Rhetoric & Christian Tradition Home

Comprehensive Bibliography

Scholars interested in the intersections of rhetoric and Christian tradition may find some of these books and scholarly articles helpful.
Anderson, Charles M. and Marian MacCurdy, eds. Writing and Healing: Toward and Informed Practice. Urbana: NCTE, 2000.

Amorose, Thomas. “A Christian Rhetoric for the Public Sphere.” The Journal for Peace and Justice Studies XX (1999): 21-49.

Augustine of Hippo. On Christian Doctrine. Trans. D. W. Robinson, Jr. New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1956.

Baldwin, Christina. Life's Companion: Journal Writing as Spiritual Quest. New York: Bantam, 1990.

Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

Booth, Wayne C. “Ending the War Between Science and Religion: Can Rhetorology Do the Job?” Professing Rhetoric: Selected Papers from the 2000 Rhetoric Society of America Conference. Ed. Frederick J. Anczak, Cinda Coggins, and Geoffrey D. Klinger. Mahawah, NJ: Lawrence Ealbaum, 2002. page numbers?

Brandt, Deborah, Ellen Cushman, Anne Ruggles Gere, et al. “The Politics of the Personal: Storying Our Lives against the Grain” College English 64 (2001): 41-62.

Brodkey, Linda. "On the Subject of Class and Gender in 'The Literacy Letters.'" College English 51 (February, 1989): 125-141.

Brown, Robert L., Jr., and Michael Jon Olson. “Storm in the Academy: Community Conflict and Spirituality in the Research University.” The Academy and the Possibility of Belief: Essays on Intellectual and Spiritual Life. Ed. Mary-Louise Buley-Meissner, Mary McCaslin Thompson, and Elizabeth Bachrach Tan. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000. 153-169.

Brummett, Barry. “Rhetorical Epistemology and Rhetorical Spirituality.” The Academy and the Possibility of Belief: Essays on Intellectual and Spiritual Life. Ed. Mary-Louise Buley-Meissner, Mary McCaslin Thompson, and Elizabeth Bachrach Tan. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000. 121-135.

Buley-Meissner, Mary Louise, Mary McCaslin Thompson, and Elizabeth Bachrach Tan, eds. The Academy and the Possibility of Belief: Essays on Intellectual and Spiritual Life. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000.

Browne, Stephen Howard. Angelina Grimke: Identity and Radical Imagination. Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2000.

Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. Berkeley: U of California P, 1970.

Burton, Vicki Tolar. “John Wesley and the Liberty to Speak: The Rhetorical and Literary Practices of Early Methodism.” College Composition and Communication 53 (2001): 65-91.

Cameron, Averil. Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991. review

Carter, Stephen. The Culture of Disbelief. Anchor, 1994.

Chopp, Rebecca. The Power to Speak: Feminism, Language, and God. NY: Crossroad, 1989.

Couture, Barbara. Toward a Phenomenological Rhetoric: Writing, Profession, and Altruism.Carbondale: Southern Illinois P, 1998.

Cunningham, David S. Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.

Dively, Ronda Leathers. “Religious Discourse in the Academy: Creating a Space by Means of Poststructuralist Theories of Subjectivity.” Composition Studies: Freshman English News 22 (1993): 91-101.

Daniell, Beth. “Narratives of Literacy: Connecting Composition to Culture.” College Composition and Communication 50 (1999): 393-410.

Darsey, James. The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America. New York: New York UP, 1997.

Gere, Anne Ruggles. Intimate Practices: Literacy and Cultural Work in U.S. Women's Clubs, 1880-1920. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1997.

---, et al. “The Politics of the Personal: Storying Our Lives against the Grain.” College English 64 (2001): 41-62.

Goodburn, Amy. “It’s a Question of Faith: Discourses of Fundamentalism and Critical Pedagogy in the Writing Classroom.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory (1998): 333-53.

Fishman, Andrea. Amish Literacy: What and How It Means. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1988.

Foehr, Regina Paxton, and Susan A. Schiller, eds. The Spiritual Side of Writing: Releasing the Learner's Whole Potential. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook-Heinemann, 1997.

Jolliffe, David A. "The Myth of Transcendence and the Problem of the 'Ethics' Essay in the Age of Politics, ed. Patricia A. Sullivan and Donna Qualley. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 183-194.

