Seeking the answers as to what makes one speaker more charismatic than another and why some speeches are merely effective while others move audiences to a transcendent state is a difficult task. This paper follows up on this challenge and seeks to provide some answers as to how the prophetic works of Richard Brothers moved his followers to a…

Attempts to provide increased understanding of the nature and function of mystical preaching as a distinctive form of discourse by investigating the sermons of the medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-ca. 1327, 1329). (MH)

Argues that changes in the form and frequency of preaching in England between 1534 and 1559 were as much the result of political and ecclesiastical struggles as they were of formal developments in rhetorical or homiletical theory. (JMF)

Since the advent of cable television in the early seventies, the success of television evangelists including Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker, Robert Schuller, and Jimmy Swaggart has grown, both in terms of finances and in conversion of souls. Although many television preachers use similar strategies for getting donations, their backgrounds and messages…

In 1965, transcripts were collected of 72 sermons on the issue of racial integration preached between 1955 and 1965. The sermons, all given by Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopal ministers in the southern United States, were examined to determine the position advocated by the minister. The sermons deemed segregationist were then…

Argues that the success of 'The Letter' can be attributed to the confluence of three distinct rhetorical traits: King's heritage of the highly emotional Negro preaching tradition, his shrewd sense of political timing and polemical skill, and his conscious literary ability, and notes that 'The Letter' is one of the most frequently collected items…

To determine the extent to which current theories of persuasion are used or advocated by homileticians (i.e., preachers), this study examines 21 frequently used homiletics textbooks for their treatment of persuasion. After describing the characteristics of classical, premodern, humanistic, and rhetorical models, the study suggests that these…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the rhetoric of the Moral Majority, (2) epideictic rhetoric in the works of 16th cntury humanist John Colet, (3) rhetoric and the Equal Rights Amendment, (4)…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 10 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the television sermons of Jerry Falwell, W. A. Criswell, Robert Schuller, Jimmy Swaggert, James Robinson, and Howard Estep; (2) the preaching of Wallace E. Fisher; (3) Theodore…