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7

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

Just a Little Talk with Jesus:
An Analysis of Conversational
Narrative Strategies Used by
Evangelical College Students

presented by

Wallis C. Metts, Jr.

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in Arts and Letters

 

 

Major professor

 

Date April 4, 1995

 

MSU i: an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771

 

 

 

LIBRARY
Mlchlgan State
Unlversity

 

 

 

PLACE N RETURN BOX to remove We checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before dete due.

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

8&9;E 7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—MS-Uleh"" .. A .. — .Arr J a:-

 

JUST A LITTLE TALK WITH JESUS:
AN ANALYSIS OF CONVERSATIONAL NARRATIVE
STRATEGIES USED BY EVANGELICAL COLLEGE STUDENTS

By
Wallis C. Metts, Jr.

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Interdisciplinary Studies, Arts and Letters

1995

ABSTRACT

JUST A LITTLE TALK WITH IESUS:
AN ANALYSIS OF CONVERSATIONAL NARRATIVE
STRATEGIES USED BY EVANGELICAL COLLEGE STUDENTS

By
Wallis C. Metts, Jr.

This ethnographic study examines the narratives of six students enrolled
in an evangelical Christian college during January of 1994. Specifically, the
tension between the rhetorical and relational character of these narratives
was studied to explore the relationship between narrative strategy and
worldview. Both oral and written samples were collected during an intensive
four-week residential creative writing workshop. The narratives were
subjected to a variety of analytical tools.

The study finds the students do not define their Christian experience in
terms of being ”bom-again,” nor do they make extensive use of direct biblical
citation, either in their conversion narratives or in classroom discourse.
Formal creative work does use biblical symbolism. The study supports James
Hunter’s observations about the erosion of symbolics boundaries among
college-age members of the evangelical subculture, a subculture which
constitutes as much as 30% of the US. population.

The researcher also develops a conversational paradigm and finds
common assumptions about the monological character of evangelical
discourse are not grounded in ethnographic observation of this interpretive

community.

Cepyright by
WALLIS CONE Miarrs, JR.
1995

For my mom, who always
wanted me to be a doctor,
and for my dad, who always
treated my ideas as though I were.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project represents the last doctoral degree in general inter-
disciplinary studies offered by the college of arts and letters at Michigan State
University. As this program wound down, a number of people were patient
and gracious in helping me achieve this degree, a dream delayed by both
personal and professional complications.

These people include members of my committee, especially chair Fred
Graham (religious studies) and David Ralph (communication department),
both of whom stayed with this project in retirement. I took my first class at
the university from Fred and he has respected my ideas and tolerated my
shortcomings for eight years. Diane Brunner (English department) was
enthusiastic about discouse analysis and its implications for my project. Her
testimony sparked my conversion from linguistic positivist to realist. Patricia
Stock, also of the English department, agreed to step in and fill a vacancy in
my committee. Interdisciplinary studies are, in a university setting at least,
”homeless.” None of these faculty members was obligated to take me in, and
their willingness to do so says a great deal good about the integrity and civility
of university communities which are often and perhaps too quickly labeled as
bureaucratic and cold.

Others in this particular university community have earned my respect
and gratitude. One of these is Nancy Ainsworth-Vaughn, whose classes in

discouse studies framed my understanding of the analytical tools I employ,

although any failures to employ them properly are my own. My several
classes with her were the most helpful of any in my doctoral program in
bringing this project into focus. Jackie Campbell, administrative assistant in
the college of arts and letters, helped steer me through what few bureaucratic
shoals I did encounter. She was understanding and supportive of my efforts
to complete this progam while living and working in another city.

Members of my own community also supported me in this endeavor,
not the least of which were the six students who gave their permission and
support as I collected, recorded and analyzed their discourse. For research
purposes they remain anonymous, but they were never merely research
subjects, and I have taken pains not to think or write of them in those terms.
They were and are my colleagues and my friends.

I appreciate also the encouragement and flexibility of three successive
deans at Spring Arbor College. Tom Ball, chair of the communications
faculty, helped keep this vision alive during its darker days, and many
colleagues shouldered responsibilites of mine or waited patiently for me to
find the time or energy to shoulder them myself. I was surrounded by
encouragers and helpers, including my own students, secretary Elaine
Courter, and faculty friends David Burns and Cathy Crater. I also worked as a
freelance writer throughout this project, and editor Mary Lou Carney was
gracious to a fault, giving me two things I needed often: laughter and time.

I was of course supported by my family. My parents and sisters gave me
their praise and their prayers. My children—Margaret, Christian, Michael
and Pilgrim—were proud of me, even when they didn’t know or understand
exactly what I was doing. I’ve promised not to make them call me ”Dr. Dad.”

And my wife Katie gave me both stability and strength. She let me be alone

when I needed to be alone, and when I needed to not be alone, she was beside
me, constant in faith and love.

Finally, I am thankful in this and every achievement to the Giver of
every good and perfect gift, the Father of lights in Whom there is no

variableness nor shadow of turning (James 1:17).

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of tables and figures
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1— Just Jesus and Me: A Story about Stories

CHAPTER 2—Faith of our Fathers: Frames for Analysis
The author’s biography
The author’s biases

CHAPTER 3—All God’s Children: Evangelicalism’s Changing Face
American evangelicalism
Spring Arbor College
The Cedar Bend students
Observations about college-age evangelicals

CHAPTER 4—Tell me the story of Jesus: Narrative as Conversation
Definitions of narrative
Rhetorical dimensions of narrative
Relational dimensions of narrative
Towards a conversational paradigm

CHAPTER 5—All to Jesus I Surrender: Oral Conversion Narratives
Relational aspects of conversion narratives
Rhetorical aspects of conversion narratives
Observations about conversion narratives

CHAPTER 6—Angels Watching Over Me: Formal Written Narratives
Angel narratives: rhetorical analysis
Angel narratives: relational analysis
Obervations about intertextual citation

CHAPTER 7— Jesus Lover of My Soul: Dramatic Discourse
”Homecoming": a skit
Rhetorical aspects of ”Homecoming”
Relational aspects of ”Homecoming”
More observations

viii

15
17
25

31
32
38
43
53

58
62

68
71

81
87
88
92

95
100
108
110

113
116
122
127
128

CHAPTER 8— Just As I Am: Confessions and Questions
What is an evangelical?
Does discourse analysis help us understand who evangelicals are?
What are the implications of a conversational paradigm?

POSTSCRIPT

APPENDIX A: World view: definitions and metaphors
An historical perspective
A Christian perspective
A Marxist perspective
A metaphorical perspective

APPENDIX B: Student responses to the analysis

BIBLIOGRAPHY

130
132
135
138

143
145
147
149
152
154
163

165

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

 

Table 1: 39
Important objectives for Spring Arbor College seniors (in percentages)
Table 2: 54
Remembered conversations with college peers

Table 3: 63

Labov’s elements of narrative

 

Figure 1: 76
A conversational paradigm
Figure 2: 155

Keamey’s cross-cultural model of world view

INTRODUCTION

A colleague of mine, when she was about ten, went out into her front
yard, hid behind a bush, and said, out loud, the three curse words she knew.
She did this, she says, so she could repent and experience the joy of God’s
forgiveness.

I took care of all this when I was six. I dutifully and sincerely confessed
that I was a sinner and threw myself on the mercies of God, depending solely
on the death of Jesus Christ as the substitutionary payment for all my
transgressions. Of course I didn’t use those words. I was only six. And of
course I didn’t have a very long list of sins. Unlike my friend, I didn’t even
know three cuss words. But still, thirty—six years later, I define myself largely
in terms of that experience. I am a born-again Christian. I know this because I
”got saved" when I was six.

By the time I was ten, if I had met my colleague, I would have doubted if
she were a Christian at all. I was a Baptist, but she was a Nazarene. She
could get saved again if she had to, which in my mind meant she wasn’t
depending solely on the death of Jesus, so it didn’t count.

Now scholars would have called us both Christians, and they would have
called us both evangelicals, and they would have called us evangelicals of a
particular sort, fundamentalists. They would have classified us in this way
because we both made something of being ”bom again,” even though we

managed it in different ways. This just goes to show how little scholars know

2
about ten-year olds. We were just kids who heard and believed remarkable

and wonderful stories.

The best stories, the most important stories, were from the Bible, stories
about animals in large boats and fiery chariots and a king born in a stable.
These were our master narratives. But the second best stories were stories by
and about the adults in our homes and churches who had turned from
drinking and gambling and fornication to lives of Christian devotion and
service. People would tell these stories and everyone would shout and get
excited. These are what Bormann calls fantasy themes.

It’s hard to compete with stories like those by standing behind a bush and
saying three bad words, but we tried. There were still sins to commit and
repent of, but they seemed less glamorous. I finally played cards when I was
in college, and in graduate school I went to a movie, both activities proscribed
by my church.

Telling stories about these experiences wasn’t very titillating for the next
generation of evangelicals. Nobody shouts any more. They just yawn and
turn on the TV. To sustain their faith young evangelicals today have had to
find their own stories to tell and their own reasons for telling them. This
project is about those stories.

In particular it is about the narratives of six Christian college students who
retreated to the northern woods of Michigan to write poetry in January of
1994. It is a discourse study, part of a growing body of scholarly work which
attends to actual language in use. I’ve used journal entries, creative work,
and transcripts of taped conversations and discussions to piece together a
snapshot of this small group of young evangelicals.

My purpose in doing so is to examine their world View, not by imposing a

set of categories on their discourse but by discovering some of the trails in

3
their symbolic universe. By doing so I’ve found some trails are not as well-

wom as one might expect. At this point I can tell you this much: they don’t
hide behind a tree to curse anymore and they don’t talk much about being
born-again. I make these discoveries by examining the tension—what I come
to call a fault line—between their rhetorical and relational concerns.

Chapter one introduces the project—and the problem. Because
evangelicals have strong rhetorical purposes, the complexity of their
narrative discourse can be overlooked. They are, like everyone else, building
and maintaining relationships, even in the more monological task of story
telling.

Chapter two tells the story of how I came to be interested in this project
and examines the biases I bring, as a teacher, a journalist, and as a Christian.
This is an ethnographic study, and my role as a teacher-researcher-friend is
both complicating and constructive.

In chapter three I introduce the students themselves, both as individuals
and as members of a larger community of evangelicals. James Hunter has
observed an erosion in the symbolic boundaries of this rhetorical community,
particularly in terms of Christian college students, and his analysis is
discussed here.

Chapter four introduces my own analytical tools, primarily Bormann’s
fantasy theme analysis and Livia Polanyi's observations about how the point
of a narrative is negotiated. Throughout this study I examine the tension
between the rhetorical and relational dimensions of discourse, a tension I
believe reflects the conversational nature of discourse, including narrative.

This conversational paradigm is also described and illustrated in chapter
four and represents my efforts to theorize across the data. At times, however,

I move beyond these theoretical constraints in an effort to interrogate the

4
symbols of this particular discourse community, bringing my personal

experience with this tradition to bear on the analysis.

Chapter five examines the conversion narratives of the students, stories
which reflect how they define their Christian experience. Peter Stromberg’s
recent analysis of Christian conversion narratives in Language and Self-
Transformation (1993) is used to show how unacknowledged aims are
accomplished through religious language.

Chapter six discusses a set of narrative poems. I show how these students
use and understand Scripture to manage certain kinds of rhetorical and
relational concerns. Chapter seven examines a skit about Christ’s
relationship with an individual. By analyzing the class’s’ reaction and
comparing it to the author’s conversion narrative, the way the students
construct their own conception of Christ is explored.

In Chapter eight I retum to my theoretical concerns and raise some
methodological concerns as well. Finally I make a few observations about
what this study suggests regarding the way evangelical Christian college
students both construct and communicate their world view. A brief Postscript
suggests a few of the implications of this project for teachers, researchers and
others interested in the relationship between world view and language.

I am using world View here in the way it was used by the University of
Chicago anthropologist Robert Redfield. He said a world view is ”the way
man, in a particular society, sees himself in relationship to all else." I’ve used
the term in that general way throughout the study, but an examination of the
concept as conceived by Christian (Sire) and Marxist (Kearney) scholars is
included in Appendix A. My interest is in the ”particular society” part of
Redfield’s conception, and the paths that society provides for its members to
reach each other.

5
Appendix B gives the students the last word. I’ve included the reactions of

three students to my analysis of their narratives. These ”member checks” are
one of several ways I’ve attempted to validate my findings. More than that,
however, they represent my respect for these students as both co-researchers
and as subjects whose candor and integrity have contributed to my
understanding of their world view.

Several years ago I heard of an architect who built a campus without
sidewalks. He wanted to see where people actually walked before he made
the places where they should walk. It seems to me many approaches to world
view analysis start with sidewalks poured at right angles. We assume people
walk there because that’s the place we’ve made for them to walk. I doubt if
there is enough concrete in this study to pour any new sidewalks. But I have
noticed some worn places in the grass.

And that is what this study is about.

CHAPTER 1

Just Jesus and Me:
A story about stories

On January 2, 1994, five college students and I piled sleeping bags, luggage,
and enough food for three weeks into a 16 passenger van and headed toward
Cedar Bend Farm near Mancelona, Michigan. A sixth student would join us
two days later.

There was no snow on the ground when we left the campus of Spring
Arbor College near Jackson, Michigan. But there was plenty by the time we
arrived at our destination, a large farm house where we would cook our food
on a wood stove, read by the light of kerosene lanterns, and try to stay warm.
We had sixteen inches of snow when we arrived and it snowed every day.

We were there to lose ourselves in a northern wilderness and write
poetry. We were there to heighten our sensory awareness with new
sensations: the rough feel of firewood, the smell of coffee and bacon, the
smooth cool texture of wooden floors, the taste of smoke and fire and ash. We
were also there to experience solitude, cabin fever, and cold. And it was cold.
A planned winter canoe trip was canceled when it remained in the subteens
for a week, and even our hearty northern guide refused to brave the chilly
waters of the Jordan River.

No one complained—about canceling the canoe trip, that is. It was a
sedentary group for the most part and the cross-country skis available to each
of us remained largely unused. We brought in fire wood and sat around the

fire, sipping hot chocolate. Days were long and slow, filled with lazy
6

afternoons and late nights playing cards, reading and writing poetry, and
getting on each other’s nerves. And telling stories.

It was only natural we would tell stories. As Walter Fisher suggests, we
are narrative beings who ”experience and comprehend life as a series of
ongoing narratives, as conflicts, characters, beginnings, middles and ends”
(Sires,1976; Sires,1979). His narrative paradigm suggests, in fact, ”all forms of
human communication need to be seen fundamentally as stories.” He says
no communication is purely descriptive or didactic, a conclusion which
perhaps defines narrative so broadly as to make it theoretically worthless. But
while the value of his paradigm can be debated, his fundamental assumption
that people are essentially storytellers is uncontested.

On a typical night after dinner, for example, Brad would be playing his
guitar, composing lyrics to a song. Often these lyrics would be narratives.
Norm would be in another room, sitting in a rocking chair, wrapped in a
blanket, singing to himself: narrative songs. Angie would be upstairs, reading
her Bible or writing a letter. More narratives. Lisa and Jerry and Ellen would
be playing cards in the kitchen. Later most would be writing in a journal or
struggling over the lines of a sonnet, preparing for class in the morning and
for the daily conference to follow. The conversations around the card games
and the journals and the poems all included narratives as well. So did class,
which began each morning right after breakfast at 8:00 am. And so did the
conferences throughout the day.

After lunch everyone helped bring in firewood and then napped or
studied. Students took turns preparing dinner, and immediately after supper
everyone would sit in large overstuffed chairs around the wood stove in the
living room and read a poem to the group, either one of their own or one

they had read that afternoon. Then the cycle would begin again.

Packed in around the edge of these days were the tools of ethnography: a
computer, a tape recorder, a video recorder. Where there was electricity—in
the dining room and kitchen—discussions, conferences and conversations
were recorded and logged. Each of the students had signed a form consenting
”to participate in a study of discourse strategies” involving ”an analysis of
transcripts of personal conversations with the instructor and classroom
discussions as well as writing samples.” Students were given the option of
withdrawing from the study at any time or requesting that specific discussions
or writing samples be exempted from the study. The writing samples
included creative works generated for the class and a directed journal which
included questions about linguistic values and influences.

What students knew about the study, according to the letter accompanying
the consent form, was it involved looking at ”the way students in the class
used language, that is, more at how they say things than what they say." I
could not have told them their narratives would become the focal point of
the study because I wasn’t sure myself which data I would use and how the
project would become focused. I did know all of us were evangelical
Christians, or at least we were all involved in an evangelical Christian
college. Certainly, the relationship between world view and language would
provide a starting point for any analysis to follow.

But the value of narrative began to emerge as early as the second day
when, in conferences, I asked students to do two things: tell me about people
who influenced their use of and / or love of language, and tell me about their
Christian experience. The narratives I heard were intriguing, and will be
treated at some length in Chapter 5.

Christianity, of course, is founded on the teachings of a storyteller and
Scripture is seen by Christians as the story of God’s dealings with man, told

largely in narrative fashion. For this reason, perhaps, Christians frequently
cast their Christian experience in terms of stories, or of a particular story they
call their ”testimony.” As we shall see, not all of the students responded with
a narrative cast in this genre, which in itself bears on the analysis this project
undertakes. But at this point, as a way to introduce the issues to follow,
consider the beginning of Angie’s story, the most conventional of all the

testimonies I heard that day:

From the time I was a little girl

I was raised in a Christian family

I went to church every Sunday

and heard all the Sunday School stories about Jesus
and I was just trained to know that

that was the way things were.

Angie uses other stories— the stories of the patriarchs or the prophets or
the apostles or Christ himself— to make sense of her own faith. One might
expect a Christian’s life to be informed by stories. Christianity has often been
characterized as a storytelling community. Narrative theologians argue in
fact that even its theological discourse has a narrative quality, since it is ”faced
with a more or less canonical body of texts, of which a large and important
text is made up of stories” (Frawley,1987; Metz,1973; Metz and Jossua,1973).
But do their own personal stories play a lesser role or a larger role in their
faith? Do they trust their own stories more because they are used to trusting
stories or do they trust their own stories less because the biblical stories seem
larger than life? And how do they interpret all these stories?

Christians, of course, devote a lot of energy to a particular hermeneutical
question: How can an ancient text be translated into contemporary
experience? Widdershoven’s analysis of the ideas of Collingwood, Gadamer
and Derrida all have implications for this question, but his concern has more

immediacy. He is concerned with stories like Angie’s, stories of our own

10

experience. ”In telling stories,” Widdershoven says, ”we try to make sense of
life, like we try to make sense of a text when we interpret it” (1993).

Widdershoven suggests that ”stories tell us who we are." This narrative
identity comes about as we ”become aware of the significance of our
experiences by telling stories about them and fusing them with other
stories”— including, in Angie’s case, biblical stories. Personal identity is ”the
result of a hermeneutic relation between experience and story”
(Widdershoven, 1993).

As Widdershoven shows, it is possible to apply different interpretive grids
to this relationship. Of the three he describes, many Christians would be
most comfortable with Collingwood’s historical approach. They would try to
rethink the thoughts of historical actors, allowing the distance in time to
”serve as a prism that separates the important from the unimportant.” This
is a frequent technique in sermons. ”Re-enactment” through liturgy and role-
playing in children’s Sunday school programs are literally, in Collingwood’s
terms, ”a revival of the past in the context of the present”
(Widdershoven,1993).

In a limited sense, this occurs in Angie's narrative. Later she says:

But then, in fourth grade,

I started reading Genesis and Exodus

and going through and

I committed myself to God personally

during that time, I think,

even though I was already a Christian,

I was too young to understand what it meant.

Notice that she doesn’t actually remember ”cornmitting herself to God” in
that period— she assumes she did on the basis of her current understanding.
Or rather, she tries to rethink the thoughts of the historical actor, in this case

herself, through the ”prism" of time.

11

Gadamer’s fusion of horizons, as described by both Widdershoven and
Thiselton, is also a comfortable approach for those whose narrative strategies
have been framed by Christian experience. This view suggests the meaning
we give any narrative is created in the history of its interpretations. Every
biblical story, for example, carries the weight of two thousand years of
interpretation(s). And that cumulative weight is felt as Christians interpret
their personal stories in the context of their interpretive community.

After describing her own isolation as a ”nerd geeko person at school,”
Angie applies this experience to her response to a missionary presentation
calling for commitment to Christian service. Because of her own sense of

alienation, she says:

I have a real heart for kids and,
just people, people that feel alone,
I can understand how they feel.

This is not an adequate basis for her commitment, however. She sees a
call to missionary service (which she later discards) as a larger plan of God’s
”calling." Her interest in missions is ”because of my time when I felt like it
was just me and God...alone in the world.”

This is all part of her interpretive stance and is based on a history of
interpretation. She is echoing the way Christians have sorted out the
problem of pain since the time of the apostles when she says ”God is going to
do His will through me, even if it hurts me," and ”God has really, really,

really shown me His will through situations." Concerning his will she says:

God’s been talking to me about his will

and how he works everything together

for the good of those who love him

and have been called according to his purpose.

12

This is almost a direct quote from the apostle Paul writing to the Romans.
He writes: ”And we know that all things work together for good to them that
love God and are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

She may or may not have realized she was citing Scripture, but this does
lead to considering Derrida’s concept of interpretation as citation
(Widdershoven,1993). At first glance, this may be the least comfortable of any
of these three hermeneutical frames for evangelical Christians, fraught as it is
with postmodern baggage. Derrida believes reading a text means taking it out
of one context and placing it in a different one, one in which the original
meaning is immaterial. This results, as Widdershoven explains, not in unity
and continuity but in divergence and diffusion of meaning.

But intertextuality—citation—is undoubtedly a part of the Christian
experience, particularly the evangelical experience, and in much the same
way as Derrida suggests. Biblical texts are constantly being cited by older
evangelicals in evaluating personal narratives, and often with little regard for
the original context or meaning. Although I am not suggesting Angie’s use
of this citation in this case is not appropriate for the narrative she relates,
Noll has noted ”Americans have been perhaps more prone than people
elsewhere to bend, twist, and abuse the Bible for their own sometimes very
un-Christian purposes" (Noll,1992).

This use of Biblical authority might indicate narratives are intended to
have a point, even if it is not the point the original text proposed. But more
generally it can be said to indicate, as Polanyi has suggested, that narratives
are related to ”presuppositions jointly held [in this case by a Christian
subculture] about what is right, wrong, normal, abnormal, etc.” (Polanyi,1979).

And, as vehicles for these presuppositions, the narratives—and the

13

citations—are appropriate to and perhaps even necessary for sustaining a
Christian world view.

Following Bakhtin, Kristeva would call representative narratives like
these—narratives with a point—”monological” discourse, in the same class
with historical and scientific discourse. In her essay ”Word, Dialogue, and the
Novel,” she distinguishes it from ”dialogical” discourses, such as polyphonic
novels (Kristeva,1986) According to Kristeva the monological form of
narration, the epic, lacks ambivalence, ”assumes a hierarchy,” and is
”theological”— that is, it is ”a belief in the literal sense of the word.”

”Dialogical” discourse, on the other hand, is ”anti-theological” and ”its
history is the history of the struggle against Christianity and its
representation.” It is discourse which ”transgresses” the ”prohibition”
inherent in monological discourse, a prohibition which refuses to let the text
”turn back upon itself” or ”to enter into dialogue with itself.” . Kristeva is
talking about literary texts, of course, and she is using ”dialogue” in a
technical sense, the sense of non-exclusive opposition as opposed to causality
and determination.

But this may be what Riessman means when she analyzes a spoken text
she says ”felt like” narration (Riessman,1993); it had a monological character,
that is, the speaker was telling about her problems, not talking about them
(dialogue). This corresponds with Kristeva’s contention that narratives are
primarily monological, hierarchical, even theological, reflecting ”a belief in
the literal sense.”

But my experience at Cedar Bend Farm suggests this is an over-
simplification. The narratives have some dialogical character as well,

frequently occurring in the context of conversation and changing in the

14

process of negotiation, as Polanyi and others have shown (Bauman,1986;
Labov,1972; Polanyi,1979; Tannen,1989).

