Christian Rhetoric Research Articles

Judith Weisenfeld, Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949

Judith Weisenfeld, Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Pp. 340. Cloth $60.00. Paper $25.95. While there have been numerous works on in as well as race and religion, Judith Weisenfeld is first scholar to bring three categories together in one text. The result is a broadly successful account of American racial ideology from Great Depression through years following World War II. The lens of filmic representations of African American religion offers a way to illuminate larger trends in American society, giving this book utility for those interested in 20th century religion, race, and popular culture. The book's narrative are moves from 1929 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release of King Vidor's Hallelujah, depicting black religion as childish, sexualized, and ecstatic to 1949 RD-DR Corporation's Lost Boundaries, which demonstrated both progress and limitations of postwar liberal Christian rhetoric in addressing U.S. race relations. King Vidor, raised in Texas, considered himself to be an expert on unique of African Americans. This purported expertise informed his direction of Hallelujah, story of Zeke's itinerant ministry, seduction, corruption, and restoration. Throughout film, black worship is depicted as intensely sexual through sensuous dancing and ecstatic moaning. This sexual religiosity is too much for Zeke and leads him away from his idyllic rural home to epicenter of temptation and sin, city. His restoration requires him to return to his rural home and recognize his incapacity for substantial religious leadership. Following success of Vidor's Hallelujah, other white directors clamored to share their own personal knowledge of the Negro. Mark Connelly offered his interpretation in Green Pastures, a play representing a black version of Old Testament. The play won Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930, and film after considerable production delays, enjoyed success as well. While whites praised film as a demonstration of primitive theology of African Americans, response in black press was mixed. What puzzled many black viewers most were depictions of heaven as rural South, complete with a fish fry. As with Hallelujah, black press praised skill of actors, while white directors claimed that their films captured African Americans' true nature and that performers were simply acting naturally. Films like Hallelujah and Green Pastures, while concerning themselves with issues of race, were not directed primarily at an African American audience and certainly were not representative of African American sentiments. However, numerous productions were created specifically for black audiences. Weisenfeld divides these films into those with explicitly religious subjects and those without. What is most striking is how both categories dwell on common theme of urbanization. The religious films, most of which involved black director Spencer Williams, in some ways echoed work of white directors by decrying urban culture as sinful. However, unlike their white counterparts, black directors were unwilling to idealize rural, resulting in a more nuanced portrayal of realities of Great Migration. …

Religious Idiom and the African American Novel, 1952–1998

In this study of novels by Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Leon Forrest, Ernest Gaines, Randall Kenan, John Edgar Wideman, Gayl Jones, and Octavia E. Butler, Tuire Valkeakari examines the creative re-visioning and reshaping of Judeo-Christian idiom and imagery by African American novelists - specifically their use of sacred language for secular meaning. She shows that in writing about the complexities of American selfhood and nationhood, these authors neither abandon religious idiom nor evangelize. Rather, they delight in reshaping their chosen raw material for their own purposes, which often have little to do with the material's original context or function. Their use of biblically derived idiom is marked by innovative secular subversion and by stories of spiritual quest that defy conventional dogmatic definitions. These authors evoke religious rhetoric to study and revisit Martin Luther King Jr.'s concept of the beloved community and to express their yearning for an inclusive love ethic that could transcend any boundaries drawn in the name of race, class, gender, or religion. Beginning with the functions of Christian idiom in African American letters from the 1770s to the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and its aftermath, followed by an analysis of post-1950 novels, Valkeakari shows how, generation after generation, African American writers have evoked Christian rhetoric to advocate civil rights and democracy. Their treatment of this legacy reached a new level of creativity in the latter half of the 20th century, becoming a more pervasive characteristic of the African American novel than ever before.

