Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 5-10-2017 Situating Polemics of Moral Imperative in Shifting Socio-Cultural Paradigms: Exploring Rhetorical Appeals in Two Baptist Archives Donald I. Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Gammill, Donald I., "Situating Polemics of Moral Imperative in Shifting Socio-Cultural Paradigms: Exploring Rhetorical Appeals in Two Baptist Archives." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2017.edu/english_diss/176 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact scholarworks@gsu.
SITUATING POLEMICS OF MORAL IMPERATIVE IN SHIFTING SOCIO-CULTURAL PARADIGMS: EXPLORING RHETORICAL APPEALS IN TWO BAPTIST ARCHIVES by DONALD I. Under the Direction of Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Ph. ABSTRACT Expanding present research in religious rhetoric, the following primary-source study helps explain how dogmatic intractability and cultural insularity have lead to precarious rhetorical positioning and uncertain rhetorical effectiveness in light of questionable appeals to moral imperative, defined herein as things that should intentionally be done or not done based on a rhetor’s perceived shared morality with an audience. The project interrogates two Baptist media outlets at two points in history roughly marking each end of the American Temperance Movement, revealing several of the ways in which these appeals were affected by historiographical and cultural contexts.
Viewing selected moral-imperative-focused Baptist polemics through a lens informed by David Barton’s “ecology” theory of literacy, which focuses on a reciprocal relationship involving linguistic connections to the psychological, the social, and the historiographical, this investigation uses a discourse analysis methodology to analyze the polemic content of six months’ worth of 1881 issues of The Christian Index, a Georgia Baptist Convention-published Christian newspaper, and three months worth of transcripts of 1942 Baptist Hour radio broadcasts (a Southern Baptist Convention production), identifying trends and patterns that indicate how moral imperative appeals were handled in each source, whether or not the Temperance Movement affected this treatment, and what role rhetor and audience perception of language may have played. Two coding categories emerged: those dealing with temperance and those dealing with war (the lingering effects of the American Civil War and the beginnings of U. involvement in World War II). Analyzed in light of these central elements (along with factors dealing with several ancillary themes that appeared in the data), this study’s major findings show that the 1881 Baptist newspaper polemicists were more sure of their interpretation and application of Biblical principles to issues of the day like temperance and resentment over Reconstruction, while the 1942 Baptist radio preachers were more open and self- and audience-aware, preferring a tone of comfort and unity to one of stark, quick judgment.
Ultimately, the study concludes that the extreme divergence between each era’s dominant culture and the insular Baptist denominational culture was likely the preeminent inhibitor of Baptist rhetor consistency and innovation. INDEX WORDS: Primary source research, Religious rhetoric, Temperance, War, Literacy, Discourse analysis SITUATING POLEMICS OF MORAL IMPERATIVE IN SHIFTING SOCIO-CULTURAL PARADIGMS: EXPLORING RHETORICAL APPEALS IN TWO BAPTIST ARCHIVES by DONALD I. A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts & Sciences Georgia State University 2017 Copyright by Donald Irving Gammill, Jr. 2017 SITUATING POLEMICS OF MORAL IMPERATIVE IN SHIFTING SOCIO-CULTURAL PARADIGMS: EXPLORING RHETORICAL APPEALS IN TWO BAPTIST ARCHIVES by DONALD I.
Committee Chair: Dr. Lynée Lewis Gaillet Committee: Dr. Michael Harker Dr. Elizabeth Sanders Lopez Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May, 2017 DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to the late Reverend Dr.
Williams and to past, present, and future Baptist preachers, teachers, and polemicists of all types who, despite the severe limitations of both human language and human understanding, strive nonetheless to “rightly divide the Word of Truth,” knowing in faith that the Word of God will not, despite the myriad imperfections of those who proclaim it, return void. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To God Be the Glory. I could not have undertaken nor completed this research without the leading hand of the Almighty in even the smallest details of the project, and I thank Him for bringing me to this achievement. Additionally, I offer my sincerest gratitude to my wife, best friend, and chief encourager, Dr.
Rebecca Leigh Gammill, my beautiful baby daughter Clara Lynée Gammill, my parents, Don Gammill, Sr. Gammill, my grandmother, Oma C. Wood, and my in-laws, Robert W. and Brenda Clark Parker.
On the Georgia State University side, I extend my deepest thanks to my Dissertation Committee Chair (and Guardian Angel), Dr. Lynée Lewis Gaillet, whose extraordinary faith in me surpassed that of any instructor, mentor, or supervisor I have ever known. I tremendously appreciate the wisdom and guidance of my other two committee members, Dr. Michael Harker and Dr.
Elizabeth Sanders Lopez, as well; their willingness to work with me and help me develop the key ideas that made this project unique and significant taught me as much about collaboration as it did about research and rhetoric. A number of my fellow graduate students/friends have also helped me in ways too numerous to enumerate throughout the various stages of this work: Susan Cochran, Robert Manfredi, Xiaobo Wang, Valerie Robin, Helen Cauley, Ann Marie Francis, Kateland Wolfe, and Tara Causey—thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Finally, I must thank all of my students, past and present (especially my Georgia State University students) for inspiring me to become a better version of myself by continuing my education. Their tenacious example in the pursuit of their own studies constantly reminds me of who I was in the past and sharpens the image of who I want to continue to try and be.
