Studies in Rhetoric & Religion – serie

St. Augustine of Hippo, largely considered the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity, has long dominated theological conversations. Augustine's legacy as a theologian endures. However, Augustine's contributions to rhetoric and the philosophy of communication remain relatively uncharted. Augustine for the Philosophers recovers these contributions, revisiting Augustine's prominence in the work of continental philosophers who shaped rhetoric and the philosophy of communication in the twentieth century. Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Jacques Ellul, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Jean-Fracois Lyotard, and Paul Ricoeur are paired with Augustine in significant conversations close to the center of their work.Augustine for the Philosophers dares to hold Augustine's rhetoric and philosophy in dynamic tension with his Christianity, provoking serious reconsideration of Augustine, his presence in twentieth-century continental thought, and his influence upon modern rhetoric and communication studies.

It has been more than two decades since the publication of George Kennedy's influential New Testament Interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism (1984). The essays in Words Well Spoken demonstrate the influence of Kennedy's work on New Testament studies. The essays offer applications of his method to canonical New Testament books and provide more general discussions of rhetorical analysis. Kennedy's thoughtful response articulates his present thinking about the New Testament and demonstrates why this scholar continues to be of such value to New Testament studies.

Vicki Tolar Burton argues that John Wesley wanted to make ordinary Methodist men and women readers, writers, and public speakers because he understood the powerful role of language for spiritual formation. His understanding came from his own family and education, from his personal spiritual practices and experiences, and from the evidence he saw in the lives of his followers. By examining the intersections of literacy, rhetoric, and spirituality as they occurred in early British Methodism-and by exploring the meaning of these practices for class and gender-the author provides a new understanding of the method of Methodism.

For decades, American popular media have instructed audiences about their roles and significance in the public sphere. In The Faithful Citizen, rhetorical critic Kristy Maddux argues that popular Christian media not only communicate avenues for civic engagement but do so in profoundly gendered terms. Her detailed interrogation of popular Christian movies, books, and television shows - the Left Behind series, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, Amazing Grace, 7th Heaven, and the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code - exposes five competing models of how Christians should behave in the civic sphere as their gendered selves. What emerges is a typology that insightfully reveals how these varying faith-based models of engagement uniquely shape public discourse and influence the larger picture of contemporary politics.

In a profound revelation of what truly undergirds modern political rhetoric, Morgan Marietta shows that the language of America's leaders often relies on deep, even sacred, ideals. The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric is a comprehensive and detailed survey of the rhetorical tactics employed even among the highest government offices as tools of political persuasion. Through careful analysis of the use of absolutist claims—and appeals to what a speaker deems to be universal truths—Marietta uncovers the sometimes subtle ways in which politicians employ this "sacred rhetoric" and demonstrates its impact on citizens' reasoning, public discourse, and the very nature of American democracy.

Everything evolves, science tells us, including the public language used by scientists to sustain and perpetuate their work. Harkening back to the Protestant Reformation--a time when the promise of scientific inquiry was intimately connected with a deep faith in divine Providence--Thomas Lessl traces the evolving role and public identity of science in the West.As the Reformation gave way to the Enlightenment, notions of Providence evolved into progress. History's divine plan could now be found in nature, and scientists became history's new prophets. With Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary science, progress and evolution collapsed together into what Lessl calls ""evolutionism,"" and the grand scientific identity was used to advance science's power into the world.In this masterful treatment, Lessl analyzes the descent of these patterns of scientific advocacy from the world of Francis Bacon into the world of Thomas Huxley and his successors. In the end, Rhetorical Darwinism proposes that Darwin's power to fuel the establishment of science within the Western social milieu often turns from its scientific course.Rhetorical Darwinism: Religion, Evolution, and the Scientific Identity received the Religious Communication Associatons ""Book of the Year"" award in 2012.

Everything evolves, science tells us, including the public language used by scientists to sustain and perpetuate their work. Harkening back to the Protestant Reformation--a time when the promise of scientific inquiry was intimately connected with a deep faith in divine Providence--Thomas Lessl traces the evolving role and public identity of science in the West.As the Reformation gave way to the Enlightenment, notions of Providence evolved into progress. History's divine plan could now be found in nature, and scientists became history's new prophets. With Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary science, progress and evolution collapsed together into what Lessl calls ""evolutionism,"" and the grand scientific identity was used to advance science's power into the world.In this masterful treatment, Lessl analyzes the descent of these patterns of scientific advocacy from the world of Francis Bacon into the world of Thomas Huxley and his successors. In the end, Rhetorical Darwinism proposes that Darwin's power to fuel the establishment of science within the Western social milieu often turns from its scientific course.Rhetorical Darwinism: Religion, Evolution, and the Scientific Identity received the Religious Communication Associatons ""Book of the Year"" award in 2012.

Building upon their critically acclaimed first volume, Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon's new Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965 is a recovery project of enormous proportions. Houck and Dixon have again combed church archives, government documents, university libraries, and private collections in pursuit of the civil rights movement's long-buried eloquence. Their new work presents fifty new speeches and sermons delivered by both famed leaders and little-known civil rights activists, on national stages and in quiet shacks. The speeches carry novel insights into the ways in which individuals and communities utilized religious rhetoric to upset the racial status quo in divided America during the civil rights era. Houck and Dixon's work illustrates again how a movement so prominent in historical scholarship still has much to teach us.

The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in large measure because of rhetorical appeals grounded in the Judeo-Christian religion. While movement leaders often used America's founding documents and ideals to depict Jim Crow's contradictory ways, the language and lessons of both the Old and New Testaments were often brought to bear on many civil rights events and issues - from local desegregation to national policy matters. This volume chronicles how national movement leaders and local activists moved a nation to live up to the biblical ideals it often professed but infrequently practiced.