of theology and piety in the later sixteenth century.

Born 1973; 1998 Cand. Theol. University of Oslo; 1999-2006 Pastor in the Church of Norway; 2011 PhD University of Oslo; 2010-14 Associate Professor of Homiletics, The Practical-Theological Seminary, Oslo; since 2014 Rector of The Practical-Theological Seminary, Oslo.