Dissenting preaching in the twentieth-century anglophone world

This chapter points to the shifting social framework for public rhetoric, and the relative position of churches, in the articulation of meaning through preaching in the anglophone world in the twentieth century. Key examples of the art of preaching are explored—Frank Wakely Gunsaulus, Jeremiah Wright, and Peter Taylor Forsyth are discussed among others — to demonstrate that preaching continued to have an effect well into the twentieth century on the motivating rhetoric of such public orators as Barack Obama. That effect shifted, however, with the growth of bureaucratized welfare states, the spread of new technologies, and changes in the nature of the public square. The result was a decline of the influence of the pulpit. Presidents, preachers, and professors rode the same waves, the same oscillations in receptivity to socially constructive speech acts. What varied was the position of their ‘pulpit’ with regard to the public being addressed.