Sound of a woman: drums, gender, and myth among the asabano of papua new guinea

ABSTRACTPrior to their conversion to Christianity, Asabano boys and women were forbidden to play drums, lest they become aroused and promiscuous. The origin myth of the drum, revealed during male initiations, identifies its sound as that which emanates from a woman's vagina during sex. Therefore, to play the drum is to have sex on a mythological-symbolic level. Boys married only after hearing this myth and drumming in an all-night public celebration. Initiates knew the secret significance of their performance, providing them with a sense of manly security and power. To women who listened and danced, the celebration displayed handsomely presented, marriageable young men. In 1994–5, Christian rhetoric held that prohibiting women from drumming belongs to the Satanic past. Yet, while initiations were no longer held, the drum still figured prominently in celebrations, played only by men. By 2005, both sexes drummed during Baptist church services symbolizing universal access to God's bounty, but outside of church drum making and leadership in performance remained a male activity. In spite of the loss of a religious ideology of male secret knowledge, masculine gender identity retained its strength in part through the continued practice of male drumming.

Samuel Werenfels: Il dibattito sulla libertà di coscienza a Basilea agli inizi del settecento (review)

Samuel Werenfels: Il dibattito sulla liberta di coscienza a Basilea agli inizi del settecento. By Camilla Hermanin. [Studi e Testi per la Storia della Tolleranza in Europa nei Secoli XVI-XVIII, Volume 7.] (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore. 2003. Pp. xii, 352. euro33.00 paperback.) Camilla Hermanin offers a broadly situated intellectual biography of Basel theologian and professor Samuel Werenfels (1657-1740), concentrating in particular on his conception of liberty of conscience within Reformed Protestant regimes. The book also includes Werenfels' Epistola de iure in conscientias ab homme non usurpando (1702) and thirteen letters from Werenfels' correspondence. Werenfels belonged to triumvirate of Swiss orthodox reformers that included Turrettini in Geneva and Ostervald in Neuchâtel, who challenged authoritarian approach to religious dissent they saw embodied in Formula Consensus Ecclesiarum Helveticarum Reformatarum, which Basel imposed on all pastors and teachers between 1674 and 1723. In Hermanin's view, the liberty of conscience was officially denied in Switzerland (p. 12) through this document, which explicitly rejected seventeenth-century universalism, ecumenicism, and historical/philological approaches to sacred canon. Hermanin's first two chapters effectively introduce late seventeenth-century Basel and Werenfels' own life. Although confessional views that ruled at time might seem inhospitable to a moderate defender of consciences, Werenfels (scion of Werenfels and Grynaeus dynasties) enjoyed an excellent education with Cartesian Johann Jacob Hoffmann and younger Buxtorff before completing his degree in theology under influence of Johann Rudolf Wettstein, who had refused to sign Formula Consensus but retained his chair. After formative journeys through Reformed Switzerland, Germany and Netherlands, Werenfels joined Basel faculty. Although Hermanin describes his career as restless, he successively occupied chairs of Greek, Christian rhetoric, dogmatics, and Old and New Testaments, as well as becoming rector of university: his nonconformity and provocative publications may have caused awkward moments, but never interrupted his life. His first high-profile contribution set tone by attacking logomachies of religious controversialists of all stripes. The remaining three chapters of Hermanin's book set Werenfels, and particularly his Eptstola, in larger intellectual context. …

Science and salvation: evangelical popular science publishing in Victorian Britain

Threatened by the proliferation of cheap, mass-produced publications, the Religious Tract Society issued a series of publications on popular science during the 1840s. The books were intended to counter the developing notion that science and faith were mutually exclusive, and the Society's authors employed a full repertoire of evangelical techniques-low prices, simple language, carefully structured narratives-to convert their readers. The application of such techniques to popular science resulted in one of the most widely available sources of information on the sciences in the Victorian era. A fascinating study of the tenuous relationship between science and religion in evangelical publishing, Science and Salvation examines questions of practice and faith from a fresh perspective. Rather than highlighting works by expert men of science, Aileen Fyfe instead considers a group of relatively undistinguished authors who used thinly veiled Christian rhetoric to educate first, but to convert as well. This important volume is destined to become essential reading for historians of science, religion, and publishing alike.