The Christians whose stories are told and examined here are not just
relating propositions, they are engaged in building and maintaining
relationship, balancing rhetorical intent with relational need. I hope to show
these narratives sometimes ”tum back on” themselves and ”invite
dialogue.”

This may suggests Fisher’s narrative paradigm is too narrow.

Angie's narrative begins with stories she heard in Sunday school and read
as a fourth grader, but concludes with ”God has been talking to me.” In her
view, and in mine, all communication is not narrative—it is conversation,
rooted in orality, uncertainty, and community. I will examine the narratives

to follow in this light. But first, another story.

CHAPTER 2

Faith of our Fathers:
Frames for analysis

This study is about stories, specifically about how a particular group of
students at a particular point in time used stories in talking and writing. As a
discourse study, it is about more than that, of course. It is also about world
view and conversation and other aspects of discourse. That is to say, it is also
about why those particular students may have used those particular stories
and what it means that they did so.

It is a rather limited study. Its goal, as is the case with most discourse
studies, is not to generalize but to particularize; that is, I am not concerned
with drawing broad conclusions about language, but with making specific
observations about the language of a particular, and to many, a peculiar
subculture, in this case evangelical college students. More to the point I will
examine how and why they used narratives and the contexts in which they
used them.

The value of such observations should emerge throughout the study, and
will be addressed at length at the end of the study. At the very least this study
should contribute to an understanding of the relationship between world
view and narrative strategies. But it should also provide some insight into
these peculiar people— evangelicals, who comprise roughly 30% of the US.
population by some estimates— and the way language frames their vision

and their lives.

15

16

I use the term peculiar here not to indicate they are weird. I use it as an
inside joke, a Shibboleth of sorts. In fact, many evangelicals would not be
offended by the term. The term, at least as translated by scholars working for
King James almost 400 years ago, is one the Apostle Paul uses to describe the
purpose of the Christian’s calling: ”to be a peculiar people zealous of good
works.” (Titus 2:14) The King James translation refers to God’s people as
peculiar four times, twice as his ”peculiar treasure." (Exodus 19:5, Psahn 135:4)
Although the meaning of the words so translated is ”particular,” I have come
to accept the contemporary negative connotations of the translated term (i.e.,
peculiar = really strange). Some evangelicals, I suppose, even relish them.

This inside knowledge, this awareness of their language, makes me a
suitable participant observer, once you get past any positivist notions
requiring objective distance. Cameron and others have noted ”we inevitably
bring our biographies and our subjectivities to every stage of the research
process, and this influences the questions we ask and the ways in which we
try to find answers.” (Cameron, et al.,1992) Others have suggested an intimate
relationship between the researcher and the subject is not only inescapable
but fruitful. Based on her experience with teacher/ researchers, Patricia Stock
says ”The researcher must have access not just to the apparent forms of talk
but to the forms irnbedded in allusions and in other references that the
community invests with meaning” (Robinson,1990).

I confess, however, that getting past positivist notions of objectivity has
been a stumbling block1 for me both personally and professionally. In doing

 

1 Notice the biblical allusion: This term occurs 11 times in the New International Version, also
as ”stumbling stone” in the King James Version, translated from the Greek skandalon.
Evangelicals, often growing up reading and memorizing large portions of Scripture, use such
intertextual citations frequently if not consciously. The role of such citations will be
addressed; I note it here to reiterate that, as an evangelical myself, I am equipped to notice
them.

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discourse analysis, I have come to appreciate a methodology that at first
seemed alien and uncomfortable. My purpose then, in this chapter, is to tell
how and why I came to be interested in this project and the methodology it
requires. I will do this by telling my own story, reviewing the parts which
seem relevant. This project is not, after all, simply about stories. It is a story.
And it is my story as well as the story of the students I eventually came to
know and to understand. If you will bear with me through this
autobiographical digression, I will return to the topic at hand and use this
autobiography to illustrate and articulate the assumptions which frame my

analysis.

The author’ 5 biography
Preacher’s kid

Like two of the students in the study, I am a preacher’s kid. When I was
five my dad sold a sign painting business in south Florida and we moved to
Tennessee so he could study for the ministry. Even as a student in Bible
college, he pastored a small Baptist chapel, and my life from then on centered
around his ministries, including terms of service as pastor, evangelist, and
church planter in Florida and Tennessee.

I taught my first Sunday school class at nine years of age, at about the same
time I earned a week at a camp in New York by memorizing hundreds of
scripture verses. At twelve I was playing the piano and organ in services. By
the time I finished high school I had visited the mission field, attended
numerous conferences and seminars, and ”surrendered my life for full-time
Christian service” as a medical missionary.

I did all this without any misgiving, mostly because of my dad’s integrity. I
respected him both then and now because he was what he said others should

18

be, a kind but principled individual who ”walked the talk.” I also respected
and followed him because he was a careful and capable spokesperson for the
faith. He majored in English in college and was multidimensional in his
presentation of the gospel. He was a sign painter and an artist, a preacher and
a poet. The author of twelve books, he was also a gifted speaker, practicing an
oratory distinctive to Baptist preachers in the south. I enjoy listening to him
even when I don’t agree with what he is saying. I learned to respect the
power of words in general and Scripture in particular.

Meanwhile my mother was buying me books and reading to me and
telling me I was smart and could be anything I wanted to be, even a doctor.
So I decided to be one. I eventually finished college with a degree in
chemistry but then couldn’t get into medical school; even though my degree
was in science my only decent admission scores were in verbal skills. I went
to seminary for a year while I decided what to do next, and then I went to the

University of Tennessee for a master’s degree in English education.

Teacher

In graduate school I started teaching upper elementary students in a
private Christian school near Knoxville. The school, servicing mostly upper
middle class evangelical families, emphasized the ”integration of faith and
learning” and most of my projects in graduate school at the time did too. My
research focused on values education. My program did not require a thesis,
but we had to formulate one in a research class: mine was an anthropological
analysis of Christian schools (perhaps the first step down the slippery slope
toward discourse analysis).

When I finished my master’s program I moved to my first college

assignment in the English department of an extremely conservative private

19

Baptist college in Chattanooga, the same school my father attended when I
was a child. Here I taught fifteen hours of freshman composition each
semester, riling the administration by critiquing chapel services in my 11:00
class and launching what some administrators considered a subversive
literary magazine for students. I also chaired an interdisciplinary studies
program and began to explore the possibility of future interdisciplinary work.
This brought me to Michigan State University and southern Michigan,
where I joined the faculty of an evangelical college teaching journalism and
communication theory and directing the student newspaper. I started work
on the doctoral program in interdisciplinary studies for which this project is

the culmination.

Journalist

While studying English education in my master's program at Knoxville, I
took a course in teaching writing, the premise of which was if you want to
teach writing you have to write yourself. The instructor required us to write
for publication as part of the class. I wrote an article for the English Journal
titled ”Tips for Teaching English to Religious Fanatics.” We did peer
critiquing and the comments in the margin of my rough draft were honest
and even angry. The article was subsequently published and I got another
wave of reaction—about a dozen letters. People thanked me for saying things
I didn’t believe and others attacked me for believing things I didn’t say.

This interactive exchange, combined with the thrill of seeing my byline,
was enough to launch me as a writer. I began to write and publish in the
popular press. Starting with religious periodicals, I diversified my interests
and audiences, winning awards in news writing and science fiction. I have

written for magazines, newspapers, trade journals, government publications

20

and children’s magazines. This strengthened my credibility as a writing
teacher, of course, but is also sensitized me to two issues: the difficulty—
impossibility—of being a completely objective reporter (or, by extension,
researcher), and the importance of listening and synthesizing carefully,

especially in reporting interviews.

Scholar

Concurrent with these experiences I was developing my expertise as an
interdisciplinary scholar, sorting out ideas around me and relating them to
each other and to the projects I encountered. Robinson has suggested
interdisciplinary thinkers are ”perpetual neophytes, persistent amateurs”
with ”a readiness—perhaps an obligation—to get into the middle of as many
conversations as possible.” (Robinson,1990) I’d like to relate here, roughly in
chronological order, the major conversations I encountered, noting briefly
the implications of those encounters as they relate to the development of the
current project.

The first of these was James Sire’s book The Universe Next Door. I read it
shortly after I began teaching at the college level. The book was
recommended to me by a colleague, along with its companion volume How
to Read Slowly. Sire introduced me to the concept of world view, cataloging,
more or less in chronological fashion, the major world views which have
shaped Western civilization. These included, in order, theism, deism,
naturalism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern pantheism, and new
consciousness. Sire defines world view as ”a number of presuppositions,
more or less self-consistent, generally unquestioned by each person, rarely, if
ever, mentioned by his friends, and only brought to mind when challenged

by a foreigner from another ideological universe" (Sire, 1979).

21

Sire differentiates these world views by examining the answers each
provides to a series of basic questions about the nature of man, the meaning
of history, the basis of morality, and the prime reality. He argues that each
individual has a unique world view; our neighbor, then, represents the
”universe next door” of the title. But he also asserts certain basic questions
frame common, overlapping viewpoints, such as those he catalogs.

His second book, How to Read Slowly, influenced my interest in a project
such as this even more. Picking up on the theme of world view, he argues
one can learn to ”read between the lines” and ascertain the world view of an
author even if it is not explicitly stated. I had read some basic linguistics in
graduate school—Edward Saphir and LA. Richards, for example—and was
intrigued by the idea.

I picked up on it when I started the interdisciplinary program at Michigan
State, thinking, at the time, to do something with grammar. I wondered, for
example, if someone with one world view might be more likely to use
subordination than someone with a different world View. I had in mind a
project that would involve counting prepositional phrases and noting
tendencies toward abstract nouns and the like. The idea had some support in
works likeText and Epistemology (Frawley,1987), which compares percentages
of kinds of conjunctions and other grammatical constructions in journalism,
theology, science and fiction.

But the idea led me ultimately to Richard Weaver and his book Language
is Sermonic. Weaver, a rhetorician, believes rhetoric expresses the ultimate
values of its users, which are reflected in sources of arguments, grammatical
categories and ultimate term. Three of his ideas intrigued me. First, he says at
the center of every culture there is a center of authority which he calls a

”tyrannizing image." He writes: ”There is a center which commands all

22

things, and this center is open to imaginative but not logical discovery. It is a
focus of values, a law of relationships, an inspiriting vision" (Foss, Foss and
Trapp,1991).

This ”tyrannizing image” can be discerned through the ”uncontested
terms” of a culture, and it inserts itself between us and our experiences: ”a
developed culture is a way of looking at the world through an aggregate of
symbols so that empirical facts take on significance” (W eaver,1970). This is
what world view does, as I was coming to understand it, and thinking about
”uncontested terms" and about the cultural context of discourse seemed more
interesting than counting prepositions.

The second idea he raised was the notion of ”rhetorical intention.”
Weaver believes ”every use of speech, oral and written, exhibits an attitude"
and ”if one looks widely enough, one can discover its rhetorical dimension.”
As long as man is ”a creature responding to purpose, his linguistic expression
will be a carrier of tendency.” Language is sermonic, he argues, and ”we are
all preachers in private and public capacities. We have no sooner uttered
words than we have given impulse to other people to look at the world, or
some small part of it, in our way” (Weaver,1970). This is what evangelicals do
by definition: we try to get others to look at the world in our way. The
rhetorical dimension of everyday language is certainly an aspect of the
language evangelicals use, given as they are to proclaiming a message.

A third idea Weaver suggested is the idea of a linguistic ”covenant.” He
rails against positivism and relativism, both positions with which thinking
evangelicals are understandably uncomfortable. The first rules out the
spiritual aspect of man and the second reduces language to a social construct
devoid of any absolute meaning. Weaver circumvents this problem by

asserting language is a covenant among those who use it. He writes:

23

It is in the nature of a covenant to be more than a matter of
transient causes. A covenant—and I like, in this
connection, the religious overtones of the word—binds us
at deeper levels and involves some kind of confrontation
of reality. When we covenant with one another that a
word shall stand for a certain thing, we signify that it is the
best available word for that thing in the present state of
general understanding. (Weaver,1970)

This is comfortable language for an evangelical, of course, since his or her
”tyrannizing image” is the Word, the idea that God has revealed Himself in
language. But the comfort I found was not limited to faith; I was reading
Searle’s speech act theory at the time (Searle,1969), an idea not too far
removed from Weaver’s ”rhetorical intent,” and soon after I read Grice’s
conversational maxims (Grice,1975). His cooperative principle sounded
something like Weaver’s linguistic covenant, without the religious
overtones.

My reading and my course work were in communication up until this
point. I was starting to warm up to conversational analysis as a methodology,
except as a teacher of writing I was interested in doing more than examining
adjacent pairs and other conversational phenomenon. Searching for a link
between writing and speaking I came across Jay Robinson’s Conversations on
the Written Word. (Robinson,1990) This collection of essays about literacy
claims language learning is a sociohistorical process, requiring both a glimpse
of the future and a knowledge of the past. The metaphor which ties all this
together is conversation. Robinson says the metaphor forces us to look at
similarities between the two realizations of language: speaking and writing.
He notes further that ”the dominant metaphors for research in our time are

metaphors of interaction.”

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At this point I started to understand what I had encountered frequently in
other readings: texts exist in contexts; all discourse is situated action. Or, as
Robinson quotes Mikhail Bakhtin: ”Any utterance is a link in a very
complexly organized chain of utterances.” I had resisted this notion because
many of its adherents used it to dilute the rhetorical notions with which I was
more comfortable. But seeing a piece of writing as part of a larger
conversation made perfect sense to me. I had seen the comments scrawled in
the margin of my article on religious fanatics years before. I had read the
mail. I had entered into conversations with unseen readers over and over
again.

Following James Boyd White, Robinson sees language not as a code but as
”a cultural resource that members of communities have available when they
attempt to say something circumstantial and substantive to one another”
(Robinson,1990). This resource, which includes a set of meanings and moves,
is what White calls constitutive rhetoric: ”the art of constituting character,
community, and culture in language.” This is what Stanley Fish calls an
interpretive community, a community with ”shared interpretive strategies”
(Fish,1980), a concept which resonated easily with my experience and
understanding of evangelical discourse.

But at the time I was most taken with Robinson’s assertions about writing:

All effective writing is centered in a writer’s anticipation of
the needs and interests and expectations of real or
imagined individuals whose readings will count for
something in the writer’s system of values. Writing and
reading are interactive processes, and as such are social
activities, even when performed by individuals in lonely
silence. (Robinson,1990)

I understood, finally, what many scholars I had read had been trying to

say: discourse is situated action. I had been content to see this action merely

25

in terms of rhetorical intention, but was slowly coming to see its relational
dimension: the action is rhetorical and probably intentional, but the situation
is relational and perhaps even unconscious.

I then began a series of readings and classes in discourse analysis and
sensed immediately a conflict between the sequential analysis of
conversational analysis and the more contextual concerns of discourse
analysis. This tension, which I eventually resolved for myself through a
conversational paradigm, is the framework for the analysis which follows. I
will take it up in Chapter 4. But I would like now to restate some of the biases
I bring to this project, biases which have been alluded to throughout this

chapter.

The author’ 5 biases

Researcher as evangelical

The first bias I bring to this project should be clear: I am an evangelical.
This means, among other things, I have a high regard for Scripture, believing
it was supematurally supervised to provide a reliable record of God’s dealings
with and revelation to man. I am not naive about the endless complications
such a position entails. I am sensitive to its hermeneutical problems, issues
both of translation and interpretation. But, like the students this study
examines, I believe God has somehow spoken to us and we have an
obligation to try to understand what he is saying.

Let me state my own position on language briefly: Language, as a vehicle
of truth, is limited and flawed, certainly. It has gaps and slippage and
ambivalence. As a Christian, I would say it is fallen. But it reveals as well as

it conceals, and it creates closeness as well as distance. Otherwise there is no

26

revelation and no way of knowing God through his Word, or even knowing
each other. As Christ observed, our words reveal the thoughts and intents of
our hearts—and ultimately of his. In language, meaning may always be
obscured, but it is not invisible.

The implication of my evangelical bias for the study at hand is this: I not
only respect the students whose narratives I examine, I often agree with the
points they are trying to make by telling them. I understand these students in
ways many scholars and journalists who have studied evangelicals do not.

In this connection I read with interest Cameron’s definition of
”empowering research” in Researching Language: Issues of Power and
Method. (Cameron, et al., 1992). She says empowering research is research
”on, for and with” using ”interactive and dialogic research methods instead
of the distancing and objectifying strategies positivists are constrained to use."

I have no secret agenda here. My goal in this study is to use the interactive
and dialogic research methods of discourse analysis to reduce the distance not
only between myself and my students (as researcher and researched), but
between evangelicals and others. I treat the students as complex persons,
hoping to help deobjectify them and their community to a community of
scholars. In Cameron’s terms, I want to empower evangelicals, but only in a
limited sense, the Foucaultian sense Cameron describes. For Foucault, power
is not monolithic, it is a force which circulates in a web of social interaction.
(Foucault,1982) This study empowers evangelicals by making them—and
others—more aware of the way narratives work to effect changes within their
community. This is the ”for” of Cameron’s formulation.

The ”with” is particularly accounted for by the world view I share with the
students. I accept their vision of reality, and I will attempt to translate it for

nonevangelicals. The case studies in Cameron’s book are characterized as

27

”realism.” (I expect we all want to be the realists in some sense.) In defining
themselves in this way Cameron and her colleagues seek, as I do, to find
some safe haven between the extremes of linguistic positivism and linguistic
relativism, although they seem more afraid of the former and I am probably
more afraid of the latter.

Realism, as Cameron defines it, ”accepts the theory ladenness of
observation, but not the theory—dependent nature of reality itself. Realism
posits a reality existing outside and independent of the observer, but also
stresses that this reality may be impossible to observe or to describe definitely”
(Cameron, et al.,1992).

Evangelicals have named this reality, or rather they claim God has named
it in Scripture, however difficult it may be to describe or observe. For them,
as our discussion of their conversion narratives will show, this reality is not
theory-dependent; it stands over and against their own understanding of
things, framing a relationship with One who is totally other. By stating my
own bias clearly I serve notice on the reader that I treat their relationship with
God not only with respect but with reverence.

Before I state a second bias, I should note Cameron’s ”research with”
formulation has procedural as well as relational implications, and
throughout this project I have given the students opportunities to interact
with the data and to comment freely on the influences which shape their use
of language. Journal assignments and conferences were structured to provide
this opportunity, providing important internal validation for many of the
observations I make. I have asked the students themselves to cement on
my analysis (see Appendix B). Cameron calls this interaction between the
researcher and the researched ”a necessary rather than a sufficient condition”

for researching language. This chapter does not deal explicitly with

28

methodology, but I have methodological concerns and do address them,
particularly in Chapter 8. But that methodology has undoubtedly been

affected by another bias to which I now turn.

Researcher as journalist

The second bias is this: I am a journalist. I think like a journalist. I write
like a journalist. I gather and synthesize information like a journalist. By
stating this as a bias I do not mean simply that I write in the first person. Nor
do I mean I will write shorter sentences than those generally used in
academic discourse, although I hope to do that too.

I mean by this assertion to say my field notes look like those of a reporter,
not an anthropologist. Transcripts of interviews are punctuated with the
kinds of questions I ask as a reporter. My style tends to be tight, concise,
unpretentious. I do this unconsciously.

This is not meant as an apology. I have been writing like this for twenty
years, and I have been teaching people to write this way just as long. I will
report what I thought and learned as clearly and simply as I can and give the
reader information to draw his or her own conclusions as often as I can.

I am sensitive to the criticism this invokes, and my journalistic tendencies
do not mean I will not write for the community of scholars for which a
project such as this is intended. Silverman suggests the work of some
interactionists ”may fail to improve on good descriptive journalism” and says
this may be overcome if ”description serves only as a prelude to analytic
work” (Silverman, 1993). I trust this will be the case here. This project is
more than ”descriptive journalism” because it relies on the purposeful
application of analytic tools within the context of an articulated theoretical

frame. But the project will be affected by my journalistic tendencies. This

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leads to a third bias, a scholarly bias which also complicates this project and

every other intellectual project in which I engage.

Researcher as interdisciplinarian

I am also an interdisciplinarian. Part of this, as my biography suggests, is
due to a diverse academic background which includes study in chemistry,
biology, psychology, English, education, theology, and communication. Prior
to my doctoral work this orientation was not intentional, although it has
served me well as a journalist.

However, as a generalist I lack the technical sophistication of many
specialists who may read this. As indicated above, Robinson says
interdisciplinarians are ”perpetual neophytes, persistent amateurs” who
”need all the help they can get if their constant questions are to result in
useful answers.” I have always been comfortable as a generalist, but this
movement away from specialization has practical implications for this
endeavor, the most prominent of which will be an intentional tendency to
eschew jargon. I will define my basic terms—world view, narrative,
conversation—in the context where they become central to my arguments or
analysis, but they will be defined in general rather than technical terms,
specific enough to use them more as a basis for asking questions than for
suggesting answers.

My interdisciplinary bent has of course taken on philosophical —or
theological—implications as well. As a Christian I find the fragmentation of
discourse into what Foucault calls ”regimens of truth” distressing. Since I
presuppose the existence of a common creator, then all truths are God’s truths

and must somehow be related to each other.

30

For this reason, interdisciplinarity as I conceive it is not a mechanistic
effort simply combining concepts and methods from different disciplines.
Like Bauman, I resist this notion ”because it concedes the legitimacy of the
disciplinary differentiation to begin with.” (Bauman,1986) And also like
Bauman, whose work in the contextual studies of oral narrative are focused
in the ”integrative vision” of a performance-centered analysis, I have sought
to find my own "integrative vision,” attempting, not too presumptuously I
hope, to address the tension between rhetoric and relationship. This is a
tension I first felt as a student of conversational analysis in communication
and discourse analysis in English language studies, both interpretive
communities where I feel at home but remain, to some degree, a guest.

Before we examine that tension, however, I will introduce you to a

community where I do feel at home, a community bounded by faith.

CHAPTER 3

All God’s Children:
Evangelicalism’s changing face

The students I took to Cedar Bend Farm share an evangelical heritage, if
not a commitment. Their conversation—both written and oral—reveals their
world view. But it also reveals their insecurities and doubts.

They remind me, in fact, of two jokes about the definition of an

evangelical:

Question: What is an evangelical?
Answer 1: The son of a fundamentalist
Answer 2: A fundamentalist with a college education

Both answers are revealing. And both describe in some ways the small
group of students who climbed into a van and rode off into the snow to write
poetry and have their conversation analyzed. All six were from Christian
homes, two in fact were preacher’s kids. All of them were pursuing a liberal
art degree—and confronting the questions such an education invariably
raises.

The question here—no longer a joke—is what do you call the son or
daughter of an evangelical when they get a college education? A new
generation of evangelicals is confronting the postmodern world. Their
discourse, as might be expected, shows something of the conflict.

These six students are not without their differences and their doubts.

Their denominational affiliations were not uniform, for example: the three

31

32

non-seniors were Free Methodists, the supporting denomination of the
college. The seniors were Nazarene, Baptist, and Lutheran. All would be

classified as evangelicals, however, defined here as conservative Protestants.

American evangelicalism

The evangelical movement remains strong in the United States, where it
emerged around the turn of the century from a split in Protestantism. The
liberal wing opted for what Hunter calls aggressive accommodation—
adjusting religious and theological truths to account for new and emerging
ideals of twentieth century experience. Among other things, this resulted in a
devaluation of spirituality, an emphasis on the social and ethical dimensions
of life, and a universalization of salvation.

The conservative wing (fundamentalism, as it was then called) resisted
cultural pressures by reasserting and defending key doctrines, most notably
the authority and reliability of the Bible and the orthodox Christian view
about salvation—that it occurs only through faith in Christ. Despite the
intense pressure of a larger culture committed to tolerance and plurality, this
movement has flourished. Hunter cites these evidences of its vitality
(Hunter, 1987):

0 Since 1965 membership in liberal denominations has declined at an
average five-year rate of 4.6%, while evangelical denominations have
increased at a five-year rate of 8%. Evangelicals give an average of 44% more
to their church than do liberals—$535 vs. $301 in 1983, for example.

