Books by Eric C Miller
The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom in the United States
Articles by Eric C Miller
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2021
Throughout the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, Charles Grandison Finney dist... more Throughout the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, Charles Grandison Finney distinguished himself as the most successful evangelical preacher in the United States. Trained as a lawyer before converting to Christianity and its ministry, Finney came to the pulpit with a fiercely rational and accusatory style that placed demands upon his listeners. In formulating his appeal, Finney also fashioned an innovative Protestant theology that challenged New England Calvinism. After establishing that each sinner has the power to self-reform, he spread the message to audiences across the Northeast, sparking a series of revivals that made his reputation. In the 1830s, Finney was asked to explain his method from his New York City pulpit, and did so across twenty-two lectures that detailed his revival strategy. This essay employs Finney's theory of individual conversion to examine his theory of mass revival, noting the essentially deliberative character of each and recognizing the lasting influence of both on evangelical life in the United States.
Pennsylvania Communication Annual, 2021
Early in the 2020s, much American public discourse is enmeshed in the same sort of national, hist... more Early in the 2020s, much American public discourse is enmeshed in the same sort of national, historical, and racial controversies that defined much of the 1990s. The southwest border remains a focal point, and immigration continues to trouble and frustrate our political process. Confederate memorials prevalent throughout the southern states have prompted conversations about history, tragedy, and justice. And the national debate over Critical Race Theory has raised tensions over public school history curricula. In 1996, auteur John Sayles considered these themes in his masterpiece film, Lone Star, and his thoughtful treatment has aged exceptionally well. This essay draws on ideas from Friedrich Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt-especially their conceptions of forgetting and forgiving, respectively-to analyze Sayles' film and, ultimately, to comment on America's ongoing interrogation of its rich and tragic past. In their work, I argue, we may locate the rhetorical tools necessary to break a long, vicious, recriminating cycle.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2020
This essay considers Phillip E. Johnson's "Wedge Strategy" for Intelligent Design (ID) advocacy, ... more This essay considers Phillip E. Johnson's "Wedge Strategy" for Intelligent Design (ID) advocacy, assessing his contribution to an eighty-year history of public education controversy. Starting with the 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, and culminating in the 2005 case of Kitzmiller v. Dover in Dover, Pennsylvania, this ancestry discloses interesting developments in rhetorical strategy. Though past studies have considered the creation-evolution debates as confrontations between religion and science, this piece is primarily interested in how these contests frame the opposition between liberality and illiberality. As Johnson and his allies asserted that ID was true, they were just as adamant that it would set people free. In making this claim, they drew on rhetorical resources previously employed by advocates of evolution, refashioning theistic appeals to positive liberty in the negative frame of academic freedom, and hoping thereby to affect a reversal of roles with their scientific critics. Important to discussions of public school science curricula, this analysis is also revelatory about liberal discourse writ large.
Voices of Democracy, 2019
This essay considers the rhetoric of Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, specifically the text of his... more This essay considers the rhetoric of Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, specifically the text of his 1922 sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" A definitive artifact of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, Fosdick's address attacked the resurgent fundamentalism that was then dividing American Protestantism, casting it opposite the generosity, tolerance, and intellectual honesty of liberal forces. Because of Fosdick's skillful deployment of apologetic rhetoric, the sermon serves as a primer on religious argumentation. Fosdick demonstrates how, when it comes to faith, the best offense may be a good defense.
This essay considers the written rhetoric of anti-abortion activist Randall Terry as a prominent ... more This essay considers the written rhetoric of anti-abortion activist Randall Terry as a prominent example of liberal prophecy – a rhetorical posture that situates the ideographs of liberal democracy within the prophetic style. Though contemporary " culture war " issues are ostensibly concerned with moral standards and religious beliefs, the public discussion surrounding such issues has tended toward a liberal frame, as competing factions vie for control of concepts such as liberty, freedom, and rights. Often effective in other venues, the liberal frame proved unsuccessful for Terry, who allowed his liberal commitments to be subsumed within a prophetic rhetoric maligned for its extremity.
Amendment in the 1970s, Schlafly and her colleagues were able to prevent its ratifıcation. In the... more Amendment in the 1970s, Schlafly and her colleagues were able to prevent its ratifıcation. In their many clashes with proponents of the women's liberation movement, these traditionalist women successfully appropriated and redeployed an ideographic argument that had been the province of their foes. Specifıcally, Schlafly claimed that traditional gender roles were freeing to women, ensuring their rights, while "liberation" could lead only to bondage. Drawing on the work of philosopher Isaiah Berlin, I argue that Schlafly's upbeat, "positive" campaign advanced a "positive" conception of freedom against the "negative" freedom proposed by second-wave feminists. The success of this effort demonstrates the utility of such arguments, especially in a nation that values freedom as both opportunity and exercise. I close by suggesting that Schlafly's rhetorical strategy has been embraced by subsequent conservative "culture war" movements, ensuring her legacy into the new millennium.