Book Review: The Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric

Book Review: The Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric

Testimonies of the Disappeared: A Response to Margaret Randall's AFS Address

First, I want to say what a privilege it is for the American Folklore Society to have Margaret Randall here as a guest speaker, as we are most fortunate to be able to hear and learn from her. When I first agreed to give a response to her talk, I began to lo- cate some of her sixty books—at least, what I had read suggested she had written sixty books; I guess that information was a week or two old, because Bill Westerman says she now has eighty books! But I was thrilled with the exercise. Randall's political work can enrich and inform my own in so many ways—although to call my work politi- cal in the same breath as hers may beg the question of whether or not what we do, as folklorists, can ever correctly be termed political. I invite you to find her books when you return to your homes. The effort is well worth it! Lucky for us, Randall lives here in Albuquerque; lucky for us, also, is the fact that Westerman went far out of his way to make this lecture possible. Thanks to them both. In reading Randall's address for today, I was struck by how well she grasped the notion of what folkloristics is and what the discipline of folklore might be concerned with. She knows the danger of going to the dictionary for definitions of terms, yet piecing these definitions together with the paragraph about the AFS that is included as the signature of every email AFS executive director Tim Lloyd sends, she has con- structed a viable kind of definition that will suffice for these purposes. Furthermore, I was particularly struck with how Hufford-esque (see Hufford 1982, 1985) was her analysis of the belief system that guides the president and many folks in government— a belief system that is invisible but, nevertheless, guides with a fierce hand the efforts to bring freedom to the entire planet under the rhetorical stance of goodwill and peace. The fact that this belief system is tied directly to Christian rhetoric and belief, she points out, makes it more powerful—and dangerous. Hufford reminded us nearly two decades ago that the academy largely shares a religion or belief system of disbe-

Christian rhetoric in 19th century Lithuanian literature

Christian rhetoric in 19th century Lithuanian literature

Writing from the Center or the Margins? Olaudah Equiano's Writing Life Reassessed

Abstract: This article is literary analysis of the autobiography of Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. It examines Equiano's use of multiple discursive and rhetorical strategies in order to move the self of his slave narrator from to central status in the international debate over slavery. The essay focuses on Equiano's understanding of morality as multicultural framework and his application of Christian rhetoric in explaining it. The main argument is that his search for religious understanding and his experiential knowledge allowed him to move between cultural centers and cultural margins while speaking with an authoritative voice against slavery. Resume: Cet article propose une analyse litteraire de l'autobiographie de Equiano, ou Gustavus Vassa, l'africain. Nous examinons l'utilisation faite par Equiano de strategies discursives et rhetoriques multiples destinees deplacer le moi de son narrateur esclave d'un statut un statut central dans le debat international sur l'esclavage. Cet essai se concentre sur la comprehension de la moralite chez Equiano comme phenomene multiculturel, et sur son application de la rhetorique chretienne dans l'explication de ce phenomene. L'argument principal est que sa recherche de comprehension religieuse et sa connaissance empirique du monde lui permettent de se deplacer entre des centres de culture et des marges de culture tout en s'elevant contre l'esclavage d'une voix qui fait autorite. Introduction Equiano's autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, was bestseller when it was published in 1789, and in the past few years it has seen resurgence in popularity. The text has been analyzed historically by Paul Edwards (1981, 1985) and by G. I. Jones, who traces Equiano's roots back to fairly exact location in what was the Benin Kingdom (1967). In addition to being traced and positioned historically, Equiano's Interesting Narrative has come under the scrutiny of literary critics. His use of the generic conventions of autobiography has been examined by Angelo Costanzo (1987), and the use to which he put the self or selves created in his autobiography has been delineated by Chinosole (1982), Susan Marren (1993), Marion Rust (1996), and Carl Plasa (2000). In his critique of discursive identities in self-construction, Chinosole argues that the point-of-view shifts in the text are indicative of marginal and multiple identities, while Marren discusses these as multiple narrating selves serving as transgressors against cultural voices that would negate Equiano's existence. Rust understands Equiano's self as the condition of black African passing for white Englishman. Carl Plasa discusses Equiano's use of British imperial discourse, arguing that Equiano appropriated the discourses of his oppressors in order to deconstruct his position as an object of colonial rule. Thus present-day scholars and critics have read Equiano's text with and against the grain of literary, postcolonial, and cultural studies. Moreover, each has had different interpretation of Equiano's position as writer and narrator speaking with an authoritative voice from cultural center or with placating voice from cultural margin.1 To date, however, there have been very few studies of Equiano's religious conversion and his use of religious discourse in constructing himself and his slave narrator in position of centrality and authority when speaking about issues of slavery and freedom, evil and goodness, wickedness and morality. Adam Potkay's Olaudah Equiano and the Art of Spiritual Autobiography (1994) is comprehensive look at Equiano's use of the form and conventions of the spiritual autobiography as theological quest for origins (678). Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds interprets Equiano's religious conversion as a story of fiscal growth in which the author delves into mercantile capitalism and makes profit; she argues that as a former slave and African moving through world of European and American whites, Equiano's successes, spiritual and commercial, seem to come at the cost of his identity as an African, member of community for whom he from time to time ventures to speak (1998:635). …