0 From an essentially non-existent media presence in 1945, there are now
over 350 Christian periodicals, 6,000 Christian book stores, and 1,200 Christian

radio stations.

33

0 In 1980, American evangelicals sent out 30,000 missionaries, 11 times
the number of American liberal Protestant missionaries, twice as many as all
the other countries of the world.

More recently, a 1990 Gallup poll indicates 47% of the US. population
reads the Bible at least once a week, up from 41% in 1978, and 20% report
reading it two or three times a week. The same poll reports 55% believe the
Bible is the ”actual” or ”inspired” word of God which, whether taken literally
or symbolically, is free from error (Noll).

Political analysts agree that the 1994 congressional elections, which
returned the Republican party to control of Congress for the first time in four
decades, were dominated by the ”religious right.” Exit polls showed 30% of
voters identified themselves as evangelicals. ”The religious right has built a
momentum that’s made them the largest political force in the country right
now,” says Arthor Kropp, president of People for the American Way, a liberal
advocacy group (Detroit News, January 15, 1995, Bl).

But Hunter claims second and third generation American evangelicals,
those now in college, are in danger of losing their ”binding address.” By this
he means an "inner imperative binding people to inherited rules and guiding
them in virtually every detail of their day-to-day lives.” This loss of binding
address occurs ”because the implicit meanings of culture succumb to the
modern imperative of analysis, reflection, and introspection.”

In a 1985 attitudinal study of students and faculty members at seven
conservative seminaries and nine evangelical liberal art colleges similar to
the one attended by students in this study, he found evidence of erosion in
their commitment to key evangelical doctrinal positions, including the
inerrancy of Scripture and the exclusivity associated with traditional

Christian soteriology.

34

Half of the students believed the Bible was not mistaken in its teachings
but ”is not always to be taken literally in its statements concerning matters of
science, historical reporting, etc.” Two-thirds of the students believed ”the
only hope for heaven is through personal faith in Jesus Christ,” but a third of
them indicated that was true ”except for those who have not had the
opportunity to hear of Jesus Christ," a real and understandable damper on the
missionary zeal normally associated with the evangelical faith. These
reservations would have been unacknowledged only twenty years ago.

Hunter associates this subtle but important shift to the movement’s
cultural and intellectual elite. Recall the fundamentalist with a college
education become an evangelical. What does an evangelical with a college
education become? Doubtful evangelicals, perhaps. While a survey of
evangelical theologians, for example, shows 98% believe the Bible is the
divinely inspired Word of God, 40% have abandoned their belief in inerrancy
(Hunter,l987). This redefinition of the boundaries which encompass this
particular world view is unsettling for those who hold it. For young
evangelicals in Christian colleges, Hunter says, ”Belief has not dissolved but
the feeling of serene certainty has.”

As you might expect, the uncertainties accompanying such a transition are
reflected in the discourse of the students at Cedar Bend. Consider Brad, a
Baptist preacher’s kid, editor of the college newspaper, co-director of a student

ministry drama team:

WALLY: Um. How would you describe you Christian
commitment slash experience?

[laugh]

BRAD: Um, well, it was part of my dad’s job. I had to be a
Christian.

35

[both parties laugh]
WALLY: Yeah, well...
BRAD: We had to go to church.

WALLY: Given that dad got that started, um, what
maintains it for you? Is it maintained?

BRAD: Oh, it’s, it’s real shaky. It’s not, I wouldn’t say,
maintained, it’s, any kind of functional, um, state, you
know. It’s very dysfunctional, I suppose. Right now...
currently.

WALLY: Yeah.

BRAD: I’ve lost a lot of the ritual, I’ve lost a lot of the, the
practices, and ah, just out of neglect, really.

WALLY: Well, for example, you do, you do, skits with
”Final Cut.” Are you doing those things because you care
about it and believe it, or are you doing those things
because you enjoy acting and being part of a group?

BRAD: Yeah, well, that’s the only thing that really keeps
me in the church, is that capability of being able to criticize
it.

Brad, a member of evangelicalism’s potential cultural elite, says his
Christian experience is dysfunctional, and later, addresses his doctrinal

uncertainties:

WALLY: Um, if somebody walked up to you in a coffee
shop you were singing in, or something, and they didn’t
have any knowledge of you or didn’t know where you
went to school or anything, and they said to you, are you a
Christian? Maybe something in meeting you made them
wonder or something. What would you say to that
question, and what would be the basis of the answer?

BRAD: That’s not as easy as yes (laughs), I can say that right
now, and it’s not as easy as no.

36

WALLY: Okay. Well, why isn’t it easy, I guess that’s the
question.

BRAD: Well, I guess it’s really my heritage, that’s really
where my family stakes its identity, is in our Christian
faith. And so to say no, is to deny, what I feel would be to
deny a big part of myself. To say yes would carry along so
much baggage, you know, but maybe it is baggage I have
anyway. Ah, it would be hard for me to say either way. Um
so, I might explain it like that.

In terms of fundamental Christian beliefs, those aren’t
anything, I’m really questioning. I mean, those are things
you can go along and ask about, debate the virgin birth,
you can debate, all those, kind of, you know, kind of,
almost mythological things we’ve created. I mean, we
didn’t necessarily create them, maybe they’ve happened,
but you know, I think those are areas where you can go
back and forth, you can be a Christian either way, but, um,
you know, what you were saying about the idea of what
God has done for us, and dying, you know, those, those are
questions I don’t really question.

WALLY: Mmm.

BRAD: I mean, it isn’t a question of whether God is trying
to reach out to us in some way. You know, for me right
now its a question of you know, it this a harmful thing?
You know, is He out to get me? Because it seems like he is.

[Chuckles]

You know, is... is it necessarily good? Those are kind of the
questions I’m dealing with right now. And, I mean, those
are, that, that besides the whole culture that I don’t like.
You know, the whole thing was created around what
originally happened. I, I don’t, I don’t have much of a
desire to be a part of it anymore.

Brad here refers to the virgin birth as ”an almost mythological thing”
which may or may not have happened. And he doesn’t think it is essential:

”you can be a Christian either way.” What remains essential is ”what God

37

has done for us, and (Christ) dying”—and he’s not even sure the relationship
with God which results from this is a good thing.

He is the most articulate of all the students regarding these doubts, and we
will return to discuss the rhetorical and relational implications of his and
other Christian experience narratives. But clearly Hunter’s conclusions about
the ”loss of binding address” is relevant to this discussion. The growth and
vitality of American evangelicalism is founded in ”the desire for a Christian
community marked by authenticity and a faith unencumbered by ambiguity
and self-doubt” but the intellectual elite of the movement are engaged in the
”predilection for reflection” that results in a ”subjective detachment”
characteristic of the modern world. This results from, among other things, a
”subjective hermeneutic” rooted in contemporary linguistic theory (Hunter,
1987). Brad addresses this tension when he writes in his journal about ”an

aspect of language that interests you.” He writes:

What interests me is its ability to shape our experiences.
The idea that interests me more is that language may be
our experience. Maybe that’s too extreme, maybe language
only allows us to experience things. That’s a big ”only.”

In another place, discussing the movie The Remains of the Day, he writes,
”If someone doesn’t have words for something, it may not be experienced.”
Obviously, generalizations about what evangelicals believe should be made
cautiously, and discourse studies such as this—studies which show what
words and stories they have available to them—can only contribute to an
understanding of the uncertainty young evangelicals are experiencing.

Generalizations about political attitudes marking this movement should
also be made cautiously, a conclusion supported by a longitudinal study
sponsored by fourteen Christian colleges (including Spring Arbor) involving
the Cooperative Institutional Research Project (CIRP) administered by the

38

American Council on Education. Seniors—including the three seniors at
Cedar Bend—completed an extensive survey in the first and fourth year of
college. This provided comparisons between the evangelical colleges
involved and 1,300 other American colleges and universities.

The study found that 45% of the students in the evangelical colleges
designated themselves ”politically conservative” compared to 20% in the
total sample. However, except with regard to approval of legalized abortion
(16% vs. 46%), the students in Christian and non-Christian schools had
essentially the same responses to a wide range of issues including support for
government activities in the areas of gun control, reducing the deficit,
environmental protection, consumer protection, capital punishment,
military spending, school busing and the role of women in society (Baylis,
1994).

Wide differences did exist in areas of personal lifestyle: only 9% vs. 51%
approved of premarital sex, for example. Motivation for attending college
was also significantly different: Christians ranked influencing social values,
making a contribution to society and participating in service higher than
those in secular school. Questions unique to the Christian college sample
indicate almost 90% engage in personal devotions, sharing their faith, and

participating in small group prayer or Bible study.

Spring Arbor College
Results of the CIRP give some additional insight into Spring Arbor
College, the college attended by the six students involved in this project. It is
a small residential college: 80% of the students are more than 50 miles from
home. 50% of the 1994 seniors plan to attend graduate school. 98% reported

having a part-time job on campus.

39

The college stresses community: 95% had been a guest in a professor’s
home compared to 60% in all private four—year colleges. There are also
community standards prohibiting alcohol, tobacco and even on-campus
dancing. 56% of the seniors taking the survey had consumed some sort of
alcoholic beverage in the year preceding the survey, compared with 85% in all
four-year private colleges. Based on informal conversations, of the six
students at Cedar Bend, three of them had used alcohol and three had not.
26% of the students at the college reported using alcoholic beverages in high
school. 5% said they had spent six or more hours partying each week,
compared with 25% in the larger universe. It’s important to realize that 5%
of such a small sample (41 respondents) is only 2 people. In these terms, one
person reported smoking in the previous year.

The college has a strong values orientation as can be noted in the
following chart comparing ”items noted as essential or very important” by
seniors against themselves as freshmen and against other private four-year

college seniors:

TABLE 1: Important objectives for Spring Arbor College seniors (in percentages)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Objective Senior Freshman Other
Jear year colleges

be well off financially 14.6 30 47
have administrative 14.6 30 39
responsibility
be] others in difficulty 83 65 74
influence political 5 22 20
_s_tr_ucture
influence social values 73 58 53

 

 

 

 

 

(source: CIRP, 1994)
As freshmen they were already less likely than their secular counterparts
to be primarily interested in material values, but the college experience

strengthened this commitment. Perhaps most interesting, they had less

40

interest in influencing the political structure than other graduating seniors, a
heartening statistic for political liberals who fear a tyranny of the religious
right.

Ellen, a broadcast major who is interested in influencing the political

structures, had this to say regarding the impact of the college on her life:

WALLY: Well good, you um... how has being a college
student at Spring Arbor influenced your Christian life?

ELLEN: Um, probably it's made me question it more.
Because I think before, I was just, I didn’t question any of it.
I thought it was all true and everything was right because I
had learned it in church, or through my reading in the
Bible, so I figure, but now, just meeting people and talking
and getting different views, I found that, you know, there
isn’t always just one pat answer for everything. Whereas
before, I wanted there, I wanted it to be like that. That
would have made life easier, really. But I started to
question a lot of things.

WALLY: Like?

ELLEN: Like issues, I mean, just, you know... I don’t know,
just issues about, you know. I guess, well, not necessarily
issues that other people deal with, because like that whole
thing about, like drinking and swearing in school and
stuff, that wasn’t really a big deal in my church, because I’m
in the Lutheran church they don’t condone, I mean, they

' don’t say you can’t drink. They don’t say you can’t. They
don’t want you to swear and stuff, but they don’t care about
the drinking thing. And so, a lot of things that, I think that,
a lot of my friends at college try to, really deal with, I

don’t really have to, because I didn’t think that it was an
issue. The whole drinking thing, I never thought it was an
issue. Whereas, I got here, and it’s a major deal with
everybody.

WALLY: Yeah.

ELLEN: But just these things that are like on a value level,
you know. It’s like some difficulties, I can’t really think of
something specific, it’s just certain, certain issues like,

41

like abortion, capital punishment, things like that, of that
nature.

WALLY: Uh-huh.

ELLEN: Where as, before, I was just, it’s this. You know?
But then, gradually, I started... I think it’s also when I get
older, you how, things become more relative to me.

She begins by revisiting the issues of faith, reflecting the same tensions as
her boyfriend Brad about ”no pat answers.” This reinforces Hunter’s
observations about the shifting doctrinal views of the coming generation of
evangelicals. Her observation that ”everything was right because I learned it
in church, or through reading my Bible” seems a bit of an understatement
however. Ellen had not just read the Bible, she had memorized entire books
of it, placing second in the world finals of a Bible-quizzing competition
sponsored by Youth for Christ. Interestingly enough, a review of the
transcripts shows she was less likely to cite specific biblical allusions than any
of the others. In fact, she never does so.2

Notice she expresses little concern about the lifestyle issues which concern
many of her peers. Although Linda, for example, cites a conversation about
whether Christians should drink or not as an important remembered
conversation from her college experience, drinking wasn’t an issue in the
Lutheran church where Ellen was raised. (She uses the word ”condone”

rather than the word ”condemn”; her church doesn’t condone drinking, but

 

2This may be attributed to her family background. She states at one point: ”My parents aren’t
very agressive when it comes to sharing their faith and things, and they never really, urn,
shared their, urn, personal faith to me really, but it was just their example of, you know, going
to church every Sunday, and, you know, of being a Christian, and the way you act toward
people.”

42

”they don’t say you can’t.”) But the college experience has made Ellen
question certain social issues like abortion and capital punishment.3

The college’s value commitments are reflected in its CORE curriculum,
which include a required cross-cultural experience (a minimum of four
weeks), a course in Christian faith and cultures which includes an extended
weekend in inner city Chicago, a freshman ”bonding” experience ( a camping
expedition at Cedar Bend Farm—kill your own turkey , build your own
shelter), and a philosophy of life paper as part of a required senior class.
Through the CORE program, all students are familiar with the college
mission statement, called ”The Concept.”

The Concept ”calls for a community of learners who are distinguished by
their serious involvement in the study of the liberal arts, their total
commitment to Jesus Christ as a perspective for learning, and their critical
participation in the affairs of the contemporary world.” The central campus is
dominated by a sculpture incorporating a lamp of learning (liberal arts) over a
cross (Christian perspective) with a globe at its center (contemporary world).
The college takes its mission statement seriously and curriculum decisions by
the faculty address the implications of those decisions in terms of the Concept
statement. In addition to the CORE curriculum, the college sponsors various
lecture series, a ”Spiritual Emphasis Week," and other events and programs
related to its mission statement. On the CIRP survey, 100% of the students
reported attending religious services each week. (There is mandatory chapel

on Monday and Wednesdays.)

 

3 CIRP data indicates Spring Arbor College seniors were less likely to support laws prohibiting
homosexuality or to believe that racial discrimination was no longer a problem than they were
as freshmen, but more likely to support capital punishment. Attitudes about abortion were
essentially unchanged.

43

The Cedar Bend students

The students involved in this project are members of a small, committed
evangelical college community. But the ties between them were more
intimate than that.

It was a close group. Everyone knew someone else in the group, no great
feat considering the on-campus enrollment of the mostly residential college is
under 800. The three upperclassmen worked on the newspaper staff, for
which I am the advisor. Of these three, the two males (Brad and Jerry) were
roommates and co-directors of a drama team. The female (Ellen) was dating
Brad. The three underclassmen (Angie, Linda and Norm) all went to the
same high school and had the same English teacher. Angie and Norm had
gone together for three years but had just broken up. They attended the same
church, where Angie’s dad is pastor. Three of the students had the same
major: communication. Norm was a biology major; Jerry was a philosophy
major; Linda was undecided.

The students kept a directed journal which required, among other things,
some reflection on language. Although this journal provides a source of
validation and data for this project, it also functioned to focus their attention
on language as it related to the topic of the workshop: creative writing.
However, some of the entries, such as ”how were you careful about language
in your home” seem pertinent to this chapter which establishes the context
for the narrative samples to be analyzed. By way of introduction to the
individual students, some discussion of their reflections on language will be
included. Transcripts of conferences in which their journal entries were
discussed will also be referred to.

It is time now to meet the students themselves.

Angie

Angie was a freshman, petite, bubbly, devout. A pastor’s daughter, she
was very intense about her faith, perhaps the most intense of any of the
participants. She engaged in daily Bible reading and prayer, wrote frequent
letters to friends and family, took her studies seriously, laboring for hours
over various drafts of her poems. Her poems addressed family or Christian
themes, except where themes were assigned. She participated in class, took
criticism well both in private and in public.

The poem she chose for inclusion in a class anthology was a villanelle
about herself and her mother and grandmother entitled ”Three Generations
of Lace.” The poem most often critiqued in class was a sonnet comparing her
loss of a boyfriend (not Norm, with whom she had broken up three months
earlier) to the loss that Mary felt at the death of Christ: ”As Mary, So 1.” She
brought it to the table three times. She wrote a poem about abortion which
was destroyed in a class critique, but she revised it and put it in her final
portfolio anyway. Later it won a poetry contest in a Christian magazine. A

representative haiku:

Gold, stained-glass window
In a shriveled maple frame
Glitters on the snow

The influences Angie lists on her language development are all authority
figures, teachers or parents, with the exception of Linda, a member of the
group who was a grade ahead of Angie in high school and whose writings
were used as examples in class.

She says her family was always careful about ”prOper English” and her
mother was quick to correct them ”if something came out a little funny.” Her

mother didn’t like ”ugly” words like ”crap, poop, suck, shut-up, and dang”

45

and ”of course no swear words ever!” In a conference Angie indicated that
she had no concept of the etymology of the word ”suck” in its popular usage,
although it was easily the most frequently used slang word by the Cedar Bend
group. I heard her use it once, a kind of effort to be included near the end of
the workshop. ”We were taught to always talk respectfully and to say things
as nicely as possible,” says Angie, who did just that.

She listed twenty-six favorite words beginning with tender, wistful,
whisper and home because ”an image or an emotion comes to me.” Angie
was easily the most sentimental of the group, although she was not maudlin.
She was somewhat gullible and accepted her role as the lone freshman with
grace and good humor.

The last thing she reports reading she didn’t have to read was the Bible,
”because its words of truth give me peace and renew my perspective on life-—

it sets me straight with God.”

Norm an

Norman, a sophomore biology major, was the loner in the group. He
seldom spoke unless specifically invited. He was the only student to do much
cross-country skiing. At nights he often sat in a rocking chair, wrapped in a
blanket, singing to himself or reading his Bible. He told me he was singing
Christian choruses. Angie had broken up with him and he had not gotten
over her, although contrary to group consensus he insisted to me that he had
not signed up for the class because she had. There was no overt friction
between the two for the entire three weeks, although we were living together
in a closed environment.

Norm has a severe genetic disorder requiring him to take lots of

medication. He was supposed to die before he was fourteen but

46

advancements in treatment have made the disease, which he never named,
manageable. (Angie confirmed this assessment.) He wears a hearing aid.

Norm was extremely focused on his poetry, eager for criticism in
conference but not in class, and talented. A frequent theme for his work was
loss—his parents were divorced, they had sold a horse farm he loved, a best
friend had gone to jail. Angie was the subtext of at least one poem. He
looked at an orange one day and wrote an intense poem about the day an
angel died. None of his poems were titled.

Norman was one of only two students to use profanity in their poetry.
The only time he used it in conversation with me was talking about his
parents’ divorce. He was angry at his dad for ”fucking another woman.” He
resisted working in set forms, although his required sonnet was as strong as
any produced. In fact, his poetry was as strong as any produced, although he

seldom brought it to class or read it willingly. The final couplet of his sonnet:

Memories flap in the wind—filling silken sails
Forcing small ships forward through hard, dark hail.

He included both teachers and authors in his list of people who had
influenced his language including J.R.R.Tolkien, Mark Twain, and Patrick
McManus, a humorist for outdoor magazines. His journal response to how
language was used in his home included this response: ”I didn’t say fuck
around my mom. When I was around my friends I didn’t say fuck either. It’s
probably the only fucking word I don’t ever say.” He says he never takes the
Lord’s name in vain or uses racist words like ”nigger.” He says he also ”never
uses politically correct words.”

His list of eleven favorite words include ”emerald” and ”sod.” In his

journal he says these words ”make me feel strongly” and ”definite memories

47

are triggered.” In conference he said emerald reminded him of a family

vacation at the coast, sod of the horse farm his parents sold after their divorce.
The last thing he read which he ”didn’t have to read for a class” was

Jurassic Park because ”I was bored” and ”it fits pretty well into my reading

habits” but he didn’t like it because the dialogue was ”dull and dirnwitted.”

Linda

Linda was a sophomore, undecided at the time between an English or a
communication major. Like Angie, she was a peacemaker, sensitive to group
squabbles and dynamics.

Her dad is an administrator at the college, one of the original forces behind
the articulation of the college mission statement as the Concept. Her older
siblings have distinguished themselves as scholars and Linda, although
bright, struggles to find her place in relationship to them. She is insecure in
this regard, although she has high regard for and expresses deep affection for
her family. She has a good sense of humor, and in tapes her distinctive laugh
is loudest and most frequent. Her favorite slang at Cedar Bend was ”Butt-” as
in butt-head, butt-cool, butt-good, a’ la ”Beavis and Butthead.”

Linda is a committed Christian, and talks frequently in conference about
her experiences in faith. She was deeply troubled by a recent experience on
jury duty and, undecided about career aspirations, talked about becoming a
lawyer to help the disadvantaged. She has since changed her major to
education. She has personal devotions, although she is not as open or vocal
about it as the other two non-seniors. She is strongly drawn to (and accepted
by) the tighter circle of three seniors. She also wants to be accepted (and is
accepted) by me. We scrape ourselves carrying in firewood one day and

exchange blood, declaring ourselves ”best friends.”

48

Linda has a history of bulimia. She also has a crush at the time on a young
pastor at her church, a church across the street from the college attended by
about 30% of the student body. He drove her up to Cedar Bend a day after the
workshop began ( a four hour drive), and he led a mission trip to inner-city
New York in which she participated and which had a profound impact on her
spiritual life, as we shall see.

She writes poems about both her bulimia and her feelings toward this
young pastor, but in class she never owns up to either, insisting that one
must not confuse the author of a work with the narrator of the work.

Though often masked in public, in private she is candid and relatively
transparent. She struggles with the issue of risk and art. When we return to
campus she reads her poem on bulimia at a campus coffee house program.
She includes it in a self-published collection of poetry by her family for a
reunion.

Frequent themes in her work are food and love. Most have dark images,
including death and suicide, although some are sentimental, almost cliches.
When she works at it, she can be technically solid, with attention to subtle

poetic devices including slant rhymes and alliteration. A haiku:

Warm, yellow flames lick
the cold ice cube in their midst,
repelled yet refreshed.

Linda notes family and teachers as influences in language, particularly her
family of ”storytellers.” ”When our family gets together the tales get taller
and the dung pile gets deeper,” she writes in her journal. She says at home
she was ”careful to say what I meant, not using wrong definitions, not using
superlatives.” Cursing was proscribed, of course, but ”at school I got enough
use in.” Honesty and openness were encouraged at home, but they were not

allowed to attack each other— ”we couldn’t say ’you’re an idiot,’ but we could

49

III

say ’your idea is idiotic. Although openness was encouraged at home, ”with
other people we were not allowed to be rude.”

She selected her favorite words on the basis of their sounds. The last
unassigned book she read was Prince Caspian, a children’s fantasy by C. S.
Lewis. ”It makes me feel closer to God when I read the Narnia Chronicles,”

she writes.

Ellen

Ellen, a senior communication major, was the complainer in the group,
very negative about the farm’s director who led the group on a strenuous
cross-country ski trip. She had negative feelings about him based on her
freshman experiences at the farm. She was the only one to complain much
about the food (which students prepared themselves) or to openly resist any
requirement, although only the experiential ones such as spending an
afternoon alone in a cabin.

