Arrested Pulse

Liberal skepticism is based on the assumption that people will abandon their beliefs when confronted with “proof” — empirical evidence in the form of facts — that those beliefs are unreasonable. Such an “ideology of clarity” (161) posits that people are by nature rational beings and that the best way to persuade them that their beliefs are wrong is to appeal to their innate ability to reason.

In Toward A Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism, Sharon Crowley argues that this rhetoric is impossible when trying to engage in civil discourse with far-right wing Christians, whom she calls apocalyptists, who conceive as their ideology as “an antidote to skepticism”(143). Skepticism, be it liberal or postmodern, is equated with godlessness by fundamentalist Christians and seen as a central tenet of the satanic religion of “secular humanism.

It is impossible to prove that apocalyptists are wrong because apocalyptism abides by a logic totally different from liberalism’s, one that Crowley identifies as having as its major premise the claim of biblical inerrancy (116-118). This deeply entrenched belief, or ideologic, automatically excludes rational appeals liberal rhetors may take in attempting to get apocalyptists to critically examine their beliefs. In order to combat apocalyptism, we need a new rhetoric, one that isn’t steeped in the liberal myth of reason.

The new rhetoric advocated by Crowley runs against the grain of common sense notions of persuasion. Rather than appealing to people’s reason, rhetors should use storytelling as a means of resistance to apocalyptism. Just as fundamentalist Christians tell stories of how America was founded as a Christian nation, so too should liberals tell stories — “and tell them often” — of the “liberal vision [that] lies close to hand in the history of America’s Constitution and its progressive revisions toward inclusion” (199). They should tell of the days when literacy tests were used to prevent disenfranchised people from voting and women were imprisoned and force-fed for demonstrating against exclusion from the electoral process.

Narrative has served the Christian Right well, as Crowley shows in her discussion of how apocalyptism resonates in popular culture: “[t]he apocalyptic narrative allows the expression of religiosity outside the church, within popular culture” in such movies like 1991’s The Rapture, 1988’s The Seventh Sign, and the four movies that began with The Omen in 1976 (126). The extraordinary popularity of the Left Behind series over the past few years illustrates as well how the apocalyptist narrative continues to resonate with an allegedly secular public.

Crowley also promotes a forward-looking form of storytelling that she calls conjecture. She cites Pierre Bourdieu’s claim that “specifically political action” can be realized by aiming “to produce and impose representations . . . of the social world which may be capable of acting on this world” (qtd 199). To counter the Right, liberal and leftist rhetors “should depict the world as it would exist with this policy in place, and they should depict it with all the pathos and compelling detail they can muster” (199).

Finally, Crowley suggests that liberal rhetors “cannot afford to ignore the values held by those whose beliefs they wish to change” (200). Family, nation, God — these notions are central to the value system of apocalyptic and conservative Christians. It is hard for liberals to argue against such values; fortunately, according to Crowley, “they can be rewritten” (200). She promotes a liberal rhetoric that appropriates values and values-oriented language from Christian discourse and uses it against certain arguments made by fundamentalists.

For example, the Christian language of love may be deployed by skillful rhetors so as “to demonstrate the hateful effects of defining homosexuality as sin” (201). She also suggests a strategy by which particular beliefs can be disarticulated by rearticulating them with beliefs from other ideologies — a strategy that “lies closest to liberal reasoning” (201). If abortion is murder, she reasons, then is capital punishment not murder by the state? The analogy, I suppose, is meant to give Christian advocates of capital punishment pause to rethink, at the very least, the arguments they make against women’s reproductive rights, or “abortion.”

To be honest, I was disappointed with Crowley’s conclusion. I guess I was expecting her to offer a more compelling rhetoric than what she presents in the space of less than five pages. When I reached the end of her last chapter I scratched my head and said: “Is that it?” Maybe I missed something along the way (a distinct possibility) but I felt as if she was building a case for an entirely new rhetorical strategy — and what I got was something along the lines of this: tell liberal stories about the past and the future and use Christian words like “love” in doing so. I know, I know: I’m being grossly reductive. But this is how I feel.

While I’m disappointed with her conclusion, I’m glad I read the book. First, her critique of liberalism resonated with me. I have been critical of liberal assumptions and ideology (including those I possessed at different times in my life) but, being a liberal and thinking within the confines of that paradigm, I’ve not been able to adequately explain what those assumptions are and how they are ideologically constructed. Now I can. Second, I learned a great deal about rhetoric, especially from Chapters 2 and 3. This text provided me with insight into ancient and (very) contemporary rhetorical theory and practice.