This essay analyzes the deployment of freedom and liberty as premises in orthodox culture war arg... more This essay analyzes the deployment of freedom and liberty as premises in orthodox culture war argumentation. Specifically, it suggests that recent decades have been host to a marked shift in social issue debates, whereby formerly religious arguments have adopted an increasingly secular, liberal tenor. Though ostensibly concerned with moral questions, activists and interest groups have sought to appropriate the mantle of American freedom, thus fortifying their positions amid the shared ideals of liberal democracy. A timely case study is found in contemporary opposition to same-sex marriage. Here as elsewhere, religious elites who had formerly framed their public statements in accusatory moralreligious terms now increasingly claim to stand in defense of free speech and free religious expression. Though at times justified, this position indicates a sort of rhetorical backpedaling whereby religious speakers defend the right to hold unpopular views rather than attempting to defend the views themselves. I conclude by suggesting a religious politics in the broad sense of the term, advising religious advocates to return to a public practice of their faith that rejects political ambition.
Patrick Buchanan's speech from the 1992 Republican National Convention is frequently cited as a d... more Patrick Buchanan's speech from the 1992 Republican National Convention is frequently cited as a definitive artifact of the culture wars of the late twentieth century. After challenging President George H.W. Bush in the Republican Primary, Buchanan agreed to endorse Bush in exchange for a primetime speaking slot at the RNC in Houston. Having attacked Bush over tax policy, Buchanan drew on social issues to stir passions and unite the GOP behind Bush's candidacy.
Chapters by Eric C Miller
Review Essays by Eric C Miller
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2022
In 1981, Ronald Reagan selected Wyoming attorney James G. Watt to serve as Secretary of the Inter... more In 1981, Ronald Reagan selected Wyoming attorney James G. Watt to serve as Secretary of the Interior, tasked with managing the nation's public lands, federal parks, and natural resources. Then president of the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, Watt's past relationship to the Department of the Interior had been primarily antagonistic, pressing the federal government to loosen regulations and to make public lands more accessible to timber, mining, and ranching interests. His nomination thus signaled that the Reagan administration intended to develop lands that had been protected in the past, drawing immediate scrutiny from environmental organizations and advocates. Though Watt's posture toward conservation and resource management may have been defensible within a secular conception of politics and policy, his approach quickly became entangled with the tenets of his evangelical Christian faith. It was around this time, according to an array of contemporary sources, that Watt drew the connection himself. The United States may not need to conserve its natural resources at all, he quipped, because "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns." 1 Thus with one careless remark, Watt established and substantiated a popular association between evangelical theology, conservative policymaking, and an exceedingly transitory, entirely disposable planet. Though Watt's tenure was short-he was forced out in 1983 after some jarring comments on affirmative action and a public feud with the Beach Boys-his profile has proven durable. Over the four decades that followed, the claim that "end times" thinking has left evangelical Christians complacent on environmental conservation has been oftrepeated and published, with former Vice President Al Gore and journalist Bill Moyers among its more prominent proponents. In 2015, when a Pew Research poll revealed that only 28 percent of white evangelicals accepted the science behind anthropogenic climate
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2021
Gamble, Richard M. In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth (... more Gamble, Richard M. In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth (New York: Continuum, 2012), 224 pp. $25.46 (hardcover). About two thousand years ago, in Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth delivered his famous "Sermon on the Mount." As part of that discourse, he encouraged the audience to set a godly example in public, styling his followers "the light of the world," their virtue radiating as though from "a city that is set on a hill." 1 Sixteen centuries later, the Puritan John Winthrop employed this image in A Model of Christian Charity, drafted aboard the flagship Arbella as it approached Massachusetts Bay. "We shall be as a city upon a hill," Winthrop wrote of the colonists, "the eyes of all people are upon us." 2 His words went unpublished for 200 years after that, then languished in obscurity for 100 years more, before achieving 20 th century prominence first in the work of select New England historians and later in the campaign speeches of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Suddenly ubiquitous, Winthrop was retroactively lauded as author of the American mission statement, his address canonized as an essential founding document with standing somewhere between the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence. It was cited routinely in schools, revered in churches, and for a time awarded primacy of place in the Norton Anthology of American Literature. Winthrop, it seemed, had been progenitor of it all; the intellectual grandfather of the American experiment. But he wasn't really, and so finally, in the second decade of the 21 st century, three serious scholars have written three excellent books recounting the singular story of his remarkable comeback. Each is a compelling piece of American historiography; all demonstrate the rhetorical value of past discourses to present purposes-even when the connections are tenuous between. The story of the story begins in 2012, with the publication of Richard M. Gamble's In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. Though not the first scholar to notice problems with the Winthrop narrative, Gamble was first to explore them at book length and so to crack the vein that subsequent
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2015
Reviews by Eric C Miller
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2019
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2018
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Books by Eric C Miller
Articles by Eric C Miller
Chapters by Eric C Miller
Review Essays by Eric C Miller
Reviews by Eric C Miller