Conservative American Protestantism in the League of Nations Controversy

The emerging fundamentalist movement made its first foray into extra-ecclesiastical politics during the League of Nations controversy of 1919–20. Both of the two main wings of fundamentalism—dispensational premillennialists and conservative Calvinists—took part in this controversy because both of them regarded the proposed League as an important, inherently religious issue. Both kinds of fundamentalists opposed the League, and both used the ratification debate to articulate their own types of Christian anti-internationalism. In the process they lent much Christian rhetoric to the political opponents of the League, the “Irreconcilables,” who were interested in exploiting it for their ostensibly purely secular critiques. Despite the fundamentalists' success in preventing League ratification, the controversy made them acutely aware of the political power and appeal of their liberal Protestant rivals. These had exerted themselves on behalf of the League, imparted their own religious complexion to the pro-League argument, and, not least, had managed officially to enlist almost all denominations to their side.

Workers' Control and the Struggles Against “Wage Slavery” in the Gilded Age and After

In nineteenth-century America, visions about the good life among labor reformers often entailed the concept of a democratic republic of citizens dedicated to self-directed work as small producers. Specific strains of the emerging workingclass movement helped to transform this artisan republican ideology into an anticapitalist critique of what was called the of slavery. Their spokesmen sparked the imaginations of working people with a vaguely defined but powerful vision of a cooperative commonwealth. This article1 focuses on the reformunionist, populist, socialist, and syndicalist movements in US labor history that aimed at enhancing workers' control and eliminating slavery in the years between 1870 and 1920. These movements differed from bread-and-butter trade unionism and progressivism that pinned all hope on progress, the rise of prosperity, and redistribution of wealth. For the sake of brevity, the various forms of anarchism and Utopian communitarianism will be omitted, since their impact was relatively less significant in the domain of labor participation. Special attention will be paid to the Utopian, millenarian, and dystopian aspects of the movements concerned, and to the view, initially expressed by Daniel Bell, that American socialists were other-worldly chiliasts who neither understood nor cared about the realities of American life (6-7). While there is an element of truth in this assertion, on its own it falls short of adequately explaining why these attempts at workers' control resulted in such dismal failure. The key, as I hope to demonstrate, lies elsewhere. Gilded Age Reformers, Christian Rhetoric, and the Battle Against Plutocracy The period between 1873 and 1897 was marked by steadily falling prices, economic recessions and depressions, and a working-class movement dominated by the rise and fall of the Knights of Labor. The next period, up until 1914, saw rising prices, corporate consolidation, and the emergence of the industrial, craft-based unionism of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and its affiliates challenged by socialist and syndicalist opponents on the left (Stromquist 544; Dubofsky, State 2). The Knights of Labor (1878-1893) was an industrial union organized at the national level, headed by a General Assembly. Workers were eligible to join, at least in theory, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity. With the exception of certain professionals, all gainfully employed individuals (including unskilled workers) could join, but three-fourths of each assembly had to be wage earners. This union was part of a broader reform movement that pressed for a producerist republican society, and it supported the eight-hour day, boycotts and arbitration (rather than strikes), various political reforms (including a graduated income tax), as well as consumers' and producers' cooperatives. The AFL, a self-appointed adversary of the Knights, was founded in 1886, and accepted individuals and locals from its rival union. The AFL, however, recognized the autonomy of each trade, thus limiting itself chiefly to business unionism and to skilled workers. Its unions stressed ownership, favored checks on immigration, demanded relief from technological job displacement, and proposed enactment of labor legislation. As a less radical strand of labor reform, the AFL also cooperated with employers, participating in the National Civic Federation (1900), for example, to help foster mediation of labor disputes (Encyclopedia 755-56). During the first period, particularly between 1886 and 1894, many labor reformers denounced the system and envisioned a cooperative commonwealth where productive labor would reap its full reward. An insecure economy marked by declining prices made producerism attractive to heavily indebted small farmers, struggling small businessmen, artisans experiencing deskilling, and laborers in saturated labor markets (Stromquist 545). …

