The Rhetoric of the Pulpit treats the sermon as the single most important factor in evangelism for a parish, and also the most important factor in the spiritual growth of both the congregation and the pastor. With emphasis on the Word as the foundation, the author adds music and liturgy to the sermon’s structure to build a unified worship experience. Recognizing that the Word is truth, but that the truth needs to be made to seem true, the book offers sound, practical advice on sermon preparation based on both classical and contemporary communication theory. Sermon preparation is viewed as a process that begins with downloading the Word, followed by productive meditation. The process then moves through the rhetorical steps, from a search for content to the sermon’s delivery. Throughout the book, the rhetorical principles are treated as a subordinate element to the Word, a means of giving effectiveness to the truth. The Rhetoric of the Pulpit aims to reflect the spirit of Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Paul, and Kenneth Burke.

In the formative years of the Methodist Church in the United States, women played significant roles as proselytizers, organizers, lay ministers, and majority members. Although women's participation helped the church to become the nation's largest denomination by the mid-nineteenth century, their official roles diminished during that time. In Beyond the Pulpit, Lisa Shaver examines Methodist periodicals as a rhetorical space to which women turned to find, and make, self-meaning. In 1818, Methodist Magazine first published "memoirs" that eulogized women as powerful witnesses for their faith on their deathbeds. As Shaver observes, it was only in death that a woman could achieve the status of minister. Another Methodist publication, the Christian Advocate, was America's largest circulated weekly by the mid-1830s. It featured the "Ladies' Department," a column that reinforced the canon of women as dutiful wives, mothers, and household managers. Here, the church also affirmed women in the important rhetorical and evangelical role of domestic preacher. Outside the "Ladies Department," women increasingly appeared in "little narratives" in which they were portrayed as models of piety and charity, benefactors, organizers, Sunday school administrators and teachers, missionaries, and ministers' assistants. These texts cast women into nondomestic roles that were institutionally sanctioned and widely disseminated. By 1841, the Ladies' Repository and Gatherings of the West was engaging women in discussions of religion, politics, education, science, and a variety of intellectual debates. As Shaver posits, by providing a forum for women writers and readers, the church gave them an official rhetorical space and the license to define their own roles and spheres of influence. As such, the periodicals of the Methodist church became an important public venue in which women's voices were heard and their identities explored.

While most books on biblical rhetoric focus primarily on the epistles, this volume from prominent scholar C. Clifton Black considers the variety of rhetorical critical approaches now being applied to the Gospels (including Lukeâ€"Acts). This updated edition takes into account recent research since the first volume was published in 2001 and features two brand new chapters. Black provides an overview of the different forms of rhetorical criticism, with examples from the Gospel of John; studies of characterization in Matthew and Luke; an analysis of classical rhetorical criteria found in Mark and Lukeâ€"Acts; and an analysis of the rhetoric of the parables with implications for contemporary preaching.

In this companion and sequel to the best-selling Power in the Pulpit (2002), which has sold over 11,000 copies, more of America's best-known and most influential African American preachers describe how they go about preparing their sermons. Each preacher also presents a sermon that highlights his or her particular method of sermon preparation. This book is an excellent how-to manual for pastors and students, presenting sage advice and wisdom on the art of preaching and an inspirational look at the work of some of the most prominent figures in the life of the black church.

The Womanist Preacher: Proclaiming Womanist Rhetoric from the Pulpit performs a close textual analysis of five womanist sermons to answer the question: how does womanist preaching attempt to transform/adapt the tenets of womanist thought to make it rhetorically viable in the church? And what is gained and lost in this? The sermons come from five women who are considered exemplars of womanist preaching: Elaine M. Flake, Gina M. Stewart, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Melva L. Sampson, and Claudette A. Copeland. This book takes the first step in womanist scholarship to dissect what is rhetorically going on in womanist preaching, to categorize womanist sermons under the four tenets of womanist preaching, and to then create four rhetorical models that reflect the rhetorical attributes of the four different categories or phrased tenets that Stacey Floyd-Thomas uses to represent Alice Walker’s “womanist” definition.

In this book, scholar and preacher Cleophus J. LaRue brings together the voices of twelve of America's most influential African-American preachers. Each of these renowned preachers describes his or her method of sermon preparation and includes a sample sermon for illustration. An excellent how-to manual for pastors and students,Power in the Pulpitis both sage wisdom on the art of preaching and an inspiring look at some of the most prominent figures in the black church.

The Victorian Pulpit is the first book to employ the methods of orality-literacy scholarship in the study of the nineteenth-century British sermon. The first chapters present three ways in which Victorian preaching was a conflation of oral and written practice. The second part is an analysis of the rhetoric of three prominent ministers. The book concludes by suggesting other ways of bringing orality-literacy studies and Victorian scholarship together.