Jones, Serene. Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox P, 1995.

Herrington, Anne J. and Marcia Curtis. Persons in Progress: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College. Urbana: NCTE, 2000.

Ignatius of Loyola (translated by George E. Ganss). St. Ignatius' Idea of a Jesuit University: A Study in the History of Catholic Education, Including Part Four of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 1956.

Kapitzke, Cushla. Literacy and Religion: The Textual Politics and Practice of Seventh-Day Adventism. Studies in Written Language and Literacy. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995.

Kastely, J.K. “The Open Question of the Conversation Between Science and Religion: A Response to Wayne Booth’s Rhetorology.” Professing Rhetoric: Selected Papers from the 2000 Rhetoric Society of America Conference. Ed. Frederick J. Anczak, Cinda Coggins, and Geoffre D. Klinger. Mahawah, NJ: Lawrence Ealbaum, 2002.

Marsden, George M. The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. New York: Oxford, 1997.

Mazzeo, Joseph A. “Saint Augustine’s Rhetoric of Silence.” Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962): 175-96.

Middleton, J. Richard, and Brian Walsh. Truth is Stranger than it Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1995. review

Milbank, John. The Word Made Strange. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.

Moffett, James. “Censorship and Spiritual Education.” The Right to Literacy. Ed. Andrea Lunsford, Helene Moglen, and James Slevin. New York: MLA, 1990 113-9.

Morton, Nelle. The Journey Is Home. Boston: Beacon, 1985.

Moss, Beverly J., "Creating a Community: Literacy in African-American Churches." Literacy Across Communities. Ed. Beverly J. Moss. Creskill: Hampton P, 1994. 147-78.

Murphy, James J. Saint Augustine and the Debate about a Christian Rhetoric.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 46 (1960): 400-10.

Pennebaker, James W. "Self-Expressive Writing: Implications for Health, Education, and Welfare." Nothing Begins With N: New Investigations of Freewriting. Eds. Pat Belanoff, Peter Elbow, Sheryl Fontaine. Carbondale: SI UP, 1991. 157-169.

Perkins, Priscilla. “‘A Radical Conversion of the Mind’: Fundamentalism, Hermeneutics, and the Metanoic Classroom.” College English 63 (2001): 585-611.

Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford UP, 2000.

Prickett, Stephen. Words and “The Word”: Language, Poetics, and Biblical Interpretation. New York: Cambridge UP, 1998.

Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: UNC P, 1984.

Rand, Lizabeth. “Enacting Faith: Evangelical Discourse and the Discipline of Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication 52 (2001): 349-367.

Rodriguez, Armando, ed. Essays on Communication and Spirituality: Contributions to a New Discourse on Communication. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001.


Smith, Huston. Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief. San Francisco: Harper, 2001.

Smith, James K.A. Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Smith, Michael Ray. The Jesus Newspaper: The Christian Experiment of 1900 and Its Lessons for Today. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002.

Stull, Bradford T. Amid the Fall, Dreaming of Eden: Du Bois, King, Malcolm X and Emancipatory Composition. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois P, 1999.

---. “Metaphors and Allusions: The Theopolitical Essays of Thomas Merton.” MertonAnnual 10 (1998): 205-221.

---. Religious Dialectics of Pain and Imagination. Albany NY: SUNY P, 1994.

---. The Elements of Figurative Language. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2001.

Swearingen, Jan. “The Hermeneutics of Suspicion and Other Doubting Games: Clearing the Way for Simple Leaps of Faith” The Academy and the Possibility of Belief: Essays on Intellectual and Spiritual Life. Ed. Mary-Louise Buley-Meissner, Mary McCaslin Thompson, and Elizabeth Bachrach Tan. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000. 137-152.

Vander Lei, Elizabeth, and Donald R. Hettinga. “A Comment on ‘A Radical Conversion of the Mind”: Fundamentalism, Hermeneutics, and Metanoic Classroom’” College English 64 (2002): 720-723.

Weaver, Richard M. The Ethics of Rhetoric. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1985.

Webb, Stephen. Blessed Excess: Religion and the Hyperbolic Imagination. Albany, NY: SUNY P, 1993.

---. Refiguring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth. Albany, NY: SUNY P, 1991.

---. Taking Religion to School: Christian Theology and Secular Education. Ada, MI: Fleming H. Revell Co. 2000.

Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995.