Short
Essay
The
relationship between rhetoric and religion, between the sacred and the secular,
has often been difficult to pin down.
The question 'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?' puzzles as many
people now as it did anciently.
Emblematic of the complexity of the issue was Rome's shift from
persecuting to promoting Christianity. Rome
discovered that religion and secular society can coexist. The question is
how.
Augustine
thought that understanding rhetoric was critical in order to understand
religion. Perhaps one reason for this
was their interdependency. Rhetoric is
primarily focused on form, while religion is more content-driven. However, form and content are inseparably
connected. A teacher cannot communicate
content without a form to carry it, and a listener cannot understand the
message without wading through the form.
At the same time, there is no such thing as pure form; every sentence
carries semantic meaning. Despite the
necessity of rhetoric in order to communicate religious values, the misuse of
persuasive tactics can also be detrimental to morality. Historically problems have emerged when
rhetoric came to represent content that differed from the speaker's true
purpose. For example, the Sophists often
persuaded people of things that the speakers themselves didn't believe were
absolutely true, and the result was an amoral worldview. During the crusades the Catholic Church used
an ethos built upon the backs of Christian doctrines such as charity and
forgiveness to push soon-to-be soldiers toward murder and hatred.
In
modern times, rhetoric has shaped the way that the public has viewed moral
issues such as abortion, LGBT rights, and the exclusion of Muslims from the
United States, as well as religious freedom, democracy, and equality. Rhetoric is a necessity when talking about
religious subjects in modern society, but it has also done considerable
damage. I believe that truth is
naturally persuasive, despite differences between people in both capacity and
willingness to perceive and receive it. Rhetoric
can be a tool that allows pure truth to shine through, or a smoke machine that
clouds other's perceptions of reality. If
we let the content drive the form, rather than the other way around, rhetoric
can be a means of persuading the world's citizens of Christian values that will
bring them peace and happiness. Making
rhetoric our servant rather than our master will make us more capable servants
of the One true Master.
Short
Rhetorical Analysis
Jacob
had good reason to do his best to be persuasive. His people was in deep spiritual trouble and
the Lord had given him the responsibility of motivating them to repent. Several kinds rhetorical tools allowed him to
make his point powerful, well-rounded way.
For
example, Jacob used each of the rhetorical appeals during his sermon. He directly referenced receiving his
assignment from God to build his ethos. He supplemented this point by telling the
people specific details of their sins, which would have helped them realize
that he knew what was happening in their lives.
He appealed to pathos by
portraying vividly the suffering of local families, "Ye have broken the
hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of
your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to
God against you" (Jacob 2:35). Logos helped him emphasize why the
people should not think that they are better than the Lamanites. "Their hatred towards you is because of
the iniquity of their fathers; wherefore, how much better are you than they, in
the sight of your great Creator?" (Jacob 3:7) By using all three appeals, Jacob created a more balanced argument than
he would have had by just using one.
On
a deeper level, Jacob utilized topics of
invention that emphasized the steep contrast between his expectation for the
people and reality. He incorporated a
combination of cause and effect and past fact/future fact to describe how the people's sin had affected their families
in the past, implying that such damage would continue to occur in the future
unless the people repented. Jacob also showed
how similar the Nephites had become to the Lamanites. That must have stung particularly hard because
the Nephites saw the Lamanites as savages.
Both of these methods painted a stark picture of the Nephites' situation
and encouraged them to repent.
On
the micro level, Jacob's tropes made his description of the Nephites' sinful
state more poignant. "Many hearts died,
pierced with deep wounds (Jacob 2:35)," is an example of metonymy, using the heart to symbolize
feelings, and of hyperbole, and
contributed strongly to pathos. Perhaps
the most salient use of metonymy was
the phrase "their skins will be whiter than yours (Jacob 3:8)," which
Jacob used to reflect the relative degrees of righteousness of the Nephites and
Lamanites. That particular metaphor
played well into the kairos of an
audience, who connected the skin color of their enemies directly to their
brutal nature. The mention of skin color
in particular, the mark of God's displeasure with their brethren, held a subtle
threat that if they weren't careful, the Nephites would fall to their spiritual
level.
Jacob
masterfully incorporated a variety of rhetorical techniques into his address
that played on the Nephites' culture, emphasized contrast between reality and
the ideal, and utilized multiple persuasive appeals. By exerting a well-rounded persuasive effort,
he was better able to touch the hearts of his listeners and encourage them to
change.
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