don’t get

why rhetoricians religion :

a counter-history of sacred rhetoric § matt miller § saint louis university

guide to terminology

The IJsseling Story: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict

Samuel IJsseling’s Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict offers the starkest example of this
standard story in rhetorical studies, which sets rhetoric and philosophy in primeval con-
flict. Rhetoric pursues emotion/context/power, while philosophy seeks truth/goodness.
Many rhetorical histories employ this dialectic.

A Speculative Sacred Rhetoric

Following Deborah Shuger, if we consider the interaction of religion with rhetoric and
philosophy, the IJsseling Story is insufficient: religion concerns itself with emotion and
truth, and is thus bound up throughout rhetorical history. By thinking about religious
rhetoric religiously, we can see more clearly how the sacred is imbued throughout the
history of rhetoric.

Orientation
Kenneth Burke’s Permanence and Change describes orientation as a bundle of judgments
producing self-perpetuating interpretations of the world, “creating the measures by
which it shall be measured.” An orientation is a framework, a way of being in the world.
Sacred rhetorics that promote habits (as through liturgy) or ways of life pursue an orien-
tation.

Person-giving
Bruno Latour characterizes religious speech as “presence-enhancing or person-giving.”
Rather than connecting the audience to transcendent facts (as in science) or forming
an identity (as in politics), sacred rhetoric gives people to one another, brings attention
to the here and now. As with the statement “I love you,” the point is not to convey new
information but to draw people together.

The Immanent Frame

In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor characterizes secularization as about more than the loss
of belief as such; it includes changes in the imaginative conditions of belief. In modernity, im-
manent explanations are taken as prior to the supernatural, the “real” explanation—this
set of assumptions constitutes “the immanent frame.” For believers, this frame can feel
alienating or impersonal.