The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity by Matthew Kuefler (review)

REVIEWS 250 Catalan political structure from an earlier authority. Through the ninth and tenth centuries, the counts of Barcelona could call on traditions of Carolingian political practice within which the count was usually considered the first among many. In the eleventh century, the counts began to form a new feudal network based upon individual and personal arrangements with their subordinates. This latter effort corresponded with the period of crisis in Catalonia which began with the independent governance of the young Berenguer Ramon I, followed by the minority of his son, Ramon Berenguer I, the subsequent civil war and reexertion of comital authority by means of the agreements which were reflected in the convenientia. The first convenientia emerged in 1021, but Kosto extends his examination back to the late tenth century, searching out the influences from which the convenientia emerged. However, it remains unclear whether Kosto believes the convenientia grew naturally out of previous documentary forms utilized by earlier counts, or were introduced from outside and then adopted to conform with new socio-political realities. Kosto opens Making Agreements with a description of the Muslim attacks on Barcelona in 985 and the subsequent necessity to rebuild and reform Catalan society. He clearly intends to argue that more than physical rebuilding was required—archival practice, personnel, and mental constructions of power had to be reformed. Which date, 985 or 1021, should be considered the beginning of the feudal transformation in Catalonia? Leaving the choice between 985 or 1021 as possible initiation dates ambiguous allows Kosto to attach his argument more easily to the various historiographical positions concerning the beginning of the feudal revolution of 1000. However, his argument would have more strength if he ignored the periodization of other regions, and instead simply examined the role the convenientia played in Catalonia from 1021. Here Kosto’s argument strongly supports the idea that sociopolitical structures changed significantly in Catalonia after that date. In this way, he both supports the idea of feudal revolution—although he prefers transformation —as argued by Duby, Pierre-Poly and Bournazel, and places that shift in the early eleventh century, as Bonnassie and Bisson have proposed for Catalonia. Adam Kosto’s Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia is an extensively researched work based upon a thorough knowledge of the available archival sources. His concentration on a single documentary form is quite an effective choice. The creation of a new scribal formula strongly supports his argument about how and why Catalan socio-political institutions underwent a significant alteration in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The counts of Barcelona and their officials created a new feudal structure, managing their relations with the powerful under the auspices of the Barcelona court. They achieved this by making individual agreements with the nobles, castellans and landholders of Catalonia. The success of the convenientia as a documentary text is witnessed by the adoption of the format by those same nobles and landholders for use in their dealings with their own subordinates. GREGORY B. MILTON, History, UCLA Matthew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago and London: University of REVIEWS 251 Chicago Press 2001) x + 437 pp. What did it mean to be a man and to appear manly in Ancient Rome? In The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity, Matthew Kuefler argues that notions of masculinity, especially among the aristocracy, informed elite intellectual life in Ancient Rome and was instrumental in the conversion of the Roman World to Christianity. During a period from the beginning of the third to the mid-fifth century, “the new Christian masculinity moved a previously subordinated masculinity into position as a hegemonic masculinity by means of the rhetoric of manliness and unmanliness” (6). Roman men yearned to be manly or at least appear that way, consequently, they were deeply afraid of being perceived as otherwise. The shapers of Christian ideology picked up on this obsession with manliness and incorporated it into Christian rhetoric and tradition. Thus by converting to Christianity, a man who may not have been prototypically manly would be able to elude the stigma of unmanliness. The beauty of this book lies in Kuefler’s subtle demonstration...

