'Theology in Language, Rhetoric, and Beyond' places before a broad audience of students and general readers theological essays on both the Old and New Testaments. Theology is seen to derive from a number of sources: the biblical language, biblical rhetoric and composition, academic disciplines other than philosophy, and above all a careful exegesis of the biblical text. The essay on Psalm 23 makes use of anthropology and human-development theory; the essay on Deuteronomy incorporates Wisdom themes; the essay called Jeremiah and the Created Order looks at ideas not only about God and creation but also about the seldom-considered idea of God and a return to chaos; and the essay on the Confessions of Jeremiah examines, not the words thatthis extraordinary prophet was given by God to preach, but what he himself felt and experienced in the office to which he was called. One essay on Biblical and theological themes includes a translation into the African language of Lingala, which weaves together the story of early Christianity with the more recent founding of churches in Africa and Asia. Jack R. Lundbom argues eloquently through these essays that theology is rooted in biblical words, in themselves, in rhetoric and their different contexts.

Rhetoric and the Responsibility to and for Language: Speaking of Evil relocates the “problem of evil”— the question of why God would allow for the existence of evil—and surveys it as a rhetorical problem. It raises this question: if we speak evil, how shall we speak of evil? When we communicate, we are naming, and evil as the corruption of language plays a central role in that naming. Evil freezes our words, convinces us we have the sole right to their definitions, and generally stifles the dynamic gift of language. By looking at how people in different eras and situations have named evil, this book suggests how we can better take responsibility for our words and why we owe a responsibility to language as our ethical stance toward evil.

An illuminating New Testament study depicts the power and beauty of language that speaks with the words of God and man. Words call man to battle or summon him to prayer. More and more, today man is analyzing his language and asking: What is the purpose of language? What do the words we speak mean? What is their religious significance? Dr. Wilder's extraordinary work attempts to answer these questions and, in particular, to study the qualities of the language that ushered in a new religion, the early Christian faith.

The Sermon on the Mount never ceases to challenge readers in every generation. New methods and new insights into new surroundings have to be applied to the most influential speech ever given. In this study, Ernst Baasland takes a fresh look at the history of research done on it, both on its broad influence and on the variety of interpretations. The historical questions are seen from new perspectives. Is orality the key to a better understanding? To what extent can we reconstruct a pre-text and the question of authenticity be answered? These questions are seen through historiographical lenses. The author argues in favour of a universal addressee and maintains that the speech contains radical philosophical thinking. The first audience consisted of Jews, and the religiously based understanding of life is conceived within Judaism. However, its ethics of wisdom is developed in a Hellenistic setting and provides a radical philosophy of life.

Michał Choiński explores the language of the key preachers of the "Great Awakening" of the mid-eighteenth century, and seeks to explain the impact their sermons exerted upon colonial American audiences. The revival of the 1739–43 is recognized as an important event in American colonial history, formative for the shaping of the culture of New England and beyond. Choiński highlights a variety of inventive rhetorical mechanisms employed by these ministers evolved into what came to be called the rhetoric of the revival," became commonplace for American revivalism, and were fundamental for the persuasive power of Great Awakening preaching and the communicative success of the "New Light" ministers. "

"Explores prayer as a rhetorical art, examining situations, strategies, and performative modes of discourse directed to the divine"--Provided by publisher.

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.