Estudio legal

The oral histories and other primary source materials I collected (see below) were analyzed using rhetorical criticism, which is concerned with understanding how textual artifacts wield rhetorical influence through the meanings embedded in them. Sacred books of religions are rhetorical sites of struggles because of how these texts have been interpreted and have come to hold different meanings for different groups of people over time. Rhetorical criticism is also useful in understanding how these texts come to have influence on others. Thus, the text is both a

31 Russel Moldovan, Martin Luther King, Jr.: An Oral History of His Religious Witness and His Life (Lanham,

Md.: International Scholars Publications, 1999); Nick Salvatore, Singing in a Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black

Church, and the Transformation of America (New York: Little, Brown, 2005).

32 For example, see Cynthia Hoehler Fatton, Women of Fire and History: History, Faith and Gender in Roho Religion in Western Kenya (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Elaine J. Lawless, “Rescripting Their Lives

and Narratives: Spiritual Life Stories of Pentecostal Women Preachers,” Journal of Feminist Studies of Religion 7, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 53-71; Stephen E. Parker, Faith on the Home Front: Aspects of Church Life and Popular

Religion in Birmingham, 1939-1945 (New York: Peter Lang, 2006); Arvind Sharma, Methodology in Religious Studies: The Interface with Women's Studies (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2002); Rebecca T. Alpert and Mary E.

means to and outcome of rhetorical struggle.33 Several scholars have found rhetorical criticism helpful as a distinct approach in understanding the rhetorical dimensions of biblical texts and biblical hermeneutics as sites of struggle.34 _{Whereas hermeneutics is concerned with the} interpretation of texts, the study of homiletics is concerned with the relationship between rhetoric and the art of preaching. From a survey of the literature surrounding the rhetorical performance of preaching, one soon discovers that there are several genres or forms of preaching. For example, narrative preaching, topical preaching, crisis preaching, and exegetical preaching are all forms or genres of preaching that have been analyzed and are replete in the literature.

Since preaching is concerned with the use of symbols and engages in the production of symbolic activity, a rhetorical critic of homiletics should be concerned with how these symbols influence human beings. In using rhetorical criticism to examine sermons, scholars have employed various forms of methods, including narrative criticism, cluster criticism, fantasy theme analysis, and neo-Aristotelian methods, to name a few.35 _{The conventional mode of} criticism is largely textual as the rhetorical critic seeks to understand the rhetorical dimension of the text of the sermons. This speaks to a limitation of current trends of rhetorical criticism of preaching, that is, the text is studied without reference to preaching as a rhetorical performance. However, my research here goes beyond this conventional approach by addressing the

33 Barry Brummett, Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2006), 91-92.

34 For example, see George Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 1984); Martin J. Medhurst, "Rhetorical Dimensions in Biblical Criticism: Beyond Style and Genre,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 77, no. 2 (1991): 214-26; Stanley E. Porter and Dennis L. Stamps, The Rhetorical Interpretation of Scripture: Essays from The 1996 Malibu Conference (Sheffield, Eng: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); Elma M Cornelius, “Rhetorical Criticism and the Hermeneutics of the New Testament,” Die Skriflig 34, no. 2 (2000): 253-74; Paul R. House, Beyond Form Criticism: Essays in Old

Testament Literary Criticism (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992); James A. Muilenburg, "Form Criticism and

Beyond," Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (1969): 1-18; Duane F. Watson and Alan J. Hauser, Rhetorical Criticism

of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography With Notes on History & Method (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994).

35For example, see J. A. Leo Lemay, “Rhetorical Strategies in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County,” in Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of

American Culture, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and Harry S. Stout (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 186-203;

Lucy A. Rose, “Narrative Preaching and Biblical Criticism,” Homiletic 17, no. 1 (1992): 1-5. Ernest G Bormann,

performative aspects of the sermon. I have augmented this methodology so that it will allow for the analyzing of sermons that includes the acknowledgment and understanding of the implications of the rhetoric of bodies and space as part of this discussion, as noted within Roxanne Mountford’s book, The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces.36

From a methodological perspective that examines the physicality, space, and oral performance of preaching, I am forced to recognize that the space in which the sermon is delivered, i.e., the pulpit, is not without a history and is a physical representation of ideas and ideology.37 _{This is to say that in addition to the text of the sermon, the rhetorical space of the} pulpit is saturated with rhetorical meaning that is worthy of scholarly attention. Furthermore, following the lead of previous research on the rhetoric of bodies, my dissertation will examine the rhetoric of the bodies of preachers as being infused with rhetorical meaning and implications.38 This exposition takes up the story of the body of the preacher that is being told alongside the story she is telling. This study, then, sets out to overcome the limitations of examining pulpit oratory on HIV/AIDS confined to the physical space of the pulpit by examining “pulpitized” areas touching on HIV/AIDS, which are inclusive of, but not limited to sermonic presentations.39 That is, these pulpitized spaces and presentations would include materials such as books, outlines, and pamphlets authored by and or endorsed by clergy members and then distributed to their congregants as part of what I am calling “religious rhetorics on HIV/AIDS.” Therefore, I employ the use of rhetorical criticism to evaluate the effectiveness of what my

36 Roxanne Mountford, The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Space (Carbondale: Southern

Illinois University Press, 2003).

37 Ashton T. Crawley, ‘“Let’s Get It On!’: Performance Theory and Black Pentecostalism,” Black Theology: An International Journal 6, no. 3 (2008): 315

38 For example, see Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley, ed., Rhetorical Bodies (Madison: University of Wisconsin,

informants are doing; effectiveness, then, depends upon the degree to which a transcultured and indigenized “theology of HIV/AIDS” informs the rhetorical activity.