Preaching without a Pulpit: Women's rhetorical contributions to scientific Christianity in America, 1880-1915
"Preaching without a Pulpit" considers the widespread public debate surrounding metaphysical healing in the late nineteenth-century and outlines the rhetorical theories and practices of important female metaphysical healers, particularly Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins. Because their theories assume the harmony of science and religion, Eddy and Hopkins engage both the Christian and liberal rhetorical traditions. I argue in this dissertation that metaphysical theologies such as those of Eddy and Hopkins are a powerful example of the conciliatory project of liberal Christianity during the period, challenging the assumption that the rhetorical practices exhibited in the liberal and Christian traditions are inherently contradictory. Their liberal characteristics provide metaphysical rhetorics with aims distinct from evangelical rhetorics and traditional pulpit oratory. Therefore, their relative absence in rhetorical history does more than marginalize a series of prolific "gurus": it substantially stymies our theoretical understanding of the possibilities and limits of religious discourse
Downloadable Article, English, 2011
Dissertation Abstracts International
1 online resource (296 p.)
9781303630118, 1303630117
1194738351
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 75-04(E), Section: A
Advisers: Cheryl Glenn; Jack Selzer
gateway.proquest.com Access to the ProQuest dissertations & theses online version restricted; authentication may be required: