Persuasions of God

The nations of the global north find themselves in a post-secular or post-Christian period, one in which the practice, expression, and effects of religion are undergoing massive shifts. In Persuasions of God, Paul Lynch pursues a project of “theorhetoric,” a radical new approach to speaking about the divine.

Searching for new religious forms amid the lingering influence of Christianity, Lynch turns to René Girard, the most important twentieth-century thinker on the sacred and its expression within the Christian tradition. Lynch repurposes Girard’s mimetic theory to invent a post-Christian way of speaking to, for, and especially about God. Girard theorized the sacred as the nexus of violence, order, and sacralization that lies at the heart of religion. What Lynch advocates in our current moment of religious kairos is a paradoxically meek rhetoric that conscientiously refuses rivalry, actively exploits tradition through complicit invention, and boldly seeks a holiness free of exclusionary violence. The project of theorhetoric is to reinvent God through the reimagined themes of meekness, sacrifice, atonement, and holiness. From these, Persuasions of God offers religion reimagined for our post-secular age.

An interdisciplinary mix of philosophy, sociology, rhetorical studies, and theology, this book draws on mimetic theory to answer the question of where religion goes next. It will be valued by religious studies and communications scholars as well as anyone interested in the future of Christianity in our modern world.

“Persuasions of God makes a major contribution to critical conversations concerning rhetoric and religion. As a post-Christian intervention, it deals skillfully with Jewish and Christian scriptures and especially with Christian theological literature as well as relevant work in rhetorical theory. As in his earlier scholarship, Paul Lynch is here not only in dialogue with various disciplinary communities; he also explicitly discusses and exemplifies how such dialogue should generously take place.”—Steven Mailloux, author of Rhetoric’s Pragmatism: Essays in Rhetorical Hermeneutics

“Persuasions of God is a theological and rhetorical masterpiece. Integrating a wide range of voices and resources, Lynch’s work achieves a remarkable integration—and simultaneous unsettling—of the boundaries between rhetoric and religion under the banner of ‘Theorhetoric.’ Persuasions is a work with profound implications for the fields of rhetoric and religious studies in the context of what Lynch identifies as a post-secular and post-Christian Kairos. It is a brilliant and beautifully written book.”—Christian O. Lundberg, author of Lacan in Public: Psychoanalysis and the Science of Rhetoric

Paul Lynch is Associate Professor of English at Saint Louis University. He is the author of After Pedagogy: The Experience of Teaching and a coeditor of Rhetoric and Religion in the Twenty-First Century:Pluralism in a Postsecular Age and Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: An Alienated Theorhetoric

1 The Meek Defense

2 Friendly Injustices

3 Overcoming Christianity

4 Uneasy Holiness

Postscript: Holy Envy

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Communication Studies

           Rhetorical Studies

Philosophy

           Philosophy of Religion

Religious Studies & Religion

           Philosophy of Religion

Rhetoric