Slightly overweight and, by her own admission, slightly spoiled, she was
the only member of the group from a large city, Detroit. The rustic experience
did not agree with her, and she was not a motivated or disciplined creative
writer. She was a serious news junkie, and being at Cedar Bend without radio
or TV may have been the most difficult part of the experience for her. She
was the only one that read the newspapers I occasionally picked up in town.
She wants to be a broadcast journalist.

She came mostly to be with Brad, but she completed all the writing
assignments and contributed freely in class with good insights and thoughtful
questions. She was smart and quick-witted. She dubbed herself ”highly

intelligent” as a joke frequently, but she was extremely bright.

50

Her Christian experience has been addressed briefly above. She was the
only student from a church (Lutheran) with a strong liturgy. Language
influences include her parents, apparently somewhat proper and reserved,
but focused mostly on mass media, including ”every AP anchor,” ”Wayne’s
World,” and Beavis and Butthead.

Her poems were all set in the context of the immediate experience at Cedar
Bend with the exception of a few haiku and a villanelle about dinosaurs. She
is the other student to use profanity in a poem: a reference to ”damn
snowmobilers.” Her work always starts out abstract, but, after class critiques
and conferences, she manages to infuse them with concrete images.

Ellen says she ”never had to be careful about language in her home"
although she got in trouble for saying ”piss” when she was about ten. She
says the entire family seemed to use swear words more often as she and her
sister got older. Commonly used expressions in her home are ”sphincter boy”
from ”Wayne’s World” and ”psycho.” In response to a query, she says her
family had no ”proverbs” of its own and she ”would be really scared if they
di .”

She likes particular words, and language in general, because ”you can use
language to make things sound important and powerful,” also the reason for
her fascination with news anchors. The last book she read on her own was
Jurassic Park because ”it was recommended to me by several people.” She

chooses books ”that are popular.”

Brad
Brad, also a senior, was the other preacher’s kid. Somewhat melancholy,

he is serious about creative work, especially songwriting in a sort of folk-jazz-

51

blues tradition. As mentioned above, he was the student newspaper editor,
an exceptional but sometimes undisciplined student.

His favorite theme at Cedar Bend was angels. He wrote two songs about
them. Although the lyrics have literary and biblical allusions, his angels
swear and smoke cigarettes. One of them is a whore from Alaska. Women
and cigarettes are others themes, not only in his poetry at Cedar Bend but in
fiction he has shared with me on campus. Shock value is part of his creative
tool kit, but it doesn’t come across as being sophomoric.

Brad says he seldom swears much at home. ”Bitch, dick, fuck and shit” are
seldom used, he says, although he can get away with ”damn, hell and crap.”
He says he can use these words even around his dad, a pastor. He says he
”only swears around people I feel comfortable with.” ”If I swear around you,
that usually means you’re my friend,” he says. (”Why don’t you ever swear
around me, damn it?" I joke. ”Hell, Wally, I didn’t know you cared,” he
responds.) He is reluctant to use slang around ”grown ups” and has been
trying to ”irradicate the words ’like’ and 'kind of’” from his vocabulary
because both are an immature use of language — ”as if swearing isn’t,” he
adds. ”Maybe people swear because they can’t think of anything to say,” he
tells me later in conference.

Language influences (perhaps collaborating with Ellen) include ”Wayne's
World” and Beavis and Butthead. His list also includes Woody Allen and
song writer Leonard Cohen, a virtual idol. His favorite words include bosom
”because it sounds softer than breasts and more subtle than boobs”; cigarette
”because of all the baggage that comes with it. It’s such a full, satisfying, yet

deviant word that I love it”;4 ” and, holy ”because it’s a word I use a lot in my

 

4 Although this word carries little baggage for most college students, it must be remembered
that Brad is a Baptist preacher’s kid whose mom teaches in a conservative Christian school.
Although drinking was not a big deal in Ellen’s church, both smoking and drinking would have

52

head...in the sense that maybe it’s something we’re all striving to be, but I
can't exactly identify what it is.”
The last unassigned book he read was a novel by Cohen because ”when-

ever I get interested in an artist I tend to look up everything they do.”

Jeny

Jerry, the most devout of the three seniors, is a cross between a computer
”geek” and a philosophy major. He’s a serious Star Trek fan, a self-confessed
Trekkie. Brad’s roommate, his commitment to the drama group they coodirect
is firmly rooted in a concern for ministry. He plans to someday teach
philosophy in eastern Europe, also as a ministry endeavor. He is
knowledgeable and tells stories easily. His verbal skills are largely oral; his
journal entries are cryptic, almost illegible.

Sometimes he gets on the group’s nerves because he knows a little about
practically everything and shares freely. A little overweight, he enjoys
cooking. He is engaged and trying to unlearn habits of swearing he picked up
in the dorm before he gets married to a devout girl (the yearbook editor) the
following summer. He comes to Cedar Bend to be with Brad and Ellen and
take a break from his senior project in philosophy, a comparison of
contemporary and traditional hymns based on the linguistic theories of
Wittgenstein. Like Norman, his parents are divorced. His dad, teacher of a
college-age Sunday school class, had an affair with one of his students.

Jerry is at the workshop as part of an independent study in creative writing
and is not required to write poetry. He works instead on drama—skits for his

Christian drama group and a spoof based on a public access channel program

 

been taboo in his home. It can be assumed that his villanelle about smoking and waiting for a
woman in a bar is not based on personal experience.

53

for Trekkies. One of the skits—and the class discussion regarding it— forms
the basis of a later chapter. The skit is based on a conversation between Christ
and a backslider.

Like the others, profanity was proscribed in his home, along with words
like ”stupid” or ”dumb.” Racial slurs and sexist statements were not allowed,
nor were conversations about family problems when company was around.

Language influences he notes include Wittgenstein and Alfred Korzybski,
but also Mark Twain’s ”Two Views of a River,” science fiction, and TV. His
favorite words are all ”Anglo-Norman” in derivation, at least four syllables.
Consistent with his philosophical interests, the aspect of language which
most interests him is ”how we decide that a specific word means something.”

The last book he read was also Jurassic Park because ”I love to read fiction

and science fiction.”

Observations about college-age evangelicals
The following chart summarizes responses to a directed journal entry
about ”remembered conversations.” It serves to set up a few concluding

remarks about the kind of evangelicals with which this study is concerned.

 

Angie
A freshman. The first conversation is with
her roommate, the second with a male friend.

TABLEzRernembered conversations with coll - e -

  

0 differences between Christian and public
schools

0 ”The virtues and characteristics we (a male
friend and she) admire in each other.”

 

Norman
Sophomore. Conversation with roommate.

0 "About God’s will for our lives...whether
we should be doing something for God while
we were in college."

0 ”About lust...I said if your mind is set
against something, hormones won’t sway

II

you.

 

Linda

Sophomore. Conversation with male friend.

0 ”Drinking—if it’s a right thing to do as
Christians, different drinks, motives and
reasons for drinking.”

 

Ellen

Senior. Generalized conversations with small
mixed-gender groups.

0 ”Males explaining something about their
anatomies we females don’t know....quite
technical and sometimes gross...the language
is never hidden or sanitized.”

 

Brad
Senior. Late night discussion between several
males on the same dorm floor.

ODid Jesus masturbate? ”He was a man and
therefore suffered the things men suffer with
their genitalia...Led to a conversation about
whether or not masturbating was wrong....I
can’t remember what we concluded—but I’m
sure it didn’t change our behavior at all.”

 

Jerry
Senior. Conversation with roommate (Brad).

 

 

0 ”Whether there is a difference between
writing something on paper or typing it on a
computer, aesthetically speaking.”

 

Based on this chart and the discussion of individual students preceding it,

the following observations seem pertinent to the analysis of narratives which

follows:

 

55

0 Hunter’s observations about the loss of binding address seem justified.
Particularly, the intellectually elite ( in this case the seniors) have a
”predilection to reflection.” However, while outward evidences of devotion
decline, their ethical sense remains intact. This observation will be
documented further, but Brad’s discussion about whether or not Christ
masturbated reflects both sophistication and integrity.

0 All of the students except one admitted to swearing. It is not clear what
they mean by swearing, but all of them address the issue of taboo language in
their homes, a topic not specifically solicited. Swearing seems to be an
important vehicle for establishing independence. Both Ellen and Brad
associate it with maturity, although Brad sees it as a possible violation of
maturity.

0 Authority is an important aspect in their lives. All of the students
except Brad list their parents and / or teachers among the central influences of
their language development, and Brad did discuss his father’s role in a
conference. In contrast, only two of them (Brad and Ellen) listed peers as a
primary influence.

0 The media plays an important part in their language development,
and, it can be assumed, in the development of their world view. The
students are not insulated from popular culture—three of the six had read the
same current popular novel.

0 They are interested in themes common to their age group. These
themes include sex, relationship, self-discovery, and independence. These
themes are frequently addressed in the context of faith, or at least morality.

0 They do not seem to be inhibited by the research process. They are
candid about issues one might expect them to be cautious about, given the

Christian community they inhabit. Their experience with that community is

56

the focus of the first group of narratives we shall explore, although a brief
examination of narrative theory comes first. In closing interviews they

specifically deny being effected by the research process.5

Clearly, self-revelation dominates the discourse fragments reported here.
The rhetorical tools are somewhat sophomoric; even formal structures such
as sonnets are almost entirely self-focused. This is based on a need for
acceptance, a strong relational need for students of this age. In and of
themselves these fragments prove little about our thesis, other than that
young adults like to talk about themselves. They do indicate, however, that
young evangelicals are complex and earnest, defying stereotypes and engaging
risk, however slight these risks might appear to others.

Emory University psychologist James Fowler has developed a cognitive-
developmental theory regarding spiritual maturity outlined in his 1981 book
Stages of Faith. As summarized by Malony, the stage of faith characteristic of
adolescents is the synthetic-conventional faith phase ”in which the need for
meaning is fashioned by identification with others beyond the family and in
which individuals begin to form a personal story of faith identity.” An
individuative-reflective faith phase, generally from ages twenty to thirty,
follows ”in which the need for meaning is fashioned by the assumption of
responsibility for one’s own commitments, life style, beliefs and attitudes.”
The emergent strength of this phase is ”the critical capacity to reflect on

identity (self) and on outlook (ideology)” (Malony, 1988).

 

5 It is doubtful you can turn on a tape recorder and not affect subjects in some way. There is much
discussion about whether or not it is possible to obtain ”naturally occurring" data and informed
consent.

57

The students at Cedar Bend show evidence of this emerging strength.
How this capacity to reflect on identity and outlook is demonstrated by

narratives is the focus of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 4

Tell me the Story of Jesus:
Narrative as conversation

Describe in detail one or more conversations you remember from college life.

Relate both the content and the context.

”...I remember talking about lust with my roommate. I
told him that if a beautiful babe slipped off a spaceship and
threw herself atme and would then disappear (with no
consequences) I still wouldn’t have sex with her. He said
that there’s no way a gorgeous woman kissing all over me,
naked, could be refused by me or any man. I disagreed. I
said that if your mind frame is set against something,
hormones won’t sway you. Your mind determines the
hormones that are released. As for context—I never
remember exact words.”

Norman, Christian college sophomore

”I remember years ago, my sophomore year, sitting in
Chuck’s room with at least myself, Jake and Chuck present,
debating whether we thought Jesus masturbated. We all
agreed that Jesus was a man and therefore suffered the
things men suffer with their genitalia—itches, erections,
and even general lust. Well, probably not lust, but we
thought, if he’s a man, he must have had some sexual
impulses or feelings, he wouldn’t have been human
without them. Did he masturbate? It was a useless
question. Chuck didn’t think he did because it would have
required some sexual images and basically lust. That led
into a conversation about whether masturbating was
wrong (and lustful) or not. I can’t remember what we
concluded—but I’m sure it didn’t change our behavior at
all.”

Brad, Christian college senior

58

59

”I remember that many of my college conversations with
friends have been about sex. Maybe it’s the age we’re at or
the school but a lot of innocent conversations get turned in
this direction. A lot of times the conversations can be
males explaining something about their anatomies we
females don’t know. The topics usually get quite technical
and sometimes gross. But the language has never been
hidden or sanitized, except by a few bashful ones.”

Ellen, Christian college senior

These excerpts are from three of eight conversations remembered by six
college students. When asked, without further direction, to recall one or
more conversations from their college experience, half of the students
recounted conversations about sex, perhaps, as Ellen suggests, because of their
age and because of their environment. And perhaps, of course, because a
conversation about having sex with aliens or Jesus masturbating is more
memorable than discussing the need for national health coverage.

These excerpts also provide a starting place for our discussion about
narratives. The first two are narratives, the third is not, the only one of all
nine not reported as narrative. The other five involve drinking, dating,
writing, schooling, and serving God. Perhaps more important than that three
of the remembered conversations are about sex, all but one have references to
faith and morality, and even that one involves value judgments (writing
with a computer versus writing on paper).

I intend to use the first two—sex with aliens and the divine genitalia—to
show how I define narratives and to illustrate how narratives reflect both
rhetorical and relational intent. I want to make a few observations about
these particular narratives before I begin. First, both narratives recall
conversations which used hypothetical situations to deal with a current

concern. The original conversation may or may not have included narratives

60

at all, although the sex with aliens discussion includes more concrete details
which make it likely to have originally been focused on a short speculative
narrative about an alien encounter. The use of hypothetical situations creates
distance between the original conversants and the topic, a distance Ellen
accomplishes by generalizing about the topic—that is by not telling a

narrative at all. Brad also does this by claiming the conversation took place
”years ago” when he was a sophomore; it was actually only two years.

Norm is a biology major and, whether his assessment about hormones is
scientifically accurate or not, it is interesting that he did not draw on a rich
store of biblical examples or scriptures to make his point. His faith is an
important issue for him: he was one of two to report two conversations and
the other conversation he recalled—also with his roommate—was about
”God’s will for our lives” and the fact that Norm was upset because ”it didn’t
seem like I was doing anything for God during college.” This was the most
directly religious of all the remembered conversations, and given its place
immediately preceding the narrative about the alien, it can be assumed that
his protestations about moral purity are rooted in the same concerns as those
of Joseph when Potiphar's wife threw herself on him: ”How then can I do
this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Genesis 38:9) Neither Norm or
Joseph are concerned with the physical woman (Norm calls the alien a
”babe”), but with the spiritual implications of their own behavior. Norm
thinks wrong behaviors can be avoided by force of will.

Brad obviously does not. He doesn’t believe their conclusions about the
morality of masturbation would have, or could have, changed their behavior.
He claims not to remember the conclusions drawn about masturbation, but
this is not the focal point of his remembered conversation anyway. This is a

discussion about the relationship between Christ’s humanity and his deity,

61

and countless priests, monks, preachers, theologians and Christian college
students have had this conversation before (including the researcher).

Two particular aspects of this journal entry would seem to suggest Brad
has negative feelings about sexuality. One is a note he wrote across the top of
the page: ”This was a somewhat risqué conversation—be warned.”
”Somewhat” was his second choice of a qualifier; it was written above
another word he crossed out. This, however, is a warning to the reader and
cannot be taken to reflect his own attitude about the subject, only his regard
for the sensitivity of others.

A second cue might also reflect a negative attitude toward sexuality, but it
would probably be mistaken. It is the use of the word ”suffer,” certame a
negative word. Brad writes: ”We all agreed that Jesus was a man and
therefore suffered the things men suffer with their genitalia.” This may be,
however, and probably is, a citation. Suffer is the word the Scripture uses to
describe Christ’s taking on the human condition. Hebrews 2: 18 says ”he
himself hath suffered being tempted.” Several references to suffering occur
in this chapter about how it ”became him (God)....to make the captain of our
salvation (Christ) perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10).

These texts are not far from a frequently memorized text in Hebrews 4:15
which would have undoubtedly been referred to in Brad’s late night
discussion: ”For we have not an high priest (Christ) which cannot be touched
with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we
are, yet without sin.” Brad’s choice of the word suffering cannot in and of
itself be taken to indicate an attitude about masturbation, but rather an
affirmation of the empathy evangelicals take to be characteristic of Christ’s
relationship with believers. This is also seen in a skit by Jerry called

”Homecoming,” where a believer named Michael accuses Christ:

62

Michael: ”You don’t even know what it’s like out there.”
Christ: ”I know what it’s like.”

Underlying this late night debate about Christ’s sexuality is a theological
certainty: Christ knows what it’s like.

I’m not suggesting young evangelicals have no sexual hang-ups. Ellen’s
observation that talks about sex start out as ”innocent conversations” might
be taken to indicate otherwise, and, of course, many experts would take even
the question about the morality of masturbation to be unhealthy. But this is a
study of discourse, and what I’m suggesting is the discourse may be more
complex than it appears, at least in terms of word choice.

My primary purpose, however, is to use these brief narratives to illustrate
what I mean by narrative and to explain the ways in which they have

rhetorical and relational implications.

Definitions of narrative

Since Aristotle, most scholars have thought of narrative as having a
beginning, a middle and an end. Sequence is considered to be a necessary and
perhaps even sufficient aspect of narrative. Fisher, as noted in Chapter 1,
makes it a paradigm, so broad as to be theoretically meaningless, but scholars
in discourse studies have recently and most frequently taken Labov as a
reference point (Labov, 1972).

Labov assumes narratives are stories about past events and that they have
common properties. A ”fully formed” narrative has the following six
elements (note their occurrence in Norm’s account of the conversation about

sex with an alien):

63

TABLE 3: Labov’s elements of narrative

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ELEMENT DESCRIPTION EXAMPLE

talking about lust
ABSTRACT SUMMARY

with my roommate
ORIENTATION SITUATION

I told...He said...I said
COMPLICATION SEQUENCE

Your mind determines
EVALUATION SIGNIFICANCE the hormones that are

released

I disagreed
RESOLUTION WHAT HAPPENED

I never remember exact
CODA PERSPECTIVE words

 

Burke’s approach to analyzing language offers a different structural
approach. Narrative analysts have also used his dramatic pentad—act, scene,
agent, agency, and purpose as a basis for exploring stories. ”Any complete
statement about motive will offer some kind of answer to these five
questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it
(agent), how he or she did it (agency), and why (purpose)” (Burke, 1945).

Structural approaches such as these have been criticized for not accounting
for cultural diversity: Labov, most notably, for his reliance on western modes
of thinking regarding time. Other narrative sequences proposed include
consequential sequencing (Young, 1987) and episodic (thematic) narrative
(Michaels, 1981). Riessman also suggests habitual narratives, hypothetical
narratives, and topic-centered narratives as narrative forms in which our
expectations about character and plot may not be met (Riessman, 1993).

Since the students are all white westerners, and since my purpose is
simply to show how rhetorical and relational concerns are handled in a given
form (I could have used questions or commands for example), I am content to

accept Polanyi's definition, which follows Labov. She sees narrative as a

64

structure ”in which the order of the recital of the events recapitulates the
order in which the events are supposed to have taken place” (Polanyi, 1979).

There is some important language here: the order in which events are
supposed to have taken place. Brad and Norm have both selected details
from the event they describe and have undoubtedly forgotten or ignored
others. Brad tells us what Chuck thought about Christ’s sexual behaviors, but
not what Jake thought or even what Brad himself thought. Norm recounts
only four conversational exchanges in an entire conversation.

Polanyi also shares Labov’s concern for what he calls ”reportability,” the
ways in which storytellers forestall the question ”so what?” This is, in fact,
Polanyi’s central concern. She sees a story as ”the linguistic encoding of past
experiences in order to explain something about, or by means of, the events
or states described. A story is thus an illustration” (Polanyi, 1979). Although
she sees an event structure as essential to her definition, ”the event structure
may be quite unimportant, and the story may well be an illustration of some
important aspect of character or situation.” This point, she believes, is
negotiated, a concern to which we will return later in this chapter. Her
understanding of narrative, however, addresses both my concerns, the
rhetorical as well as the relational dimension of narrative and, by extension,

conversation.

Rhetorical dimensions of narrative
Both Brad and Norm have related an event structure, a narrative. But
their rhetorical intentions seem rather obscure. The narratives are invited
narratives, responses to a question over which they had little control—a
teacher asked them, actually required them, to keep a journal which

presented a series of questions about language. This particular question was

65

posed on day fifteen, twocthirds of the way through an intensive workshop
requiring constant reflection on and exercise of language. What rhetorical
intention might be at work here?

To start with, both have a point to make. Norm’s point is rather simple to
ascertain: ”Your mind determines the hormones that are released.” Brad’s
point is a little more complex. Is it the inability to change ones sexual
behavior, or habits? This is his last statement: ”I’m sure it didn’t change our
behavior at all.” From Labov’s taxonomy, the location of this statement at the
end raises the possibility that it is a coda, a statement which returns the
perspective to the present. The key to understanding his point is the
pronoun ”it,” which refers to the discussion, or perhaps to the supposedly
unremembered conclusion. That being the case, his point is likely stated
most clearly when he says "Did he (Christ) masturbate? It was a useless
question.” But if this was a useless discussion, why did he tell us about it?

Some insight into this question comes from understanding why, from a
rhetorical perspective, people use stories. In Modern Rhetorical Criticism
(1990), Hart suggests three critical probes:

0 Does the narrative spring from a master narrative? From Brad’s
perspective, the story is rooted in the master narrative, the incarnation.
When asked to recall a conversation, he would attach special importance to a
conversation about the relationship of God to males like himself through
Christ.

0 What propositional content is the narrative designed to reveal? The
proposition most clearly stated is ”he must have had some sexual impulses or
feelings." The group agrees on the essential humanity of Christ.

0 What propositional content is the narrative designed to mask? The

use of the narrative allows Brad to recount a conversation without reporting

66

his own conclusions. (Compare this with Ellen’s response, which is much
more judgment driven.) The request was to describe one or more
conversations; he is not obligated to make judgments.6 He could have said
”One night some friends and I decided Jesus probably masturbated” and
detailed the theological grounds for such a conclusion. Brad is extremely
reluctant to offend people, not just me as a teacher, but mere acquaintances.
He told me in one conference he doesn’t like to tell people he is doing ”great”
because if they are having a bad day it will just make them feel worse. He
chooses a narrative not only because it is a primary vehicle of human
interaction, but, from a rhetorical standpoint, because it allows him to make a
point—that many college bull sessions are ”useless”-—less obviously. Hart
says ”Narrative is depropositionalized argument. It holds open the illusion
that we—as listeners and readers—help to determine its meaning” (Hart,
1990).

Not all of the five students who chose a narrative response did so for the
same rhetorical reason as Brad. Norm’s response, for example, has a different
motivation. Although his narrative may also be ”depropositionalized
argument,” his use of narrative is not intended to mask anything. His
rhetorical motivation appears to be to enter into what Bormann calls the
”rhetorical vision” of his community.

The idea of rhetorical vision grew out of fantasy theme analysis and its
corresponding theory in communication called symbolic convergence theory.
Bormann and his associates at the University of Minnesota were studying
small group interaction and noticed when certain themes were introduced in

a group they were ”dramatized.” Certain idealized narratives would cause a

 

6You recall, he is not comfortable drawing conclusions. In his discussion of his Christian
experience, he says even the question about whether or not he is a Christian at all ”is not as
easy as yes or no,” this in spite of the tremendous ”baggage” his Christian heritage represents.

67

symbolic explosion in the form of a chain reaction. ”As members of the
group entered into the fantasy, the tempo of the conversation increased.
People grew excited, interrupted one another, laughed, showed emotion, and
forgot their self-consciousness” (Bormann, 1972), a manifestation we shall
see in later chapters. Similar types of stories can be grouped as fantasy types
and, as these stories become dominant in various communities, they
constitute that community’s rhetorical vision. He defines fantasy as ”the
creative and imaginative interpretation of events that fulfills a psychological
or interpretive need.” A rhetorical vision is ”a unified putting together of the
various scripts which gives the participants a broader view of things”
(Bormann,l985).

Bormann himself has used this analysis to analyze revivalism before the
Civil War (Bormann, 1985). Others have used it to look at religious and
political movements including Christian Science (McDonald, 1978) and
McGovern’s presidential campaign (Semlak, 1973). In a ten-year review of
fantasy theme analysis published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech,
Bormann cites over 30 studies based on this approach (Bormann,l982).