Harry Potter and the Disenchantment of the World

Educators and reviewers have credited J. K. Rowling's mega-hit children's series with introducing a new generation of readers to a magical world of wonder; Rowling is regularly compared to C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien. At the same time, some Christians have decried the books as portals to the New Age, Wicca, and diabolical magic. Through an examination of the Christian rhetoric on both sides of the debate and a comparison of the Harry Potter books to historical examples of magic, I hope to show that Rowling's work presents magic-as-technology. The disenchanted magical world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry reflects secularity in the same way that Tolkien's work reflected his romantic nostalgia for an imagined religious past. Harry Potter's brand of magic thus shows the degree to which wonder has been standardized and commodified in 21st-century consumer society.

The Trials Of Theology

Theology experiences many trials of practice and interpretation as it charts a course through contemporary society's political and cultural challenges. September 11 has generated more such trials, some of which are concerned with the historic issues surrounding the ‘War on America’ and its defence in terms of Christian rhetoric and belief. This article begins with a consideration of some of the background to this defence in the language and events of the American Civil War, particularly Stonewall Jackson's dying words and their juxtaposition with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. It then considers the validity of such notions as freedom and justice in contemporary debate, and challenges an understanding of Christian political thought that views it as responsible for defending a particular form of western society. It ends with some trenchant conclusions about a theologian's responsibilities in the present and future world.

TEMPORALITY IN MASACCIO'S TRINITY (1426): The Rhetoric of its Architectural Setting

In 1952, the Italian art historian Ugo Procacci found behind an altar in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence a fresco of a skeleton. The fresco was the lower thirdofapaintingdescribedby Vasari in his Lives of the Painters. The upper part of the painting, showing the Trinity above Mary, St John and of two kneeling donors, had been moved to the entrance wall of the church three centuries earlier (1570). It was a painting famous in its own time, a masterpiece of Masaccio's painted around 1425-7. This paper argues that Masaccio's Trinity straddles medieval and renaissance symbolic structures, one rooted in symbolic geometry, and the other based in narratives indebted to Christian rhetoric. It reinterprets ancient themes of temporality and a-temporality in its use of an architectural setting. The paper considers the relation to illusion and to perspective in architectural representation, and to the symbolic nature of representation. It sets the problem of temporal representation in the light of the work of Adrian Snodgrass in temporality in architecture, including his writings on mandalas. The useof'symbolandits interpretation is placed in the context of participation and ritual, that suggest an inevitable surrender of the self in an order established by an architectural setting.

Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel

Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel

Book Review: Poseur Par Excellence: In Season, Out of Season, the Fifth Times Book of Best Sermons, Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel

Book Review: Poseur Par Excellence: In Season, Out of Season, the Fifth Times Book of Best Sermons, Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel

Augustinian and Pauline Rhetoric in Romans Five: A Study of Early Christian Rhetoric (review)

Augustinian and Pauline Rhetoric in Romans Five: A Study of Early Christian Rhetoric (review)

Vulnerability and power: the early Christian rhetoric of masculine authority

Vulnerability and power: the early Christian rhetoric of masculine authority

A Christian Rhetoric for the Public Sphere

A Christian Rhetoric for the Public Sphere