Foundational Growth (Asynchronous - Online Only)
Persuasion or Manipulation: Employing Pathos as a Persuasive Strategy in Protestant Sermons View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Martin Adam
Besides the discourses of politics, advertising and marketing, which are generally considered persuasive by definition (van Dijk 1998, 2008), in many ways it is the religious discourse that adopts persuasion as one of its essential instruments to convince the audience of the truthfulness of the doctrine it presents, be it sermons, theological treatises, doxologies, personal testimonies, evangelistic texts, apologetic argumentation, or the Bible itself (Lempert 2015, Adam 2017, 2019, Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. 2020). The proposed corpus-driven paper explores the persuasive strategies and linguistic means employed to convey persuasion in English Protestant sermons. It strives to shed light on the rhetorical role of pathos, which is purposefully evoked by the preacher via affect; stirred emotions are to boost the persuasive effect, i.e. to promote the doctrine and to make the believers comprehend and accept spiritual truths. Special attention will also be paid to the blurred borderline between the intentional use of sentimentality and manipulation.
Mary’s Fiat : An Interpretation of the Mother of Christ’s Agency from a Catholic Perspective View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alfonso Gómez-Rossi
The Virgin Mary is the most extraordinary woman for Roman Catholics. Though her claim to fame is traditionally based on being the mother of Christ, there is another aspect of her personality which makes her importantly unique: since the proclamation of her immaculate conception by Pope Pius IX, it is understood that she is the only human to have ever enjoyed absolute free will. The construction of Mary’s free will was determined by a series of theological debates that attempted to explain how much freedom humanity actually possesses. For Catholics, free will is understood as an ability to choose to act in accordance to God’s desire or to reject it. But this simple definition derives from theological understandings shaped by the cultural underpinnings of different periods in history, beginning with the Augustinian interpretation of the fall. Mary’s perfect alignment with God’s will at the moment of the Annunciation, and the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, implies a woman free from sin and thus able to acquiesce to God’s plans freely. This paper explores how the concept of free will was constructed by the Roman Catholic Church and how, unlike the rest of humanity, only Mary has ever possessed complete agency.
Kepler’s Star of Bethlehem Miscalculation: Zoroastrian and Judeo-Christian Text That Disagree with Kepler and Modern Planetary Conjunction Theorist View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robert William Weber
Every year at the spring equinox the nation of Iran celebrates Nowruz (Nōrūz, Nō Rūz, or Nō-Rūz). Nowruz is not only the first day of the new year on the Iranian calendar, but also marks the first day of spring—a time in both ancient and modern Iran that represents the rebirth of nature, and the victory of light over darkness, or good over evil. This paper focuses on the importance of the spring equinox in the Zoroastrian religion and its relationship to the Nativity. This is an area that is greatly underrepresented by modern Star of Bethlehem theologians. Johannes Kepler was among the first to suggest that the Star was related to a planetary conjunction. However, several readings from Zoroastrian and Judeo-Christian texts indicate that the Star was an unknown and unpredicted celestial object—signifying that the Magi did not know exactly what to search for, or that it was a predictable event. This rules out planetary conjunctions that are predictable and considered malevolent in Zoroastrian texts. Despite the overwhelming evidence from primary sources, modern theologians continue to neglect ancient texts to produce their own biblical interpretations of scripture. It is not just science that is often overlooked by theologians, but quite often important religious scriptures. This is a study of what is wrong, and how to find better ways to conduct research in the future that brings science and religion together to provide answers to the Nativity.
The Natural World as Unscripted Sacred Text: When Faith and Rocks Come Together View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Ann Casanova
The natural world predates the most ancient recorded sacred texts. The writings of Julian Tenison Woods and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin offer an example of reading nature from the dual standpoint of science and religious faith, and suggest practices for the retrieval of a religious reading of unscripted texts. This paper draws support from philosophical approaches such as phenomenological hermeneutics, new materialism, and queer ecology. Nature theology, incarnational theology, and animism, for example, give credence to deriving religious and spiritual meaning and interpretation through engagement with the innumerable volumes of unpublished works which surround us. My study draws on my research and 2022 dissertation, When Rocks and Faith Come Together: A Metapraxis of Julian Tenison Woods and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