From this perspective, Norm’s encounter with the sexy alien can be seen
as part of an overcoming-temptation-by-strength-of-character fantasy type, a
narrative in which the hero (Norm) overcomes the weaknesses of the flesh
and joins Joseph and other heroes of the faith—including Jesus in the
triumph of moral purity.

Bormann says fantasy theme analysis ”forces scholars to search for the
boundaries of rhetorical communities and reveals the complex and
complicated terrain” of those communities. Those boundaries constitute the
horizon of that community’s world view. These fantasy themes become

more prevalent, he notes, when members of that community feel uncertain

68

and insecure, a condition we have pointed out is characteristic of young
evangelicals today.

These then are two of the rhetorical dimensions of narrative, choosing a
narrative to reveal or conceal propositional content and choosing a narrative
to identify with the rhetorical vision of one’s community. The concept of

community brings us now to examine the relational aspect of narrative.

Relational dimensions of narrative

As Brad and Norm are making rhetorical decisions about their
remembered conversations, they are also constituting relationships, in this
case with me. The two discourse fragments with which this chapter has
concerned itself seem at first glance to be ill-suited to a demonstration of
relational need since they are written, not spoken. But this challenge can
result in their becoming even more convincing examples, not less.

Polanyi, as we have already said, believes the point of a narrative is
negotiated between the speaker and the listener(s). To illustrate her ideas we
will revisit Brad’s narrative, lines cast in terms of how they might be spoken

(I’m relying mainly on intuition).

I remember years ago,

my sophomore year,

sitting in Chuck’s room

with at least myself, Jake and Chuck present,
debating whether we thought Jesus masturbated.
We all agreed that Jesus was a man

and therefore suffered the things men suffer with their genitalia—
itches, erections, and even general lust.

Well, probably not lust,

but we thought,

if he’s a man,

he must have had some sexual impulses or feelings,
he wouldn’t have been human without them.

Did he masturbate?

69

It was a useless question.

Chuck didn’t think he did

because it would have required some sexual images and
basically lust.

That led into a conversation about

whether masturbating was wrong (and lustful) or not.

I can’t remember what we concluded—

but I’m sure it didn’t change our behavior at all.

Polanyi says stories carry three kinds of information. These are
characterized by an event structure, a descriptive structure, and an evaluative
structure. Despite western conceptions of time, the event structure may be
insignificant: narrators may use the story to illustrate character or situation.
As we have seen, Brad uses this narrative to make a point about the value of
late night bull sessions. The event structure itself is not essential to this task
and his narrative, unlike Norm’s, lacks temporal connectives like ”and
then.”

The second structure, the descriptive structure, provides ”all of the
environmental and character-centered information” (Polanyi, 1979). In this

case it is seen in the first four lines:

I remember years ago,

my sophomore year,

sitting in Chuck’s room

with at least myself, Jake and Chuck present

He establishes time and place and characters, what Labov calls orientation.
Actually, it is my own projection which puts this late at night, a projection
based on my own experience and the sensitive nature of the topic. Brad’s
own roommate, Jerry, is not present. The ”years ago” may serve to set up his
claim not to remember specific conclusions, and may also then be an
indication of the point to be made: not a point about masturbation but about

conversation.

70

This is seen in Brad’s extensive use of the third structure Polanyi
addresses: evaluative structure. She says, ”As a general principle it can be
stated that anything which departs from the norm of the text can act
evaluatively by drawing attention to itself” (Polanyi, 1979). These devices can
include repetition of key words, reported speech, increased use of modifiers
and suspension of action. Brad uses all of these. Christ (as ”Jesus” or as ”he”)
is referred to seven times, masturbation only three times, the same number
of times as ”lust” or ”lustful” and ”we thought” or ”concluded.”

The only reported speech is very indirect: ”Chuck didn’t think he did
because...” Compare this with Norm’s ”He said there was no way a gorgeous
woman kissing all over me, naked, could be refused...” We can assume
words like gorgeous, naked and kissing were part of the original speech event.
Brad’s more indirect use of reported speech creates some distance and helps
hedge against offending the reader. He isn’t shy about evaluating the point of
his narrative directly however: the conversation was ”useless” and ”didn’t
change our behavior at all.”

How does this all relate to negotiating the point of the narrative, especially
a written one like this? Polanyi says speakers, especially American ones,
decide if a story is ”storyworthy” by basing it on culturally, socially or
personally interesting material. Culturally interesting material is the broadest
category, referring to the values, beliefs and world view of a given culture, in
this case evangelicalism. Brad senses that any discussion of Christ is
culturally interesting. Socially interesting material is more lirnited—in this
case Brad knows I’m interested in studying conversations by college students
and he holds this one out as typical. He is gambling somewhat on the

personally interesting aspect. He doesn’t know if I will find the topic of

71

masturbating interesting, I am, after all, a forty-year old married man. But he
hedges his bet with the caution he scribbles across the top of the page.

Twice he seems to address me directly. The first time he says the group
concluded Christ probably had itches, erections and ”general lust.” He is not
sure I can accept attributing lust, understood as sin, to the person of Christ so

he withdraws the conclusion and then recasts it as ”sexual impulses”:

Well, probably not lust,

but we thought,

if he’s a man,

he must have had some sexual impulses or feelings,
he wouldn’t have been human without them.

Later he uses a question, an involvement strategy which allows the
reader/ listener to enter into the narrative, even though it is written. We are,

in some sense, involved in conversation.

Toward a conversational paradigm

I take this position—that we enter into conversation with readers and
listeners through either speaking or writing—seriously. Martin Nystrand
says, given that writing also occurs in a social context ”every written text is
not wholly idiosyncratic” (Nystrand,l986). In his ”Notes Towards a
Reciprocity-based Text Grammar” Nystrand says ”what counts is not simply
what the text says but how what is said relates to what is already shared by
writer and reader.” This results in what he calls ”choice points,” places where
the writer must decide whether or not elaboration is necessary. In Brad’s
narrative one of the choice points occurs when he pulls back and elaborates
on ”general lust.”

Nystrand starts with references to reading and compares the two processes,

noting, for example, how readers use cues to reduce the possible meanings of

72

a text and how writers supply those cues. They lead, in his work, to an
understanding of topic and to comment on the topic. Studying writing in this
way would be profitable if all it did was provide some insight into topic
management, a particularly difficult concept in conversation (West and
Garcia,1988) since it is difficult to know, from a transcript or tape at least, if
something in the environment prompted the new topic, or if there are
connections in the conversation known to the participants but not the
researcher, connections to shared experiences previous to the conversation.

In writing, however, at least in the case of experienced writers, the author
is more likely to elaborate on these things simply because he or she is less
likely to take them for granted. So coherence and topic management could
be examined in written discourse and the understandings gathered applied to
our understanding of conversation. For example, the question from
Nystrand’s analysis can be raised: is there something analogous to a choice
point in spoken conversation? Findings could be applied to our
understanding of spoken discourse, provided one is willing to consider
writing as conversation.

Some people obviously are not. For example, Wilson’s Speaker’s Rights
Theory (SRT) attempts to delimit conversation so narrowly as to even
exclude jokes and banter. He says, ”Conversation is being defined as that
speech event where an effort is made to maintain a relative equality in the
distribution of speaking rights” (Wilson,1989). This is typical of the focus on
power which characterizes the work of some discourse analysts. But I find
Wilson’s quest for a limited definition of conversation completely
unnecessary. I’m perfectly willing to see all discourse as conversation,
situated somehow along relational and contextual continuums, an idea

hinted at by Goffman in his discussion of participation framework (a

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discourse analysis concern) and production format (a conversational analysis
concern) when he allows for platform monologue (Goffman,1981). In
extending talk to include writing I am extending this idea even further.

In this view, not only can our understanding of conversation be enhanced
by an analysis of writing as suggested above, but our understanding of writing
can also be informed by our understanding of conversation, the most basic of
human communication events. An essay, for example, can be construed as a
turn at talk. From this perspective, any piece of discourse (even the most
formal) is interactional—prompted by some other piece of discourse, inviting
some response and also located in some rhetorical context.

SRT seems to fail primarily because speaker’s rights (as compared to
speaker’s turns) are difficult to ascertain from the data. He describes the
difference in terms of silences: in conversation silence is to be avoided. This
creates, according to SRT, the need to maintain talk without any individual
being overtly in control. He says: ”Conversation is being defined as that
speech event where an effort is made to maintain a relative equality in the
distribution of speaking rights.”

But the problem, of course, is that people can have the right to speak and
choose not to speak; there is no way to tell if they felt they had the right to talk
unless you ask them. This is not a bad idea. But why not just depend on the
participants’ or researchers’ intuition about whether or not they felt like it
was a conversation in the first place?

Despite Wilson’s protestations to the contrary, he is defining conversation
by negation: it doesn’t have explicit topic initiation. Commands have to be of
a certain sort (commands to speak), not other sorts. Topics cannot be initiated
or maintained overtly. If they are, it’s not conversation because participants

will censure the offending party.

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This is an interesting and important insight. But it doesn’t always apply if
the conversation is between two people and one of them is shy. Or
introspective. Or non-confrontive. Or younger. Or female. Or from Saudi
Arabia. SRT takes no account of personality or conversational style and
essentially defines any asymmetrical exchange as non-conversational. All
sorts of everyday, ordinary talk is excluded by definition. People often joke
about whether or not men and women can carry on a conversation.
According to SRT, probably not. Women’s speech is often characterized by
the forms of indirectness Wilson equates with conversation; men’s speech
isn’t. Except Brad’s narratives are, which suggest such generalizations are
unwise.

To take a stretch of everyday talk and then exclude (outrnode is his term)
jokes, banter, various imperatives, narratives, etc. from analysis seems
unnecessary. These elements are part of what we mean by conversation——
speech events which give conversation its texture and define its relational
aspects. Conversation is not a speech event; it is composed of speech events.

But if conversation can be defined too narrowly, can it also be defined too
broadly? I think not. Conversation is always situated interaction. But in
some sense all situated interaction is conversation. To study it we have to
examine the situation and the relationships, as discourse analysts have
rightly insisted. As such, conversation is an extended metaphor for all
discourse, written or oral. One may try to limit it to a spoken exchange
between two persons, but there is no reason not to include three persons, or
four persons. Furthermore, if one is willing to consider the possibility of
written exchanges, a writer can have a conversation with thousands of

peOple.

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In Conversations on the Written Word (1990), Robinson says:

Most kinds of writing, reflective readers know, and most
kinds of reading—perhaps all kinds— are essentially
conversational. Writing and reading are nothing more
and nothing less than attempts by human beings to form
community with other human beings whose real needs
and expectations and understandings are imagined when
not known.

Robinson also suggests that when we see writing as conversation we are
speaking metaphorically. ”But to use the metaphor and mean it,” he says, ”is
to force oneself to look for deep similarities between the two realizations of
language that may be masked by differences in the mediums.”

Metaphors are instructive, of course. But when we say some writing is
conversational and some is not, do we mean conversation has characteristics
some writing shares and some doesn’t? Do we mean, perhaps in a
Bakhtinian sense, some writing is dialogic and other writing is monologic?
Or perhaps we mean it is personal and reflective. A love letter or a note of
condolence may in fact be more personal than an oral conversation. Perhaps
and most probably we mean some writing ”follows the rules” and some
doesn’t.

If, as Silverman has suggested, conversation is not only the baseline for
other forms of talk, but also for all discourse, written and spoken, formal and
informal, then conversation becomes more than a metaphor. It becomes in
fact the paradigm through which all human communication can be
understood.

The usefulness of such a paradigm emerges from the tension between two

dimensions— a relational dimension and a rhetorical dimension.

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Consider the diagram below:7

A Conversational Paradigm

 

i
I ritual

court room II

'IVWHOd

    
 
  
   

journalism

committee meetings

A AUTHORITARIAN EGALITARIAN ‘

 

classroom therapy group

'IVWHOdNI

III

31.253.32.39; IV

 

 

 

 

 

The vertical axis reflects rhetorical intent. Consciously or unconsciously
we manage meaning through strategies appropriate to particular contexts.
Along the vertical axis we apply rules consistent with the machinery of
conversation to make and respond to various rhetorical goals. As

represented in this conversational paradigm, the more formal the situation,

 

7 I’ve plotted different forms of discourse along the x and y axis, but these are merely
illustrative at this point. They would vary from discourse sample to discourse sample. A
particular classroom may be more or less authoritarian, for example, and, accordingly, its
discourse might be situated differently along either dimension.

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the more rules we manage, although in terms of a conversational paradigm
the rules are extensions of what works in the conversation underway, that is
to say they have descriptive as opposed to prescriptive power.

The horizontal axis reflects relational concerns. These include issues of
solidarity such as cohesion and coherence as well as issues of power such as
interruptions, topic management (and control), questions and other concerns
normally associated with discourse studies. The arrow suggests we have a
tendency to move discourse down and to the right, balancing relational and
rhetorical intentions. As we do, we engage in what people generally
recognize as conversation. This tendency is the focus of this project and we
will return to it again.

There is no quantification proposed with this model, and for my purposes
none is needed. But suppose, for the sake of clarification, you could plot
discourse along these axes in some consistent and reproducible fashion.
Forms of discourse could be plotted as clouds or fields; perhaps you could say,
for example, that first person student essays tend to fall in a certain area. Or
you could say that each quadrant represents certain kinds of interactions:
mediated (I), small group (H), large group (III), or interpersonal (IV)
communication.

Most writing, in any event, falls in quadrant I; it has lots of rules and it is
usually author-itarian. And, to the degree it moves toward egalitarian and
informal discourse, it becomes—and is—conversational. To view writing in
this way may mean to examine the way a writer constructs his turn at talk,
the way he invites back-channeling, or the way he handles footing. It may
mean to think about how long a turn is constructed by the writer and for

what reason, or how various speech acts—promises, questions, commands—

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are set up and used. It may mean to choose narration over description for
rhetorical purposes, as I have tried to illustrate through Brad’s narrative.

On the other hand, this approach also means we constantly examine the
tension these rhetorical behaviors create over against the relational needs of
the writer or speaker, their sense of authority, alienation, or community,
their sociocultural identity.

Writers or speakers sensitive to the implications of this tension may try to
move their conversation—in whatever discourse form it takes—up and
down or over along these lines, depending on their purposes. A feminist
may want to move her academic writing to the right, keeping the respect of
her colleagues but being more inclusive in both language and perspectives; an
evangelical, on the other hand, may want to move hers down and to the left,
making her message less formal but more authoritative. Then again, she
may not. But according to this paradigm, this movement is in every sense a
conversational move.

I close this chapter by illustrating if not illuminating this conversational
paradigm with a brief narrative from Angie, whose conversion narrative we
touched on briefly in the first chapter. This is one of two short narratives she
includes as a response to the same journal assignment which elicited Brad
and Norman’s narratives above.

She writes:

In mid-November my friend Bill came to my room to
study for a Spanish test we were going to have the next
day. But we didn’t study! The small talk we began with
turned into an important conversation about personal
things. He told me that he’d noticed me last year when I’d
visited the campus and he’d been observing me during our
friendship and the thoughts I’d brought to his mind were,
”She’s the kind of girl I could marry.” He talked about his
call to ministry and how he would never date anyone who
wouldn’t make a good pastor’s wife. We had a generally

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waging time, talking about the virtues and
characteristics we admire in each other.

Along the rhetorical dimension of the conversational paradigm, Angie
has suspended some of the rules. Her other writing shows she is quite
sophisticated in writing essays for school. A summary assignment on ”Why
is risk an element of art” is a model five-point essay. Here, however, she
suspends the organizational aspects of such writing (introductions and
conclusions) and uses oral rather than written forms (three independent
clauses in one sentence). She has moved her discourse down along the
rhetorical axis.

Her choice of narrative is also a rhetorical move, a depropositionalized
argument in Hart’s terms, which makes the discourse less formal. The
propositional content is that the choice of a mate is ”important,” as opposed
to studying for a Spanish test. No master narrative is at work, but boy-and-
girl-find-God’s-choice-for-a-mate is a fantasy, perhaps in both the everyday
sense as well as the technical sense used by Bormann.

She has also moved her discourse to the right along the relational axis.
She does this by trying to indicate emotional quality (exclamation points and
underlining) and by the use of involvement strategies8 including constructed
dialogue and specific detail (a Spanish test).

She is having a conversation with a particular reader, in this case, me. At
this point Angie had spent fifteen days at Cedar Bend, and during almost this
entire time she had been working on a sonnet about why God was keeping
someone (Bill) from her. We have had several conferences about this sonnet,

and, although she has never named him to her peers, 9 she has told me in

 

8 See Tannen (1989) for a discussion of involvement strategies.
9Angie and Bill are both fictitious names. None of the names appearing in this study are the
actual names of the students or their peers.

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conference the relationship never achieved the potential suggested here. The
narrative is storyworthy because she believes it is, in Polanyi’s terms,
personally interesting—that is, interesting to me because we have a shared
history with the tOpic.

Because this is part of a conversation with me, she also fails to elaborate
on issues she might have expanded in writing or speaking to someone else.
These include defining or explaining a ”call to ministry” or ”a good pastor’s
wife.” She does this because we have a shared experience: we’re both
preacher's kids. She also assumes I know the kind of virtues and
characteristics she and Bill might admire in each other. Such assumptions are
characteristic of the conversion narratives I solicited on the second day of the

workshop, a collection of material to which I now turn.

CHAPTER 5

All to Jesus, I Surrender:
Oral conversion narratives

Where are you in your Christian experience and who are
some of the people who helped you get there?
1]
Um, really,
Spring Arbor College,
just people associated with the college,
with the church,
have, um, helped me a lot in my spiritual walk.
[2]
My CORE instructor,
my CORE instructor was Steve Whelton,
and I attend a weekly Bible study with him,
and he really just has been a good example for me.
[3]
Last August, or this past August,
we, um, took a trip to New York City
on a ministry, er, missions trip there
to the New York, um, New York School of Urban Ministry.
And, um that was the first time
I’ve every had to share my faith with other people that I’ve
never, you know, that were strangers.
[4]
And it was really risk-taking, you know,
going to, just living in the city, you know, the subway...

You were there how long?

For nine days.

Um, we were there on the subway after we saw Les Miserables,
and there was a drug bust right next to us,

I mean, really, just urban experiences.

It really helped me grow—

learned to have to trust God.

Um, simple act of giving, um, everything to Him—
how hard it is for me to give God a situation,

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82

because I’m the kind of person who wants to straighten everything out.
I want to work out everything for everybody,

and just, you loiow, in having to just sit back

and give something to God is really a struggle,

and so, that trip especially,

showed me how much I just can’t do it all.

[6]

You know, just, urn, that was the first time

that I felt God, um, really came and was right next to me.
Um, before I always felt like,

well people have well, experiences with God,

where they feel really close to Him,

but I just, you know, haven’t had that kind of experience.
And I’ll just be like that, you know, is fine,

but um, [laugh]

I always felt kind of bad.

I always thought that there was something wrong with my Christian walk,
because I hadn’t.

[7]

And um, we went to the Times Square Church,

and I just really felt like I had to go through a spiritual battle.
I felt like like, God was really,

I felt like God and Satan were on one side,

each of them on one side of me,

and I was just going through all of these different events,
um, in my life, different attitudes in my life

that I need to change.

I was just, like, I was fighting it right there,

and really fighting the decision to give my life to God to do,
to give it to Him.

Linda, sophomore

Linda’s narrative is one of the responses from each of the six students in
private conferences when asked to tell me about their ”Christian experience.”
Stromberg calls stories like these ”conversion narratives,” even though they
are not about the conversion experience itself. He uses the terms to signify
stories ”based in part around the claim that their conversion experiences
have changed them in a fundamental way and that these experiences have

led them to a deepened commitment to their faith” (Stromberg, 1993).

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What is interesting about Linda’s narrative—and about all but one of the
narratives solicited by this request—is that there is no mention of a
conversion experience. In a subculture supposedly rooted in the experience
of being ”born-again,” only one person even mentioned it. Angie, whose

narrative was referenced in chapter one, says

But then, in fourth grade,

I started reading Genesis and Exodus

and going through and

I committed myself to God personally

during that time, I think,

even though I was officially already a Christian,
I was too young to understand what it meant.

I gave myself to God when I was just really little
but I really committed myself later.

Angie makes a distinction between ”officially” being a Christian and being
a committed one, one who understands what it means. What it means rather
than how it is defined is the focus of all these conversion narratives which,
with the exception of Angie’s, begin in the middle of things. Linda starts
three months earlier. Norm, Ellen, Angie and Brad make references to a
childhood surrounded by Christian family as part of the orientation to the
narrative, but begin to describe their Christian experience (the event structure
of their narrative) in high school or college. Jerry and Norm begin with the
impact of their parents’ divorces, even though both sets of parents were
Christians. (Norm is emphatic about the fact that his dad used to be a
Christian.)

Another similarity is Linda’s reference to a Christian mentor, an
instructor and Bible study leader who ”has been a good example to me.” For
Ellen this mentor was a youth director who prompted a period of growth and

excitement in her church and got her involved in quizzing. Jerry responded

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to a new youth director who ”showed me that it’s possible to be a Christian
and to do what you do well.” Norm mentions an older brother with a serious
genetic kidney disorder who was not a mentor as much as an example of
courage and ”putting his trust in God.” Only Angie and Brad—the two
preacher’s kids—do not mention a specific individual in this regard, although
their father’s role can be safely assumed. They both report positive
relationships with their fathers. The reference to these role models recalls
Fowler’ 5 synthetic-conventional faith phase ”in which the need for meaning
is fashioned by identification with others beyond the family and in which
individuals begin to form a personal story of faith identity” (Maloney, 1988).
This phase—typical of adolescence—is evidenced by ”identification with
others” such as youth directors and missionaries and occurs, in these
narratives, as part of the high school experience.

The reference to these individuals is not entirely spontaneous, however,
and so may not reflect an overriding concern of their own narrative identity
in terms of Christian experience. These narratives occurred immediately
after a question about individuals who had some impact on their language
development and in some cases a discussion of the role of others in their
Christian experience was specifically called for.

What was not called for, and yet appeared in every one of these narratives,
is some reference to struggle. These students, as second or third generation
evangelicals, probably made some ”profession of faith” or ”accepted Jesus into
their heart” at an early age. But, with the exception of Angie, they do not see
this experience of being ”born-again” as fundamental to their Christian
experience. Linda’s narrative involves her sense of a struggle between God
and Satan and, more to the point, ”fighting the decision to give my life to

God.” This is what Angie referred to as commitment, and for these students

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committing one’s self to God is difficult to do and to maintain. For each of
the students, the conflict is different. Jerry’s concern is aesthetic. He had to
overcome his perception that being a Christian involved ”mediocrity.”

Norm struggled with the discipline of maintaining a habit of prayer. Angie
struggled with the loneliness—being a Christian among non-Christian peers,
a struggle hinted at by Ellen who also had to overcome a tendency to be
satisfied with ”pat answers.” ”I wanted it to be like that. That would have
made life easier, really,” she says. Brad, as we saw in chapter two, felt like God
”was out to get” him, and struggled with doctrinal certainties.

How or why is this commitment maintained, given that four of them
describe it as difficult or hard and all of them see it as a struggle? Brad, you
recall, saw it as ”where my family stakes its identity,” a bond not to be
underestimated. But those with a more devotional bent see it differently.

Linda wants ”to feel close to” God. She says

I always felt like,

well people have well, experiences with God,

where they feel really close to Him,

but I just, you know, haven’t had that kind of experience.
And I’ll just be like that, you know, is fine,

but um, [laugh]

I always felt kind of bad.

If the opposite of feeling bad is feeling good—that is, feeling close to God—
she is willing to engage the struggle she describes to experience this closeness.
Norm had begun to read his Bible and pray again after he ”rebelled for a few
years” because he realized

...there’s nothing in this world
that you can count on forever.
People are always going to fail.
I’m not going, going around,
’people are always gonna fail you,’
but. they do,

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and they will.
And um, I just realized
that I had to have my life based on the right thing.