Thank you all. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. VII 1 CONCEPTUALIZING RELIGIOUS ARCHIVES FOR RHETORICAL INVESTIGATION .1 Historic Placement and Present Relevance .2 Key Terms and Research Questions. 32 2 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AS PRETEXT: HISTORICALLY CONTEXTUALIZING BAPTISTS, TEMPERANCE, AND THE SOMEWHAT CONFLICTED NATURE OF BAPTIST POLEMICS ON PUBLIC MORALITY .1 Historiographic Context of the Temperance Movement and its Relevant Significances/Resonances .1 Alcohol in America: 19th Century Temperance .2 Late-Century Temperance: The WCTU and the ASL .2 Historiographic context of Baptists and Baptist ideas about the public sphere in American society.2 Baptist Ideas Influence American Culture.3 Conflict: The First Amendment and Religion’s Place in American Society .4 Baptist Inconsistencies: Sound Doctrines but Unstable Stances.
64 3 CONFLICTS AND INCONSISTENCY: A LATENT STRUGGLE BETWEEN PRACTICAL EXPEDIENCY AND DOCTRINAL LOYALTY.1 Findings, Analysis, and Discussion .1 Future Research Implications. 123 3 1 CONCEPTUALIZING RELIGIOUS ARCHIVES FOR RHETORICAL INVESTIGATION Ephemera, preserved for whatever reason, can take on future significance as an archive, and can sometimes constitute a heretofore missing piece of a puzzle that many had forgotten was not entirely complete. When such materials are coalesced, the ephemeral essence is often shed, as the likenesses and commonalities of the collection shine through the outward appearance. Great potential for useful meaning often results, and sometimes this meaning can better inform or even correct conventional histories.
Such was the case in composition professor Bruce McComiskey’s book “Microhistories of Composition,” where the author talks in the introduction about finding his own first-year composition essays. Reading these 30-year-old papers, along with his instructor’s comments about them, revealed a tremendous incongruity with the grand narratives of the history of composition pedagogy; what he now knew that was going on in Composition Studies in the early 1980s was not at all what went on in his class back then. This surprising revelation caused him to wonder exactly how many data points similar to his own experience conflicted with these grand narratives and what the inclusion of such “micro-histories” might do to mitigate what he viewed as the conventional view’s limitations (which he related to Kenneth Burke’s idea of “trained incapacities”). McComiskey was “forced to reassess [his] assumptions regarding what history is, what historical narratives do, and how historical evidence should be 4 marshalled in the service of an argument” due to this primary-source finding (McComiskey 7-8).
In much the same way, I have leveraged largely overlooked archival materials to unearth helpful data points which, in small but useful ways, inform the understanding and sharpen the focus of Evangelical Christian religious rhetoric. The following qualitative study expands on the understanding of rhetoric’s role in how religious dogma has affected public discourse and, subsequently, public policy. This research interrogates primary sources in order to evaluate the roles played by various words and phrases that religious rhetors used to advance exhortations concerning morality in the public discourse of their day. By confining this effort to the microcosm of a particular historical/socio-cultural context—Baptists in Georgia during the late 19th- and early 20th- century Progressive Movement—I established necessary scope-limiting parameters that were essential to the maintenance of sufficient depth and feasibility.
Focusing on symptomatic reading, or reading that searches for what that the text did and didn’t say due to ideological bias, I employed a qualitative discourse analysis methodology to identify a number of generally defined “textual elements” which serve as “code” for each author’s broader social, cultural, and historical context (Anderson 125). By carefully interrogating words and phrases correlating with the recurrent themes of war and temperance (both abundant in the primary sources), I probed a number of subtle-but- significant outcroppings of the foundational layer of religious bedrock which undergirded—in a hegemony-creating and sustaining manner—nearly all of American culture and politics in the late-19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. Essentially, this 5 study helps explain in small part how religious rhetoric helped bring this cultural hegemony about and what it did—or at least tried to do—in order to sustain it.1 Historic Placement and Present Relevance This research, while archival in nature, is timely and relevant in that it uncovers important aspects of the rhetoric of public morality that existing scholarship has yet to fully explore. It simultaneously constructs a meaningful link and helpful addition to the current corpus of religious rhetoric and rhetorical studies more broadly.
Specifically, it does this by shedding light on Baptist’s linguistic association (or perhaps even conflation) of theology with practical social concerns. As an evangelical Christian denomination that views all morality as Biblically derived and the non-Christian world as lost and dying, the Baptists in this study conform to popular stereotypes by associating (or possibly confusing) their Divine charge to proselytize to individuals with a similarly concerted desire to try and conform society to Biblical precepts. Focusing on this famously dogmatic, somewhat insular, surprisingly cohesive, and doggedly change- resistant religious community at two meaningful historical moments—during the fighting (and in the aftermath of the loss) of the losing cultural battle that was the Temperance Movement—proved particularly fruitful. Garrett Peck sets the stage for this “target-rich” environment for rhetorical examination by succinctly summarizing the history of the movement in his book, The Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet: Eliminating alcohol from society would free the workingman from the clutches of the liquor trade.
It would shut down the corner saloon where he poured out his wages. It would save his wife and family from abuse and poverty, from 6 widowhood and the orphanage. Ultimately it would sober up the nation and create a more God-like country. Temperance succeeded in pushing Prohibition onto the nation.
(198) As Peck’s recap suggests, many evangelicals (and this is particularly true of Baptists) see Christians as "pilgrims in an unholy land"—ambassadors for Christ in a lost and dying world. Correspondingly, while societal values have evolved and moved away (according to the Baptist's view) from Biblical precepts, Baptist rhetoric has also evolved. New scholarship is therefore needed to help explain how these rhetors— especially the official polemicists among them—react rhetorically to these changes.