Persuasions of God
Inventing the Rhetoric of René Girard
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Pennsylvania State University Press
Published:20th Mar '24
Should be back in stock very soon
An engaging exploration of René Girard’s mimetic theory as it relates to the post-secular age.
The nations of the global north find themselves in a post-secular or post-Christian period, one in which the practice, expression, and effects of religion are undergoing massive shifts. In Persuasions of God, Paul Lynch pursues a project of “theorhetoric,” a radical new approach to speaking about the divine.
Searching for new religious forms amid the lingering influence of Christianity, Lynch turns to René Girard, the most important twentieth-century thinker on the sacred and its expression within the Christian tradition. Lynch repurposes Girard’s mimetic theory to invent a post-Christian way of speaking to, for, and especially about God. Girard theorized the sacred as the nexus of violence, order, and sacralization that lies at the heart of religion. What Lynch advocates in our current moment of religious kairos is a paradoxically meek rhetoric that conscientiously refuses rivalry, actively exploits tradition through complicit invention, and boldly seeks a holiness free of exclusionary violence. The project of theorhetoric is to reinvent God through the reimagined themes of meekness, sacrifice, atonement, and holiness. From these, Persuasions of God offers religion reimagined for our post-secular age.
An interdisciplinary mix of philosophy, sociology, rhetorical studies, and theology, this book draws on mimetic theory to answer the question of where religion goes next. It will be valued by religious studies and communications scholars as well as anyone interested in the future of Christianity in our modern world.
“Out of the many good and important arguments of this book, I will limit myself to highlighting the following: Paul Lynch’s expansion of both René Girard’s mimetic theory and the study of rhetoric through his efforts to create a theorhetoric (a term he borrows from Steven Mailloux), a new way of speaking to, for, and about God; that it represents the first sustained scholarly effort to investigate the relationship between the thought of Girard and Kenneth Burke; and, finally, that it proposes a way of speaking about Christianity that will be welcomed by some and others will find welcoming.”
—Jeremiah Alberg The European Legacy
“Lynch critically observes and imaginatively reinvents the persuasions of God found in four key theological topoi of meekness, sacrifice, atonement, and holiness.”
—Elvir Ciceklic Reading Religion
“Persuasions of God makes a major contribution to critical conversations concerning rhetoric and religion. As a post-Christian intervention, it deals skillfully with Jewish and Christian scriptures and especially with Christian theological literature as well as relevant work in rhetorical theory. As in his earlier scholarship, Paul Lynch is here not only in dialogue with various disciplinary communities; he also explicitly discusses and exemplifies how such dialogue should generously take place.”
—Steven Mailloux, author of Rhetoric’s Pragmatism: Essays in Rhetorical Hermeneutics
“A book as well-informed as it is interesting.”
—Alvaro Silva Mayéutica
“Persuasions of God is a theological and rhetorical masterpiece. Integrating a wide range of voices and resources, Lynch’s work achieves a remarkable integration—and simultaneous unsettling—of the boundaries between rhetoric and religion under the banner of ‘Theorhetoric.’ Persuasions is a work with profound implications for the fields of rhetoric and religious studies in the context of what Lynch identifies as a post-secular and post-Christian Kairos. It is a brilliant and beautifully written book.”
—Christian O. Lundberg, author of Lacan in Public: Psychoanalysis and the Science of Rhetoric
ISBN: 9780271097091
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 21mm
Weight: 426g
220 pages