For Norm commitment is just the ”right thing.” In conference he denies
that any specific event was a catalyst for his return to faith, although Angie
had broken up with him after several years of going together within the time
frame to which he alludes, adding to the list of people in his poems—a best
friend, and parents—who had somehow ”failed” him.

Angie and Jerry ultimately justify their struggle on the basis of being able
to know God’s will, a realization for both of them which was discovered
accidentally through the work of providence. For Jerry, a senior, and Angie, a
first year student, their choice of a college has turned out to be the right choice
for them personally (although they were uncertain about it), and they
attribute this to God’s wisdom revealed after the fact.

Jerry, for example, had planned to go to the University of Michigan and
study computing, but he ended up at Spring Arbor studying philosophy
because he thought he should go to the mission field, a ”call” about which he
is now ambivalent. At Spring Arbor he has made important friends—
especially his fiancee— and he concludes ”what has happened to me here has
been God’s will. And my relationship with my fiancee, and my friendships so
that, maybe, perhaps God made me feel a call to the mission field to get me to
go to Spring Arbor. Because if he had just said go to Spring Arbor, I probably
would have said why, and not done it.”

Notice the timidity of his assertion: ”so that, maybe, perhaps.” Notice also
that he offers no account of how God speaks to him, a notion we will address
in chapter six and seven. And notice finally how even the call of God can be

adapted to fit existing relational realities.

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But we now turn to a closer examination of Linda’s conversion narrative,

beginning with the relational aspects and turning then to its rhetorical design.

Relational aspects of conversion narratives

The relational aspects of Linda’s narrative are framed by the student-‘
teacher context. Although Linda and I were to become ”best friends” and
although she would eventually confide in me about the nature of her
relationship to Steve Whelton and, several weeks after our return from
Cedar Bend, her own history of bulimia, this was the first time she had ever
talked with me individually, the first conference of the workshop. In fact, she
might have been even a little more intimidated than one might normally be
with a new professor—she had arrived only the night before, coming up two
days after the rest of the group because she was finishing a term of jury duty.

Her effort to make a narrative that is storyworthy begins with a reference
to the college and to people I know at the college. This is a means of
establishing the narrative as being socially interesting. The reference to ”risk
taking” in stanza two is an effort to make it personally interesting; she is
picking up on one of the themes of the workshop, a theme I discussed at
length in class that morning, her first experience with me as an instructor.

If she has doubts about her Christian experience, she is not going to discuss
them until she has some relational background to convince her that I have
my own doubts or can accept hers. But, given the exploratory character of this
exchange, she has some confidence in her abilities as a storyteller (from a
family of storytellers, she writes in her journal later) and proceeds without
prompting and only one interruption on my part. She is also somewhat

candid about her feelings—she felt bad that she had not felt close to God

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(stanza six). In this context, of course, talking to a Christian professor at a
Christian college, it would be okay to feel bad about that; no real risk is
involved.

Five times she seems to invite some back channeling through the use of
”you know,” and the things taken to be experiences I might reasonably be
taken to understand are the fear of sharing one’s faith with others (stanza
three), the fear of a large city (stanza four), the difficulty of giving up control
(stanza five) and the feeling—perhaps also a fear—that others have
something we don’t, in this case a closer feeling of God’s presence (stanza six).
What she does not assume I can relate to is her more personal and less
universal spiritual experience where she felt God and Satan pulling at her
(stanza seven). All of the fears and feelings she assumes I can relate to are
common to the evangelical experience except one—the fear of a city, or a new
place. Her efforts to involve me in this experience include specific details: Les

Miserables, New York School of Urban Ministry, Times Square Church.

Rhetorical aspects of conversion narratives

Linda also waits until she has established relationship before introducing
the point of the story and its personal nature—she uses the word "felt” six
times, all in the last two stanzas. The point is reflected in the word ”give”
which occurs four times, twice in stanza five and twice in stanza seven,
bracketing the conflict and climax of the story, the desire to experience the
presence of God and its eventual realization.

The way this point is handled is part of the rhetorical aspect of this
narrative. Her choice of a narrative in this case is almost prescribed by the

invitation to ”tell me about...” But why would she chose this narrative and

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not another narrative? And why would she choose this kind of narrative,
rhetorically speaking?

One reason for this narrative may easily have been her relationship with
Steve Whelton, who, in addition to taking her to New York City and teaching
her first-year college orientation program (stanza two), spent four hours
driving her up to Cedar Bend the previous afternoon. Possibly they talked
about the trip to New York City on the way up. We’ve mentioned that she
was infatuated with him and we will look below at a narrative she wrote
about her love.

But Steve on the surface appears to be only a bridge to a story she sees as
being crucial to her Christian experience, a story about how she came to
finally experience a closeness to God she had seen in other by giving herself to
God. She does this by giving up control. A lengthy evaluation of the story

occurs in stanza five:

It really helped me grow—

learned to have to trust God.

Um, simple act of giving, urn, everything to Him—
how hard it is for me to give God a situation,
because I’m the kind of person

who wants to straighten everything out.

I want to work out everything for everybody,
and just, you know, in having to just sit back
and give something to God is really a struggle,
and so, that trip especially,

showed me how much I just can’t do it all.

But one of the things she can’t ”work out,” one of the things she has to ”sit
back” and ”give to God” is her relationship with Steve, although she doesn’t
say so here. This may be a case of telling one narrative to keep from telling a

different one, a narrative about how ”hard” it is to do a ”sirnple” thing, to not

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declare or demonstrate one’s feelings about someone she cares about. Notice

these lines from her (required) sonnet:

I’ve known a longing for your love before,

A languish felt as friendship shared was kind.

I labor so to lose this unfamiliar roar,

To banish thoughts of you that rule my mind.

I dream of bricks and ghosts, of fire and wine,

Of dreams and books, of things that can’t stand still;
I drown my time with memories not mine,

The image of your face these things can’t kill.

Has my epic dream of life denied God’s will?

Do I sin each breath I breathe your favored name?
I fight to feel alone, separate, but still

Your touch, your gaze appear to fuel my shame.

I die each day my love for you is hid,

I live each night with you beneath closed lids.

Her love for him has taken on epic proportions. She is, in fact, consumed
with thoughts about him, but she has no assurance this love is ”God’s will,”
and, since it may not be, it could even be a sin to breathe his name. In class
she specifically denies that this is anyone in particular—”It’s just imaginary,”
she says. In conference, however, she tells me it is Steve, but liking him is
”such a cliché” and ”everybody has a crush on him” so she says she hasn’t
told anyone about it. While not addressing it directly in the poem, she has
chosen to ”give” this to God and ”wait and see.” This is the theme of her
conversion narrative: ”to sit back and just give something to God is really a
struggle” (stanza four).

On that first day Linda does not choose a master narrative to do this—as
Angie does when she compares her loss of a boy friend (not Norm, but Bill) to
Mary’s willingness to give up her son Jesus for the will and work of God.

Instead, Linda chooses a fantasy theme common to her rhetorical

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community—how we learn to surrender to God’s will. (This is one of the
poems about which the group became animated and excited.)

She chooses a fantasy theme for relational reasons; she doesn’t know me
yet and can’t tell me about the specific struggle in which she is currently
engaged. But the important struggle for this young woman at this point in
her life is this: she just spent four hours in a car with a guy she likes, but for
some reason she doesn’t believe God has given her permission to do so or to
say so.

In Language and Self-transformation: A study of the Christian conversion
narrative, Stromberg describes conversion narratives as rituals in which
believers invoke certain emotional conflicts and attempt to resolve these
conflicts by refrarning them in the language of evangelical Christianity
(Stromberg,1993). He argues that self-transformation occurs ”as a result of
changing embodied aims into articulable intentions.” These embodied aims
are unacknowledged purposes—such as Linda’s desire for Bob. ”Such a feat is
possible because of shifts between constitutive and referential realms,” he
notes. The referential realm is expressed in what he calls canonical language,
”a set of symbols concerned with something enduring and beyond everyday
reality.” The constitutive realm is the metaphorical, meanings generated in
and by the situations one finds oneself in, which Stromberg characterizes as
”initially opaque to interpretive effort.” He suggests ”subjects be
conceptualized as having multiple and sometimes even contradictory aims,
and that utterances be assumed to reflect this somewhat messy subjectivity.”

My reading of Linda’s narrative assumes this to be true. As Stromberg
asserts, ”A conversion narrative is a ritual that integrates unacknowledged
purposes into a socially construable project.” And I agree further with him

that such narratives are performances, performances which constitute the

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world in which the narrators live. He says ”the point is not that the efficacy of
the canonical language is recalled in the conversion narrative, rather that
efficacy is experienced in the narrative.” In telling about her trip to New York
Linda is working out the complications of her love life, and she may be doing
so unintentionally.

In fact, the tension between the rhetorical and relational aspects of her
narrative are not unlike the shifts between the referential and constitutive
realms with which Stromberg is concerned. But my focus is different: I am
not concerned as he is with the construction of one’s identity, but with the
ways in which that identity is communicated to others and what that says

about this particular rhetorical community.

Observations about conversion narratives

Here are a few observations about what the rhetorical and relational
tensions in these conversion narratives say about the college-age evangelical
who told them:

0 These students define their Christian experience in terms of the
present. This may reflect a shift in binding address, as Hunter has noted.
More likely, it suggests that for second and third generation evangelicals the
central story of Christian experience has shifted from a fantasy type based on
being ”born again” to a type based on struggle and commitment. The reasons
for this are unclear based on the narratives I examined.

I do know that twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I would not
have conceived of beginning any narrative about my Christian experience
without saying ”I was saved when I was six” or something along those lines,
especially when talking to another believer. I would have done so to identify

myself as a legitimate member of the community. For Linda that

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identification occurs through an expression of shared present fears and
feelings— ”you know.”

0 The rhetorical content (of the conversion narratives at least) is framed
largely in canonical language. In almost every case, the point of the story, the
ways in which it is evaluated internally, resort to religious images and
language. For Linda there were references to giving God control and trusting
Him. Jerry and Angie evaluate their narratives in terms of ”God’s will.”
These may in fact mask ”unacknowledged purposes,” but they unmask that
which is for them ”enduring and beyond everyday reality.” These
presuppositions include a confidence in God’s wisdom and control. For Brad
only are these issues challenged, and not without considerable and articulated
tension.

0 These narratives invite multiple readings and cannot be taken to be
exclusively monological in character. One does not have to have access to her
journals and poetry to sense from Linda’s narrative that she is talking about

something that she’s really not talking about: Consider her last two lines:

I was just, like, I was fighting it right there,
and really fighting the decision to give my life to God to do,
to give it to Him.

What might she mean by not finishing her thought about what God
might want to do with her life? She is ”fighting the decision to give my life to
God to do...” To do something. To give up on Steve? And consider these
lines:

It really helped me grow—

learned to have to trust God.

Um, simple act of giving, um, everything to Him—
how hard it is for me to give God a situation.

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Why the two um’s? Giving everything to him is the point of her
narrative. Why the hesitancy in expressing it? What ”situation” is hard for
her to give up?

These cues suggest there is more here than meets the eye. Her narrative is
sermonic, as Weaver suggests all language may be. She draws conclusions
about her Christian walk. But she hedges too. She communicates, both
intentionally and unintentionally, the paradox of a life which is at once both
”sirnple” and ”hard.”

0 Finally, there is something missing from these conversion narratives.
Although they use religious language, these conversion narratives are
essentially void of any meaningful citation from or even reference to
Scripture, with the exception of Angie’s citation of Romans (discussed in
chapter one) and her reference to Bible reading as a child noted above, and a
brief comment by Ellen about the effect of memorizing Scripture. We will
take up these two examples in the next chapter, where we will also examine
the ways in which the students do use Scripture, particularly in their

narrative poetry.

CHAPTER 6

Angels Watching Over Me:
Formal written narrative

But when I ,
finally about fourth grade,

I began,

actually in second grade,

began reading the Bible,

like in the Gospels,

for myself,

and that,

gave me an element,

of just like,

being positive that it was really true.

Angie, college freshman

What is remarkable about this narrative fragment is not that a second
grader was reading the gospels—”finally,” as though she couldn’t wait to
begin. What is remarkable is that of six evangelical college students she is the
only one to report doing so, or to in any consistent fashion reference Scripture
as a way of discerning whether or not a thing ”was really true.”

Her conversion narrative is the only one framed by references to Scripture
and includes references in other places to ”stories about Jesus” and reading
Genesis and Exodus in fourth grade. ”Going through” Scripture in this way
she ”committed” herself to God ”personally.”

Like others whose conversion narratives we have examined, Angie
characterizes her Christian experience as a struggle—a struggle with

loneliness. She tells me:

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During junior high I was

kind of a loner,

kind of a nerd geeko person at school,

because I kind of,

I didn’t want to be like everybody else,

like, I had these ideas that

like Christians shouldn’t do all these things,

like things even my parents didn’t believe, but

like I thought Christians shouldn’t wear panty hose
because they were pretending that their legs were tan.
You know what I mean?

I had all these little ideas, and,

so I was kind of a weirdo,

and then, I decided,

I felt really lonely

like it was just me and God in the world.

As a ”nerd geeko person” she had gone beyond even her parents own
standards and felt ”really lonely.” In high school, however, she had become
more tolerant, partially through her relationship with her best friend, also a
preacher’s daughter, who had non—Christian friends. ”At that time, I just
didn’t understand how she could do that,” Angie reports.

Later, still in high school, she feels a call to minister to ”people that feel

alone.” She says:

I can understand how they feel
because of my time when I felt like
it was just me and God, you know,
alone in the world.

In the past few years

I’ve lost that closeness to God,

I’ve been, like its me alone in the world,

and just in the last two months

God’s been talking to me about his will

and how he works everything together

for the good of those who love him

and have been called according to his purpose.

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When she goes from ”me and God alone in the world” to ”me alone in
the world,” God begins to talk to her and he does so through Scripture. As we
observed in chapter one, this is practically a direct quote from Romans 8:28:
”And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are called according to his purpose.”

For Angie, the confidence in providence alluded to in the preceding
chapter is validated by Scripture, but it would be hard to say Scripture is for
her the sole reliable means of knowing truth, a position taken by orthodox
Christians in the past. The Reformation principle of sola Scriptura was, in
fact, the unifying principle behind American Protestantism before the turn of
the century and remained the focal point of the emerging evangelical
movement. ”Scripture, as illumined by the Holy Spirit, is the only
trustworthy guide in moral and spiritual matters,” says Kenneth Kantzer, a
contemporary evangelical theologian.

But Angie is also depending on another way of discerning God’s will.

Consider this excerpt:

I didn’t even know

where he wanted me to go to school,

I hadn’t prayed about it,

I just went to Spring Arbor because,

actually because Norm wanted me to,

and he would have been really mad if I hadn't,
and God has

really, really, really

shown me his will through situations now.

I feel like I’m on track again and

I feel like I’m closer than ever before
just because now I realize I'm weak
and I have to trust in God.

She chooses a college so her ex-boyfriend won’t be mad, but God uses this

mistake anyway and ”really, really, really” shows her his will through

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circumstances. The ”really,” emphasized by repetition, pitch and volume,
denotes the importance of this additional means of revelation. Her
understanding of it is not at odds with the Scripture she cites earlier; it may in
fact be an extension of its claim that God is working everything out. But it
assumes some independent agency here. God is using situations to show her
his will; the result is she is ”closer than ever before.”

Overall, however, Angie fits a profile commonly ascribed to evangelicals.
Stromberg says ”The central task of the believer in evangelical Christianity is,
through his or her interpretation of the Scripture, to find a meaningful link
between the symbol system (the Bible) and his or her experience” (Stromberg,
1993). She is also from a specific tradition within evangelicalism called
Pietism which stresses the need for an experiential faith as opposed to one
based in tradition or doctrine. Four of the students—Angie, Linda, Norm,
and Jerry—are from churches in this tradition. This may account for their
reliance on personal experiences as a way of discerning God’s will.

But Angie’s use of Scripture, her linking of that particular symbol system
with her experience, is pervasive. Consider this sonnet, like Linda’s about an

unretumed love interest. The title is ”As Mary, So I.”

I wonder at the one You brought for me to love-—
A rebel wisp in his eyes can’t hide the intensity
Of a wise child—in laughter, faith, and love.
Guitar’s song echoes passion’s immensity.

As Mary watched You take her gift away—
Watched him beaten, stripped, punished as a thief;
Her grown-up son she watched as soldiers slay,
And wept for joy beneath heartsick grief.

So I know a deep and joyful anguish...

My arms are empty now except for You.

You called him back, and even though I languish,
You’ve shown me it’s your will, I trust it’s true.
As Mary treasured up these things in her heart,
So I treasure his memory and won’t let it part.

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In a class critique she says she read a book about Mary the previous
summer and Mary is her ”new hero.” The poem itself is rich with citations,
especially Mary treasuring these things in her heart, a paraphrase from Luke
2, a chapter I memorized for a Christmas program in first grade and which
Angie had undoubtedly memorized too. For some reason God has taken this
relationship out of her life; she must accept this as it is his will. She is not
entirely confident of her ability to discern this. ”I trust it’s true,” she says. It’s
okay though. Somehow God himself has become her lover: ”My arms are
empty now except for You.” Stromberg argues that ”believers often attempt
to realize in their relationships to God aims that are forbidden in mundane
society.” He notes ”sexually tinged relationships with the divinity are
anything but rare, compromising a stock piece in the repertoire of asceticism.”

Angie, however, is the exception rather than the rule. Ellen’s use of
Scripture in her conversion narrative is more characteristic of the group. She

says

And then, also,

in high school,

I started Bible quizzing,

and that consumed my life pretty much
for four years.

And so, I was around people,

I was around peers,

who had the same Christian values as I did,
and so that really influenced me a lot,
as well as, you know,

memorizing Scripture,

and um, I think that’s really

where I started to take it in personally
when I was about in tenth,

in like, ninth or tenth grade.

Bible quizzing requires memorizing entire blocks of Scripture, in fact

entire books of Scripture. Contestants ”jump” off a chair rigged to indicate

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who jumps first and then complete Scripture verses, often after hearing only
one or two words. Ellen placed second in world competition—but she later
writes in her journal that she would be ”scared” if her parents had used
proverbs around the house. Quizzing seems to be important to her for social
reasons, allowing her to be around peers who ”had the same Christian values
as I di .”

Although all of these students probably memorized a great deal of
Scripture in Sunday school and church youth programs, Ellen, who probably
memorized the most appears to use it the least. Her discourse available to me
for analysis reflects no intertextual citations such as Angie’s use of Romans
8:28. In fact, the recorded discourse of the group in classroom discussions and
conferences was much more likely to be laced with citations from the popular
media than with any reference to Scripture.

The exception is in the formal creative works themselves, and the
references here are often indirect. The rest of this chapter involves an
analysis of these works, particularly a series of works about angels which I

take to be characteristic of the ways Scripture is handled by this group.

Angel narratives: a rhetorical analysis
One of the most popular themes at Cedar Bend, for two students
especially, was angels, a theme which may reflect the culture at large. Angels
were big in popular culture at the time. A book about angels was on the best
seller list. Angel specialty shops were springing up around the country. A
couple of new shows about angels were being tested by the networks. The
angels in popular culture were not always consistent with biblical notions,

however. Many shared characteristics of New Age ”spirit guides,” shadowy

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figures leading people around in altered states of consciousness. Others
appeared as soft and sentimental creatures, warm and fuzzy.

Wood observes cherubs in popular culture are naked babies with dimpled
cheeks, but cherubirn, a special class of angelic creature mentioned ninety
times in the Old Testament, ”never sound chubby or cute.” Associated with
guarding God’s holiness, they are described by Ezekiel as fearsome creatures
with whirling rings of eyes, four faces, thundering wings that conceal human-
like hands, surrounded by flashing fire (Wood,l994).

Angels as depicted in the Bible, however, are more like rank-and-file
soldiers, mentioned over three hundred times in Scripture. The Old
Testament word malak and the New Testament word aggelos both mean
”messenger.” Aggelos is one of the root words of evangelical. The biblical
angels deliever messages from God, dole out judgments, make
announcements, and defend and aid God’s people. Always referred to as
male, they are spirit beings which sometimes appear in human form.

The Cedar Bend angels are for the most part biblical angels, given a few
artistic liberties. They appear as messengers, in the biblical sense, or as
witnesses to the lives of the characters in the narratives, also a biblical
function of angels. The two students who wrote about them are Brad and
Norm, whose remembered conversations involved not having sex with
aliens (Norm) and whether or not Jesus masturbated (Brad).

Norm’s angels are heavenly witnesses to human events, and they don’t
like what they see. Tucked in his final six haiku, five of which follow

conventional themes of nature, is this piece:

What do angels feel
watching willful destruction:
are they disgusted?

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This is a theme he returns to later in the workshop:

The oranges sweat in the sun

people walk slowly, strenuously.

Dogs pant in the shade.

Young women sprawl out on towels—
legs spread, arms away from their body,
absorbing every ray.

Windless calm, nothing stirring

salty air.

Teenagers hold cold cans of Coke
against baking brows

doing anything to escape

from reality.

The day the angel died.

Young couples make love,

all the fans whirring.

Old man sits in rocking chair
telling anyone who will listen,
”This is nothing compared to ’64.”
Police knock down door

of crack house—thug is shot.
Woman slowly turns pages
Danielle Steele novel—

tips of pages bent back marking
juiciest scenes.

Frumpish middle-age husband
doesn’t excite her anymore.
The day the angel died.

Construction workers shed sweat freely
whistling as girls in bikinis sway by.
The old men lift rheumy eyes,
savoring the shape that still

grips their attention.

Boy robs ”Jerry’s Party Store,”

police catch him a block away—
initiation into the gang.

Young men swing in hammocks,
or watch the beach, looking, lusting,
wishing.

Sunday in Miami

Church melts in the sun.

The day the angel died.

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I did not see this poem in conference before Norm read it in class. He
introducd the poem on the last day of class, apparently emerging fully blown
in some last creative flurry. He had told me he had written a poem about an
orange, and he reads it at my invitation after declining an invitation to read a
more personal work about the death of a horse which works as a metaphor
for his parents’ divorce. He reads the poem reluctantly, telling the group ”it’s

not any good right now.” This was the class’ reaction, and my own:

Wally: You got that out of looking at an orange?
(several people laugh)

Norm: I got the first sentence looking at an orange.
(more laughter)

Wally: Pretty cool. The history of an orange. Okay.
Comments?

(pause)

Linda: Good.

Jerry: You always say that.

Linda: No I don’t always. It was good. What can I say?
Angie: Question. Did you write this after we had our
conversation yesterday? Our class talk?

Norm: About what?

Angie: About sex? (slight laugh)

Norm: No

Angie: It just seems that...( most of class is laughing loudly)
Norm: No, that didn’t influence it. I was looking at an
orange.

Linda: Wow.

(extended laughter)

Wally: Any other questions? Did you write that
yesterday?

Norm: Yeah.

Angie: I think it was subliminal. You didn’t even know
that that was it.

Linda: Have you been in Florida much?

Norm: Yeah. I went there on my first Christmas break.
???: I just thought all this snow finally got to you.
(Much more laughter)

Wally: ”I was just looking for the hottest images I can
find.” (More laughter) This is your temperature poem,
right? All right, any other comments on that?

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So what is Norm doing with his angel poem, from a rhetorical
perspective? First he is completing a requirement for a poem about hot and
cold—hot in this case. And, despite his protestations to the contrary, he may
be influenced here by the conversation to which Angie alludes, a
spontaneous conversation at the end of the previous day’s class about friends
who got married and found that ”sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

But he claims to have looked at an orange which apparently reminded
him of a trip to Florida. Either as an actual event or a poetic device, he recalls

a Sunday on which people indulged in sensual rather than spiritual concerns:

Sunday in Miami
Church melts in the sun.
The day the angel died.

The angel here is grieved—”disgusted” is the word Norm uses earlier—
and ”dies,” not something biblical angels do literally. This angel is engaged in
a biblical enterprise, however. The Christian’s life is ”a spectacle to the world,
and to angels” the Apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 4:9. As men engage in
spiritual struggles such as those Norm and his peers report in their
conversion narratives, angels rejoice when men turn from sin (Luke 15:10)
and, Norm assumes, grieve when they don’t.

Biblical angels are curious, especially about how God could provide
salvation through the sufferings of Christ. I Peter 1:12 says this is something
”the angels desire to look into.” In Norm’s view, the death of an angel serves
as a rhetorical device to indicate how disappointed angels must be by the way
people in Miami on a Sunday are indifferent to this same gospel message.

Brad’s angels, on the other hand, are not so somber. He has four different

works dealing with angels, including, like Norm, a haiku:

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A branches blanket
like an angel’s frosted wings,
needles pointing upward.

His angel image is less melancholy, but also, like Norm’s, prefigures a

later work, lyrics for a song called ”Ice Angel”:

No one lives in the house of virtue,

and no one dines at the table of righteousness,
not even angels with the holiest of foreheads,
not even angels from the heaven above.

My guardian angel is a whore of Alaska,

last time I saw her I meant to ask her,

if the snow that drips from her wings and her past
is a part of the glorious heavenly cast.

My angel comes in a gown of icicles,
anoints my head with oils from Antarctica,
she covers me in a blanket of frozen tears,
then she sits and crosses her bare blue legs.

Then she says, ”I ain’t trashing no city.”

and she says, ”I ain’t talking through no donkey,”
and she says, ”I ain’t visiting a virgin,

but I’ll be, yeah, I’ll be, honey, your angel of ice.”

And no one lives in the house of chastity,
and no one dines at the table of faithfulness,
not even angels with the holiest of foreheads,
not even angels from the heaven above.

This is Brad’s temperature poem, in which the snow-covered tree in his
haiku begins to talk to him. He wrote another song about angels too, ”The
Angel Song”:

I met an angel on my way,

and he asked me about my day.

I said, ”Buddy,

You don’t know what it’s like to be

a million dollars short of rich, a million bucks
from rich.”

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He said, ”You’ve got no place to complain.
Think you’re the only one with pain?”
And with that he

lit a cigarette. He said, ”A

cigarette a day keeps the holy man away,
away.”

”You’re a woman short of love,

but that’s never stopped you before,”
he said between cracks in his teeth.
”You’ve never stopped there before,”
he said between cracks in his teeth,
Unfolding crumpled wings and strife
he moved his halo to the side,

and let out a heavenly sigh.

Brad’s fourth and final angel reference is the first two lines of his sonnet, a

poem called ”Mortal Misery”:

Have you felt the tiny brush of angel’s wings
across the sweating nose of things undone?

Unlike biblical angels, Brad’s angels have wings. And at least one of them
is female. They have human qualities, and eschew divine perfection with
crumpled wings and slanted halos. In fact, like biblical angels, they appear as
humans, smoking cigarettes, sighing, and dispensing advice. But his ”Ice
Angel” was one of the most popular of all the creative works, producing in
the group a flush of acclaim. It seems, on the face, an unlikely fantasy theme,
but guardian angels apparently elicit strong emotions among these young
evangelicals, however irreverent those angels might be. The rhetorical
implications of these narratives seem obvious. In his songs he develops a
fantasy theme using narratives (depropositionalized arguments) to comment

on his own crisis of faith.

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From Stromberg’s perspective, the poem may be acting as a vehicle for
”embodied aims,” providing through the use of subversive canonical
language about angels a means of expressing concerns unaccepted in this
rhetorical community. There are creative risks involved, and Brad is not
unaware of the implications. Artists, he writes in an essay at the end of the
course, are risk-takers who face ”rejection, criticism, hate-mail, embarrassing
exposure and great number of other very painful possibilities.” On the other
hand, these risks could result in ”praise, satisfying self-expression, success,
technical mastery, and a number of other positive results.”

Brad seemed surprised his angel poems met with almost universal
acclaim. In a sense he has negotiated a balance between exposing himself in
ways that might prove embarrassing in this group and achieving satisfying
self-expression through technical mastery, including a challenging and
successful musical setting for the lyrics to ”Ice Angel.” In the end his most
negative treatment of an angel receives the highest marks from his peers.

Part of this is achieved by giving his angel a biblical context. Consider

these lines:

Then she says, ”I ain’t trashing no city.”
and she says, ”I ain’t talking through no donkey,”
and she says, ”I ain’t visiting a virgin,
but I’ll be your angel, honey, your angel of ice.”
His guardian angel does not seem to be doing what angels are supposed to
do. These three references are specifically biblical—the angel who destroys
Sodom, the angel who confronts Baalam, and the angel who announces the

birth of Christ to Mary. In conference Brad tells me he spent a couple of

hours looking in a Bible for more obscure references, and was frustrated by

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the limitations of the Bible concordance (index of quotations) available to
him at the Farm.

His use of angels provides a way for him to comment on the difficulty, the
struggle, of his and his peers’ Christian experience. According to his poem,
no one, not even an angel, can achieve the righteousness, virtue,
faithfulness, and chastity required. You recall ”holy” is one of his favorite

words: ”It’s something we’re all striving for.”

The angel narratives: a relational analysis

These biblical citations are one way Brad involves his audience in his
narrative. And the struggle he alludes to make his song both socially and
personally interesting (Polanyi, 1979). These are techniques used by Norm as
well. His use of concrete detail involves his audience with the specific
sensory image of a hot day in south Florida, cold Cokes pressed against baking
brows, whirring ceiling fans and Danielle Steele novels. Sex is always
personally interesting to college readers and spiritual dryness is interesting to
this particular groups of believers, several of whose conversion narratives
focus on not feeling close to God.

But the most interesting relational interplay may be occurring not between
these two writers and their small audience of snow-bound evangelicals. The
most interesting relational concern may be competing moral visions. In the
front of the journals provided for the class was an optional entry across from
Robert Frost’s poem ”Fire and Ice,” which begins with the lines ”Some say the
world will end with fire, / some say with ice.” Only two students completed
this entry: Brad and Norm.

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Brad, in characteristic artistic fashion, drew a picture of Beavis and wrote
under it: ”The world will end when people who look like this take control.”

Norm uses the page to recount a more prophetic vision. He writes:

The world will end exactly as God plans it to end. Christ
will come and reign for a thousand years, and after that it
will be destroyed. Probably by fire—internal heat triggered
by the explosion of a meteorite. But that’s just speculation.
I really have no idea. One thing I’m sure about—there
aren’t going to be any interplanetary civilizations before
Christ comes. Science’s progress is limited to uncertainty.
We might find a way to extend human life a couple of
more years, and maybe find a few cures, but the dream of
science fiction writers will never be seen as reality.

All of the students would accept or at least respect Norm’s first two
sentences. They have a shared eschatology for the most part. And the second
coming of Christ is a rich and fertile fantasy theme for any evangelical
narrator. But Norm is engaged in a dialogue with a number of different
parties. He responds to Frost, first, who says in his poem ”he holds with
those who favor fire.” But Norm may also be reacting to both Brad and Jerry,
Trekkies who during the time this journal entry appears are working on a
skit about Star Trek. I have few ideas about what topics these students
discussed late at night, after the tape recorder was turned off. But Norm is
sensitive here to his social context.

Norm is the only student not to comment on Brad’s angel works in class.
But his angel poem is a reaction to Brad’s, coming as it does following
successful public performance and peer acceptance of what in Norm’s view
would be Brad’s more jaded angelic vision. Such a reading seems consistent
with Norm’s prophetic temperament.

Both Brad and Norm have used Biblical frames to articulate narratives

about the influence of the supernatural in their lives, and although they have

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done it with less directness than Angie, they have used the symbol system to
manage both rhetorical and relational concerns. I offer the following

observations about how this is done and what it may or may not mean:

Observations about intertextual citation

0 Intertextual citation as evidenced by the use of direct quotations from
Scripture is not as characteristic of young evangelicals as might be expected,
although Biblical literacy is strong as seen in the sophisticated use of angels in
the narratives examined. These students treat Scripture with respect, but
recourse to experience as a way of discerning God’s will is growing in
importance.

0 The use of Biblical imagery seems to increase in structured formal
discourse. Students who did not use citations in their oral conversion
narratives or classroom discourse did so in their poetry. This would indicate
they see it as a legitimate source of authority and validation as well as a
source of powerful metaphors and fantasy themes to which an audience can
relate.

0 No observations about the use of Scripture in informal discourse can
be drawn from this study. Physical limitations of this study prevent informed
observations about the use of intertextuality in more informal conversations,
sitting around the wood stove in the living room or playing cards late at
night around the kitchen table. Because the farm house where data was
collected only had electricity in the dining room (which functioned as a
classroom), the observations based on this data can only be taken to describe
classroom discourse.

Some evidence exists to indicate use of biblical frames of reference may

increase as discourse becomes less formal in the same way it increases as it

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becomes more formal. Consider this poem by Ellen, her only recorded

reference to Scripture outside of her conversion narrative.

Stoke the fire
Join the fun

We sit up late
playing cards
solving problems
telling futures
writing poetry
getting angry
”What does the
Bible have to say?”
I’m right

you’re wrong
hear them sing
what’s going on
Stoke the fire
join the fun.

This poem shows up undated and undiscussed in her final portfolio, so it
is difficult to place it in a context. But it is quite likely several discussions
occurred over the issue of drinking. Linda seemed particularly concerned
about this issue, mentioning it in both her conversion narrative and as the
topic of her remembered conversation. After she discussed her trip to New
York (chapter four), I asked her to discuss her earlier Christian experience.

Here is that exchange:

WALLY: Let’s go back to earlier. When in your life did you
start to say this Christian thing is me, I care about this, this
is who I am. When was this starting to kick in for you?

LINDA: Yeah, um, probably high school. Um, until then,
um, you know, urn the peer group. You just concentrate so
hard on just trying to, on being like everyone else, and
trying just kind of to lose myself in the shadow. I didn’t
want to make a stand, I didn’t want to be someone who
was different at all, who was noticed. Um, and then in
high school I really had to make the difficult choices. Um,
my friends started making choices that I didn’t agree with,

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and I had to really search why I didn’t agree with them.
Um, I’m still doing that. I was starting a conversation out
there, trying to get different people’s views on drinking.
Not because, not that I shouldn’t drink because I’m under
21, but, biblical standpoint, why shouldn’t I be drinking,
you know?

As early as the first day there is a discussion about drinking from a
”biblical standpoint” outside the range of the audio and visual recording
equipment. Dicussions about drinking and other topics may have been the
source of Ellen’s reported speech in her poem: ”What does the Bible have to
say?”

I will discuss the research limitations involved in not having access to
these conversations in my concluding chapter. But the possibility that
Scripture is more likely to frame discourse in formal written discourse and
informal conversational discourse, but less likely to do so in institutional
discourse, again raises the issue of how education affects faith. Hunter says
”contemporary Christian higher education produces the unintended
consequence of being counterproductive to its own objectives” because it
”contributes to the erosion of its symbolic boundaries” (Hunter, 1987). The
analysis presented here may indicate these students do not feel comfortable
grounding classroom talk in Scripture and their college experience in fact
undermines their commitment to positions traditionally associated with the
evangelical tradition.

One of those positions regards the person and work of Christ, a ”symbolic

boundary” to which we now turn.

CHAPTER 7

Jesus Lover of My Soul:
Dramatic discourse

Hunter’s suggestion that Christian colleges may be counterproductive to
their own objectives by eroding symbolic boundaries is one Jerry, a senior,
specifically denies, at least in terms of his understanding of Scripture and
salvation. He claims, as we shall see, to have arrived at his views
independently before college.

In an exchange of E—mail a year after the workshop I asked him to send me
a copy of the skit analyzed below. I also asked him to describe his views on
inerrancy and soteriology and to comment on the way those views had been
affected by his experience at Spring Arbor College. Here is his reply (without

corrections of spelling and punctuation):

Date: Thu, Jan 19, 1995 2:19 PM EDT

From: [Jerry]
Subj: Inerrancy (sp.?)
To: MET'ISWAL

File: homecomingsit (6336 bytes)

Wally,

I’m sending you Homecoming and my views on
Inerrancy. Your mail message also mentioned Christ as the
ONLY means of salvation, so I’ll throw that in too.

113

114

INERRANCY:
I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God.
(Plenary Inspired that is.)
I believe that everything in the Bible is their because of the
DIRECT will of God.
HOWEVER: I believe that when reading the Bible, one
must keep in consideration the cultural, social, and
historical point of vie of both the author and the intended
audience, as well as the literary mechanincs involved.
For Example: Gen. Ch 1 is written in a poetic format.
Therefore, the author (whether it was Mosses, or a group
of scholars spread out over a thousand years) may have
taken some artistic licence in writting.
Another Example: In Rev. when John talks about giant
locusts, he could have actually seen helicopters. To a 100
AD. person, a group of helicopters, could very well look
like locusts from a distance.
Yet Another Example: When Paul talks about marriage in
Corinthians, he was addressing the trend for Christians to
sell everything, and go wait in a field for Christ to return
(which they believed was irnmenent). That is why he talks
about marriage so non-chalantly: he is trying to convience
the Corinthians that they can go ahead and marry, it won’t
intterupt their vigil for the second advent.
My view of God as author of the Bible, is one of God giving
his human instruments visions, feelings, and insights,
thereflre allowing them to write. It is NOT of God dictating
to some schmuck who writes down everthing God says.
(With the exception of direct quotes from God)

Christ as the ONLY means of salvation:

Jesus said ”No man comes to the Father but by me.”

Yes.

But what does it mean to come to Christ? I guess I lean
toward the Catholic doctrine that all men (and women)
have the ability to discover God by the light of their own
reason.

A bushman who has never heard the word of God, may
still feel a spiritual presence by from the creator of the
universe.

After all, the Bible make numerous references to us being
JUDGED in the end. If salvation were as cut and dry as ”I
got saved” or ” I didn’t get saved” there wouldn’t be much
to judge.

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AND: I held these views LONG before I even HEARD of
SAC, so THEY did not corrupt me.

P.S. What version of AOL are you using? The new version
(2.5.1) is great!

This E-mail message, with its misspellings and false starts, is characteristic
of on-line discourse, often hurried and more ”conversational” than writing
in academic contexts. Here Jerry says the college did not corrupt him, and that
may be so. His view of a last judgment is a specific doctrinal position of
many in the Wesleyan movement to which his own church (Nazarene)
subscribes. However, it is not typical of that tradition in particular or
evangelical churches in general to discount the necessity of being ”saved."

The poor bushman is problematic, of course, but my concern here is not

with Jerry’s doctrine but with his discourse. Consider this fragment:

Jesus said ”No man comes to the Father but by me.”
Yes. But what does it mean to come to Christ? I guess I
lean toward the Catholic doctrine that all men (and
women) have the ability to discover God by the light of
their own reason.

Christ, who described himself as the ”light of the world,” says he is the
only way, but Jerry says we don’t know what that means. He thinks people
can come to God through the ”light of their own reason.” The shift is
managed by interchanging ”Christ” and ”God,” a semantic solution allowed
by the Christian conception of the Trinity perhaps, but not, historically at
least, in the way Jerry manages it here. Christian orthodoxy is careful to
distinguish between the roles of God as Father and as Son, and the Son alone
provides an avenue for coming to God in any sense.

However Jerry allows the bushman to come to the Father without coming

through the Son, a requirement evangelicals generally maintain on the basis

 

’2!!! i_“. ..‘EMJ V-L 0-... .

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of the verse Jerry himself quotes but then discounts. By not distinguishing
between Christ and God in terms of how salvation is acquired, he is failing to
make a distinction critical to the Christian faith since the first century.

This blurring of the first two persons of the Godhead is seen in his E-mail
as he discusses Scripture too. In general, his hermeneutics are consistent with
current evangelical scholarship in its concern about the ”cultural, social, and
historical point of view of both the author and the intended audience.” As he
observes, this allows some latitude in interpreting the creation story from
Genesis 1. A ”dictation” view of revelation is also widely discounted, even
among fundamentalists. There is no ”schmuck who writes down everything
God says.” But notice the exception Jerry makes: ”With the exception of direct
quotes from God.”

In the very next paragraph he begins to discount a ”direct quote” from
Christ. How does Jerry view Christ? What is his role in the Christian
experience? How do believers relate to Christ? To explore this we will look at

Jerry’s narrative account of this relationship, a skit called ”Homecoming.”10

Homecoming

Christ is on stage, sitting. After a few moments, Michael
enters.

Christ: (Happy, glad to see him) Michael! You’re back!
Michael: (A little uncertain, or maybe apprehensive) Yeah.

Christ: I missed you. I always miss you when you’re away.

 

10 If this were a CR-ROM, which is how discourse studies will be reported in the next few
years, you could now push a button and watch Brad and Jerry perform this skit. But lacking the
technical expertise to provide such documentary, I offer you the skit in its entirety, lacking the
dramatic and verbal complexity of its performance.

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Michael: Great.

Christ: I’m glad you’re back, there’s so much I want to talk
with you about! (Notices that Michael is holding his hand
as though it is injured) Are you OK?

Michael: It’s not that bad.

Christ: Let me see it. (Michael holds out his hand. Christ
takes it and examines it.) Doesn’t this hurt?

Michael: Not that much.

Christ: You should have come to me sooner, let me help
you.

Michael: (Takes his hand back) No, that’s OK. It barely
even hurts.

Christ: Michael, please, let me help you. (Michael gives
him his hand) There, isn’t that better?

Michael: Yeah, thanks.

Christ: Michael, it’s so good to have you back. You can’t
believe how much I missed you.

Michael: Yeah, well, I’m back.

Christ: Now, we can continue where we left off. You
never have to leave again. (Hold out arms as if to give
Michael a hug, but Michael pauses, then walks away)
Michael: Look, I’m not ready for that.

Christ: What do you mean?

Michael: I’m not here to ”build our relationship.” I just
came to get something. (Starts to rummage through a
drawer)

Christ: What is it? What do you want?

Michael: (To himself) Where did I leave that thing? (To
Christ) Don’t worry about it, it’s just something of mine

I '0.

 

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I’ve been meaning to get rid of. Ahh, there it is. (Finds
what he’s looking for)

Christ: Michael?!?

Michael: What?

Christ: What are you going to do with that?

Michael: I’m going to sell it.

Christ: Sell it? You can’t sell that!

Michael: Sure I can, why shouldn’t I?

Christ: Because I didn’t give that to you just so you could
sell it. It’s a gift with a special purpose. And selling it out
there is not what it is intended for.

Michael: Well, it’s not getting a lot of use around here.
Besides, you have no idea what I can get for this. (Starts to
leave)

Christ: Michael, please don’t go.

Michael: Why not?

Christ: Because I might not be able to help you next time
you get into trouble.

Michael: Right. (Starts to leave again)
Christ: Michael, please.

Michael: Oh, come off it! You know that every time I come
back you’ll help me!

Christ: I won’t always be able to.

Michael: Yeah, right. You’ve said the same thing for the
last I don’t know how many times. But you still take me
back. (Starts to leave, stops, walks near Christ in
frustration) You know, you’re really pathetic! All you do is
sit here and wait for me, and then when I come back all I
do is ask for help, and then leave again! And this time I’m

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even taking one of your gifts to sell out there! And yet still
you sit! (Starts to leave)

Christ: Michael, please don’t leave.
Michael: (Stops) Give me one good reason not to.

Christ: Because you’ll just get hurt again. Like the
problems with Sue when your marriage was on the rocks,
and when your children, Jeff and Sara started getting into
trouble, and when you lost your job. In one way or
another, those all started happening because you left me.
(Pause) Michael, someday the trouble you get into may be
more than I will help you out of.

Michael: Yeah, right. You helped me with all of those
other problems, and you even FIXED my problem this
time. Face it, no matter what I do, you’re always going to
take me back.

Christ: I won’t always be able to Michael, please don’t go
out there again.

Michael: Please, you spend all of your time sitting here
waiting for me, you don’t even know what it’s like out
there.

Christ: I know what it’s like.

Michael: Oh yeah, I forgot you know everything. Well
then, you must know this: I’m leaving, and I’m NOT
coming back! Good Bye! (Exits)

Christ gets up as if to follow after Michael, but stops before
leaving center stage. Christ stands there for a moment, as if
agonizing over a decision, then looks upward in silent
pleading prayer, then sadly returns to his seat. Long pause,
then...

Michael: (Enters, pauses at the entrance and looks at Christ,
expecting to be greeted. Michael is panicked and worried)
Uh, hi! I’m back!

Christ: I know, Michael.

Michael: Oh, yeah, right. Well, um, I need some help.

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Christ: I know.

Michael: Yeah, you know that too. Look could you give
me a hand here?

Christ: (Pause, painfully) No.

Michael: What?!?

Christ: I’m sorry Michael. I can’t; it’s too late.

Michael: What?!? C’mon, sure you can. O.K., look, I
PROMISE I won’t leave again! Hey, remember what it used
to be like, how we would just sit and talk and just be with
each other all the time?!? I PROMISE it will be just like
that again, ’cause I’m never gonna leave again.

Christ: Michael, it’s too late.

Michael: How can you say that? Remember all the stuff we
did together? Remember all the things I did for you?

Christ: I remember. I remember all the things you did. And
I remember why you did them.

Michael: Well, this is real serious, if you don’t help me I
could be in REAL trouble! I mean, this is more that the
other stuff you’ve helped me with, if you don’t help
me...I...could...die.

Christ: (Stands) It’s too late.

Michael: What do you mean?

Christ: You’re already dead.

Michael: No, I can’t be!

Christ: You have to leave now.

Michael: No! I won’t go!

Christ: You have to Michael. You’ve made your choice.

Michael: You won’t make me go! I thought you loved me!

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Christ: I do love you Michael, I wish I could let you stay.
But, the choice was yours, and you have made it. Now you
must go.

Michael: But Lord!

Christ: Michael! (Pause) Depart from me, I knew you not.

I want to comment briefly on the group’s reaction before examining Jerry’s
rhetorical and relational concerns. Norm says ”it gets a little bit repetitive.”
Ellen wants more character development and more discussion of the gift
Michael intends to sell. For her it seems both too ”vague” (not enough
detail about the gift) and too ”blunt” (when Michael tells Christ ”you’re so
pathetic" it ”almost scared me,” she says). Brad feels Christ should be a little
more abrupt, perhaps angry, when Michael appears the second time. Angie,
on the other hand, wants Jesus to ”be a little more heartbroken.” Brad, as the
discussion progresses, changes his position and wants the last line to be angry,
but the second scene to ”build up to that.” Linda wants to know about the gift
too.

Four members of the group praise it for the same reason: it gives Christ a
conversational presence. Linda says ”I like the idea of the conversation and I
also like the point he was driving across about how we leave the relationship
always knowing, expecting Christ to be right there.”

Angie is most insistent on this point. She says:

I like it because it is very conversational, very real in the
way people talk. It brings a Christ relationship to the level
of, like, just a personal relationship and that’s what it is. It
shows people that aspect. And it’s kind of neat because it
shows a friendship. At first you don’t know that it’s God
he’s friends with, but it makes you see, if you had a regular
friend who came and used you and they had a problem.
And like you were calling God pathetic because he just sits

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there and waits for you and every time you have a
problem helps you and wants you to hang around, but he
has no life. I like that. It shows his constancy through, I
mean, good slant, good angle, I like it.

What Angie and her peers are doing throughout this critique is projecting.
There is no reference to Scripture as a standard or measure of what Christ
may actually be like. He is a conversational partner: somewhat angry in
Brad’s view, constant and caring in Angie’s view. For Ellen, he is
unapproachable; you wouldn’t go up to him and tell him he is pathetic. The
students see him the way they want him to be. It is written around a specific
biblical citation, however, and we now consider Jerry’s rhetorical and

relational concerns.

Rhetorical aspects of ”Homecoming”

The skit was being prepared for performance in churches by a drama group
directed by Brad and Jerry. It concludes with the line: ”Depart from me, I
knew you not,” a reference from Matthew 7:23.

In the second class reading Brad reads the line as ”I never knew you.”
Jerry jumps him over the misreading immediately, with an extended and
loud AACHH! ”You messed up,” he says, as Brad immediately repairs and
says the line as written not once but twice: ”I knew you not.” There is a brief
pause after which Ellen says emphatically ”It’s OKAY” and laughs, apparently
trying to defuse the tension. The transcript shows little of the emotion

involved in this exchange. It continues as below:

BRAD: Uh, it’s a Scriptural quote...

JERRY: yeah

BRAD: ...although, if you
looked it up in another version, maybe it would be ”I
never knew you.”

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JERRY: That’s true. I think maybe the Jehovah Witness
version says that. (laughs)

ANGIE (very softly): I think the New International
Version might say that.

JERRY: I beg your pardon?

ANGIE: I think the New International Version might say
that.

There is a real concern here about using the exact words of Scripture,
although as it turns out Jerry is mistaken. Brad has cited the verse as it
appears in both the New International version and the King James version,
the versions both he and Jerry would be most likely to have memorized as
children. Matthew reports Christ saying this in an order reversed from how
Jerry quotes it: ”I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work inequity.”
Christ, in turn, is quoting Psalms 6:8: ”Depart from me, all ye workers of
inequity.”

Jerry’s hermeneutical sophistication indicates he knows Jesus was quoting
from the Hebrew into Aramaic while Matthew is quoting him in Greek and
all of this is being translated into English, but he appears to be concerned
about getting the words exactly right. He tells me later he wants to use the
verse exactly as it appears to ”spark people’s memory” of the original text so
”when they go home they will think about it.”

Get-ready-because-you-have-to-stand-before-Christ-and be-judged is one of
the ultimate fantasy themes in his rhetorical community, and, interestingly,
one which conflicts with his view of the reasoning and seeking bushman. He
reinforces his narrative by invoking the power of a remembered script. Here

is the text as it appears in its biblical context (Matthew 7:21-23):

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the
kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my
Father who is in heaven.

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Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out
demons and perform many miracles?’

Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away
from me, you evildoers!’

According to this text, it may not even be enough to profess Christ and do
good works. One must also know Christ. Where does this leave Michael,
Christ’s conversational partner in the skit? Notice his appeal, after he has
died. Christ tells him it is ”too late:”

Michael: How can you say that? Remember all the stuff we
did together? Remember all the things I did for you?

Christ: I remember. I remember all the things you did. And
I remember why you did them.

Christ knows what one does and why one does it, an ability Michael
characterizes as giving him an unfair advantage. When he returns the first
time, Michael is not interested in ”building a relationship.” When he leaves

Christ warns him not to:

Christ: Because you’ll just get hurt again. Like the
problems with Sue when your marriage was on the rocks,
and when your children, Jeff and Sara started getting into
trouble, and when you lost your job. In one way or
another, those all started happening because you left me.
(Pause) Michael, someday the trouble you get into may be
more than I will help you out of.

Jerry is being careful with his words here. Michael can get into more
trouble than Christ will help him out of, not can get him out of. But this
fragment, indeed this entire skit, has personal connections for Jerry. This is

how his conversion narrative begins:

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When I was a really little kid,

before I was 12,

my family, I mean, we attended church,

my mom was the church secretary,

my dad was on the board of trustees

it was I guess in a way it was real to me

but I, it was all very legalistic.

Being a Christian and loving God and serving him,
meant that we didn’t go to movies,

we did go to church every week,

we did this, we did...

it was all what we did,

not necessarily what we were

or how we thought or anything?

And then my dad was the head of a discipling group
for the college and career age group,

and he slept with one of the students, a girl,

And that was just kind of the climax.

They’d had a couple of problems for a couple of years.
So, anyway, my parents got a divorce.

From there it was kind of a question,

especially for my mom and for us,

you know if we did all the right things

then how come this happened and stuff like that.
I think, because of that, it had to be more real.

I couldn’t just say, well, if I do this, if I don’t do this...
I came to realize that faith in God

required more than actions.

You couldn’t find God in what you did,

it was an attitude of faith,

an attitude of love,

and, you know,

faith in Him?

So it became a lot more real,

then.

An important question for Jerry is ”if we did all the right things then how
come this (the divorce) happened?” He realizes finally that he couldn’t find
God in ”what you did,” it was ”an attitude of love” and, ultimately, as
reflected in his skit, a relationship. As Matthew 7 puts it, you have to know
Christ.

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Jerry doesn’t believe bad things happen to you because of what you do.
Christ warns Michael that he will run into trouble ”because you left me,” a
relational concern. And his understanding of this is not rooted in his
ongoing personal Bible study; in fact, he tells me the reason he got the biblical
reference wrong at Cedar Bend is because he didn’t have a Bible with him to
check it.11 His understanding of this issue is more likely based on
conversation, the same vehicle he uses to communicate it with. He

continues his narrative:

My mom was working through a lot of the stuff

with some friends of hers in the church.

My dad kind of broke all ties with the church

and with any of the people that my parents had known,
so my mom was still friends with most of them.

Some people didn’t want to

have anything much to do with my family anymore,
because I think they were afraid it

would happen to them or something.

I don’t know.

But mom would talk to her friends,

and they would try to work through

and try to figure out, you know,

what’s going on, and,

I’ve always slept with my door open.

And the kitchen where she always sat and talked to people
was right beneath my door,

underneath the staircase,

so I always heard everything that was going on,

and I would lie there and think about it,

and go, yeah,

what about that?

 

11 Jerry relies on his memory of Scripture in constructing this skit. In conferences before and after
its presentation in class he says it is based on Matthew 25, a text about the judgement which
includes no version of the disputed line: ”I never knew you.” Verse 12 in that chapter does use ”I
know you not” in a parable about ten virgins.

127

Relational dimensions of Homecoming

His rhetorical concern, then, is to communicate his insight about God
through both a narrative and a conversation, powerful rhetorical tools drawn
from his own experience. His relational needs in this case seem insignificant,
compared with these rhetorical concerns. Insignificant, perhaps, but not
nonexistent.

His primary relational concern appears to be with the audience. He wants
them to go home and think about the message. He uses all sorts of
involvement strategies: reported speech, specific detail, repetition. The skit is
both socially and personally interesting, as evidenced by the class response. It
produces the excitement of a genuine fantasy theme as his peers rush to co-
construct it.

But in the academic discourse community of Cedar Bend, where angels
wear crumpled wings and slanted halos, a discourse community where
Angie’s abortion poem is trashed by the class as too polemical, Jerry is
uncharacteristically modest when the work is introduced. He offers to read it
rather than act it out. He suggests he is too tired to do it justice. He judges it
severely before he even begins: ”It sucks! ” he says. He senses it is the wrong
audience, the wrong time and place. It is intended for a church, not a
classroom.

But in this case he is wrong. He strikes a responsive chord. For the most
part, these students are engaged in a struggle to create and maintain a
personal, conversational relationship with Christ. Jerry’s skit suggests it can
be done. After all, the students have not rejected him as Michael has. Here is

a Christ who heals and hugs and helps. He seems to be exactly the kind of

128

Christ they want, even if he is not exactly the kind of Christ the creeds
proclaim him to be. 12

The analysis of this chapter continues to support Hunter’s observations
concerning the loss of binding address. I will return to this in my concluding

chapter, but a few additional observations seem justified here.

More Observations

0 Young evangelicals may be relying on a rich background of biblical
teaching rather than personal study for their understanding of Scripture.
Jerry never checks the text on which his skit is based. Brad is frustrated
because the concordance he has access to doesn’t contain some of the more
obscure angel references he has heard about. Three months after Cedar Bend,
Brad goes on the mission trip to New York City to which Linda refers. He has
to prepare and present a devotion on a Bible character and chooses,
appropriately enough, doubting Thomas, the disciple who refused to believe
in the resurrection until he touched Christ himself. When he returns from
New York, Brad tells me it was exciting to make a point about the story he
had ”figured out” himself. He treats this as an unusual event, not just in his
current state of skepticism but for him generally.

0 The image of Christ presented here may owe as much to psychology as
to theology. This is a Jesus who helps and heals and hugs. The students
have not defined their Christian experience in terms of regeneration, but in
terms of a struggle: they are ”working through” their problems. In an analysis

of popular literature produced by evangelicals since 1925, Watt, a historian,

 

12Jerry and the others could and probably would in church or while talking to a pastor define
Christ in terms of traditional theological constructs. And the Christ presented here is not
merely human: he has omniscence, for one thing. But the Christ co—constructed by this writer
and this audience is primarily concerned with Christ as human, a concern seen earlier in Brad’s
discussion of whether or not Christ masturbated.

129

concludes popular evangelicalism has been profoundly influenced by its

encounter with modern psychology. He writes:

A subculture shot through with therapeutic ideas and
practices is one in which traditional religion is
declining....If therapeutic world views are symptomatic of
the declining power of traditional religion and if
evangelicalism is at base a therapeutic subculture, then the
vitality of evangelicalism is not a sign that traditional
religion is flourishing in America. It is rather a sign that a
new sort of faith, one that owes at least as much to modern
psychology as to Paul, is being born (Watt,1991).

What other signs are there that a new sort of faith is being born? More
specifically, how have these signs been reflected in this project? These are

questions I now consider.

CHAPTER 8

Just As I Am:
Conclusions and questions

I have used the titles of hymns as chapter titles throughout this project,
mostly because the titles reminded me of some theme discussed in the
chapter. I have done so without comment, but this title, at least, should be
explained.

”Just as I Am” is the hymn I sang more than any other hymn in my entire
childhood. The first verse goes like this:

Just as I am without one plea

But that thy blood was shed for me,
and that thou bidst me come to thee:
Oh Lamb of God, I come.

I include it here for two reasons. First, it is an invitation hymn. We sang
the same song week after week. The rhetorical intentions of the service had
been dealt with. The sermon had proclaimed the truths. But underlying
even that seemingly monological discourse was a relational concern. You
needed to come to God, and this song was the signal that you could do so, not
just in your heart, although that was okay too, but before assembled
witnesses. You were invited by this song to establish (get saved) or reestablish
(rededicate your life) that relationship in a social context, before friends and
family members who would help you and pray for you and remind you
without ever saying a word that you were part of the family of God.

The song also meant the service was about over. All I had to do was

decide if I needed to go forward and confess any sins, and, if I didn’t, I would

130

131

The song also meant the service was about over. All I had to do was
decide if I needed to go forward and confess any sins, and, if I didn’t, I would
soon be out the door, laughing with my friends, running across the parking
lot toward open fields and sunshine. That’s one of the reason I’ve included it
here. All I have to do is examine my heart, or at least my methodology,
confess a few shortcomings perhaps, and we’re all out the door.

There is a second reason for including this song as well. Faith seemed
simpler then, although I doubt if it really was. But such a song—and such a
faith—is more complicated for the students who went with me to Cedar
Bend. Is there just one plea? How about the bushman and his light of
reason? The students want to be close to God. But it isn’t as easy as going
forward in church—it is, in fact, a ”struggle.” And what about the blood and
the cross? Only two students mentioned it at all, the student with the most
doubt and the student who was most devout. Angie mentioned it in her
poem about Bill, an almost trivial use of her community’ 8 most compelling
master narrative to articulate what Stromberg calls an embodied aim. Brad
uses it too. He says in his conversion narrative that ”what God has done for
us, and (Christ) dying, you know, those, those are questions I don’t really
question.” The only thing he doesn’t question is Christ dying—and he calls
that a question.

What this discourse study has uncovered—to use Foucault’s analogy of
archaeology—is a faith in confusion. In his analysis of published Christian
literature, Watt says ”the portrait of the evangelical mainstream which
emerges from this book makes it look less and less like a disciplined and
charging army and more and more like a group of Americans that are
trying—quite successfully—to fit in” (Watt, 1991). My concern here is not
with how these students are trying to fit into American society, although that

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is undoubtedly part of what is going on in their lives. I have been more

concerned with how they are trying to fit into their own faith.

What is an evangelical?

Quite frankly, and here is my first confession during this invitation hymn,
I sallied forth to defend their faith and now find myself quite unable to define
it. I am not alone in this quandary. In The Varieties of American
Evangelicalism (1991), a collection of essays by thinkers in a dozen different
evangelical traditions, editors Johnston and Dayton struggle with defining
evangelicalism and find no satisfying solution.

I have defined it as conservative Protestantism, rooted in a split dating
from early in this century. Dayton says this conservative / liberal dichotomy
is problematic. Churches in the holiness tradition pioneered the ordination
of women hundreds of years before mainline (liberal) Protestant churches, for
example. He says evangelical churches are actually on ”the newer and
innovative edges of Christianity” and the movement includes young
movements such as Pentecostalism which are still in the process of
developing a critical and historical consciousness. He suggests we dispense
with the term altogether and focus on ”more useful and appropriate
categories of analysis” (Dayton,l99l).

This leads to my second sin, perhaps. In drawing conclusions about the
role of experience or Scripture in defining the Christian experience of these
students, I may have in some ways overlooked their own unique tradition
within the borders of the evangelical community. Angie, Norm, Linda and
Jerry are all from churches which are not only Pietistic, a distinction dating
from soon after the reformation, but, more recently, from the North

American holiness movement founded largely on the teachings of John

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Wesley. Wesley was concerned with the Scripture primarily in terms of its
”sufficiency for salvation,” and believed it had authority as a vehicle for the
Spirit of God to witness of the love of God (Bassett,199l). He believed, as
our analysis of Angie’s conversion narrative shows, the Scripture must be
confirmed in experience.

This holiness tradition also maintains a doctrine of entire sanctification.
At the risk of oversirnplification, this doctrine holds one can achieve a divine
cleansing from the tendency to sin along with a gifting of unconditional love
for God and neighbor (Bassett,l99l). This comes to people who have
already been justified by grace, that is, who have accepted the atoning work of
Christ. To outsiders this sometimes appears as getting saved over and over
again.

Brad brought this to my attention when I asked him why he thought little
was made of the conversion experience itself in the Cedar Bend narratives.
Brad, a Baptist who only gets to do it once, said ”these people have to do it
over and over again, so maybe it doesn’t mean as much.” In fact, he said, ”I
always talked about being born-again when I was growing up” but he suggests
he may not have brought it up in his conversion narrative ”because I’ve been
hanging out around Wesleyans too long.”

Of course Angie specifically accounts for ”giving her life to God,” and the
holiness movement is deeply rooted in nineteenth century American
revivalism where such conscious acts of accepting Christ were specifically
called for. Even if I have misread the holiness vision of Scripture and
salvation from my own more Calvinistic viewpoint, it remains clear that the
students’ views of these matters are extending the symbolic boundaries of
their faith, not only in a larger evangelical context but in their own holiness

tradition as well.

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According to Bassett, Phoebe Palmer, an important early leader of the
movement, certainly believed that to be a believer was to know and believe
the Scripture; and H. Orton Wiley, whose Christian Theology (1940) is a
widely used text in the movement, specifically chastised fundamentalism for
a hermeneutic that, by separating the spirit of God from the Word of God,
”came to mean nothing more than human reason” (Bassett,l991).

This theological perspective views the Scripture as primarily a vehicle, or
to use a Wesleyan term, a medium, for salvation. It leads ultimately to a love
of God, a relationship to which Jerry easily attests. But it makes no room for
his curious and reasoning bushman. And Jerry and his peers remain
nevertheless clearly identified with evangelicalism, whatever it may be.

Johnston suggests evangelicalism is characterized by a ”family”
resemblance, more useful as a description than a definition. Citing Cullen
Mullen, who calls it ”a twelve-ring circus,” and Roman Catholic rnissiologist
Thomas Stransky, who calls it ”a confusing conglomeration,” Johnston
follows Timothy Weber and others in seeing it as a collection of church
traditions with a common theology and a basic ethos. He says it is composed
of ”those churches that have wanted effective, biblically-based evangelistic
and social outreach” as a means ”both of expressing and of extending the
evangelion, the gospel—the good news of Jesus Christ” (Johnston,l991).

This may be as close as it gets. But our concern here is not primarily with
how evangelicals are defined, but with how they view the world, and more
specifically with how that is reflected in their conversation, both spoken and
written. Our concern has not been so much to define them as to describe

them. This brings us to the second verse of our invitation song.

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Does discourse analysis help us understand who evangelicals are?

I’ve argued that discourse is essentially conversation, and I’ve suggested
viewing narrative in this way forces us to look at both the rhetorical intent
and relational concerns of speakers and writers. I’ve not claimed that such an
analysis is particularly new or original.

For me it came from an effort to balance the social science concerns of
conversational analysts with the more humanistic concerns of discourse
analysts. The conversational analysts have tended to study sequential
features of language (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson,l974;
Schegloff,l968), and I take the rhetorical choices speakers and writers make
to be choices about what comes next. That is I take them to be sequentially
organized, although, and this is confession number three, I have not
addressed this in my analysis or documented it here. To do so would have
required more extended stretches of informal talk than I was able to obtain
given the physical limitations of my data collection. There is only so much
you can record in a six room house with two electrical outlets. I also found
myself wanting to give the students a break from the intensive focus on
language which both the research project and the workshop itself involved.
Narratives have been examined in such contexts, of course, by discourse
analysts such as Goodwin who makes much of stories as participation
structures (Goodwin,l990).

Like conversational analysts, discourse analysts have studied the
sequential features of talk (Ainsworth-Vaughn,l992; Murray,1985), but
they have concerned themselves more with the context, using it as a vehicle
for examining issues of power, gender and culture (Ainsworth-
Vaughn,1992; Fisher,l983; Johnstone,l993; Tannen,1980;
Thorne,1993; West and Garcia,1988). They have been more focused on

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the relational aspects of discourse. This is a discourse study, and I have data
available which might reflect on some of the concerns with which discourse
studies are normally concerned. A class discussion about the movie The
Remains of the Day, for example, might show something about how this
group of young evangelicals negotiates issues of gender. More specifically, it
was a discussion about why the females in the group spent twenty minutes
talking about the movie and the males never said a word. (When I brought
this up, Ellen threatened my life if I was going to call it a ”chick flick,” a
designation Jerry gave it the night before.)

Discourse studies about such discussions—who speaks, who controls topic,
etc—would be useful, but they are outside my work here, which examines
the role of narrative. I chose narratives for several reasons. One is because
Christianity is seen as a storytelling community. Although this data is largely
classroom discourse, a limitation I’ve acknowledged above, this is primarily a
study of religious discourse and narratives seem appropriate to this task. I
also chose narratives because narratives are generally seen as a speech event
which interrupts conversation, and I see it as a part of conversation.
Confession four: I chose narratives because they gave me a chance to
demonstrate my conversational paradigm. I’ll tackle this again below. First,
however, I want to offer a brief defense of the validity of what I have
attempted here.

This defense is not intended to defend discourse studies from its more
scientifically minded (positivist) critics. This is a qualitative study and makes
no claims to be otherwise. My intention at this point is to assure scholars
who conduct and value qualitative research that I have been sensitive to the

demands of such research.

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Reissman, speaking of narrative studies specifically, says their validity is
based on persuasiveness, correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic use. By
persuasiveness she means ”Is the analysis reasonable and convincing?” She
says this occurs ”when theoretical claims are supported with evidence from
informants’ accounts and when alternative interpretations of the data are
considered”(Riessman,1993). I’ve tried to account for the observations I
made at the end of each chapter. I used Stromberg’s analysis of self-
transforrnation through conversion narratives to extend my own
understanding beyond that which my own use of Bormann and Polanyi
allowed. But ultimately, as Reissman notes, the persuasiveness of the
analysis rests on the rhetoric of writing and the reader’s response.

The second criteria she notes is correspondence. ”An investigator can take
results back to those studied,” she says. Reissman says ”member checks, ” as
Lincoln and Cuba call them, increase credibility, although the validity of an
investigator’s interpretations cannot be completely validated in this way
(Riessman,1993). The stories themselves are not static and meanings shift
as consciousness changes. Nor can our theorizing across a number of
narratives be evaluated by individual narrators. Throughout this study I
have referenced the continued and continuing commentary on these
narratives by their narrators. In addition, I asked the three students (Linda,
Brad, and Jerry) whose narratives were the focus of major chapters to provide
a brief response to my analysis of their own work. These reactions are
included in Appendix B.13

Coherence is another aspect of validity which, in Reissman's view,

consists of modifying understandings of speakers’ and writers’ beliefs and

 

13 I have intentionally not responed to their comments. As teacher/ researcher/ writer I
already have disproportionate power in this project. This appendix is intended to give them
the last word. I am, of course, thankful that they found the analysis accurate.

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goals (global coherence) in light of particular narratives (local coherence). For
example, I expected the first conversion narrative I encountered (Angie’s
how-I-gave-my-life-to God story) to be the prototype, but it turned out to be
the exception. Themal coherence is also important—the clustering of stories
about angels, for example—for avoiding ad hoc theorizing (Riessman,1993).

Finally there is the pragmatic use, ”the extent to which a particular study
becomes the basis for others’ work” (Riessman,1993). She says we do this by
describing how the interpretations were produced, ”making visible what we
did,” and making primary data available. I have offered data in large
chunks, hoping to provide others the opportunity to make observations
independent of my own analysis. And finally, quoting Agger, Reissman says
we further the understanding of narrative analysis by bringing our
”foundational assumptions [and values] to the surface.” I’ve made no secret
of these.

Silverman discusses the validity of qualitative research more generally,
suggesting one way it occurs is through ”triangularization,” a term coined
from navigation. He defines this as ”comparing different kinds of data (e.g.
quantitative and qualitative) and different methods (e.g. observation and
interviews) to see if they corroborate one another” (Silverman,l993). I’ve
attempted this using data from quantitative surveys, student journals,
interviews, classroom discussions, creative works, and even E-mail, and trust
the analysis is richer for the diversity of narratives and discussions of
narratives considered. Silverman cautions, however, that triangularization
of data can not in and of itself arrive at an ”overall truth.” Nor do I wish to
suggest that it does. I’ve been careful to offer observations, not conclusions,
not out of regard for the postmodern temper as much as for the clear

limitations of this work As Reissman observes, narrative analysis is only ”a

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useful addition to the stock pot of social science methods, bringing critical
flavors to the fore that otherwise get lost” (Riessman,1993). This study says
something about six evangelical college students, flavoring the findings of
Hunter and others who have noticed subtle changes in the values of young
evangelicals generally.

I have attempted to do so through the use of a particular paradigm. It is
time for the third verse of the invitation hymn, a discussion of how that
paradigm contributes to an understanding of discourse in general and world

view in particular.

What are the implications of a conversational paradigm?

Silverman, a conversational analyst, sees conversation as the baseline for
understanding other forms of talk, a distinction he sees as being critical in
distinguishing conversational analysis from discourse analysis
(Silverman,l993). The tension between these two approaches contributed
to my development of the paradigm set forth in chapter four. To review, I see
all discourse as conversation, and I see conversation as emerging from the
tension between rhetorical intent and relational concern.

Others have noticed this tension as well. In Conversational Realities
(1993), Shotter argues for a ”rhetorical-responsive version of social

constructionism.” He says:

I want to claim that our ability as individuals to speak
representationally—that is, to depict or describe a unique
state of affairs (whether real or not), as we please,
independently of the influences of our surroundings—
arises out of us first and primarily speaking in a way that is
responsive to the others around us.

He uses the term rhetorical rather than referential because ”our ways of

talking can ’move’ people to action, or change their perceptions.” He believes

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most of the time we fail to fully understand each other, and if we do, it is by
testing each other’s talk, questioning and challenging it, reformulating it, and
so on. The rhetorical aspect of language, however, allows us to use
metaphors (or stories) to ”make connections” between disconnected
utterances and give form to ”merely sensed feelings and tendencies shared by
speakers and listeners.”

This has been my concern. By examining a fault line between rhetoric and
relationship I’ve hoped to see how the students ”make connections” and so,
in Shotter’s terms, ”depict or describe a unique state of affairs (whether real or
not).” Some of what the students believe is real and some is not. I say that
because I am not a social constructionist, strictly speaking. I do believe we
construct our understanding of the world through words. But as a Christian I
believe the world and God exist outside and independent of my
understanding.

More to the point of Shotter’s argument and aside from my theological
perspectives, however, this tension between the rhetorical and the relational
reveals the way connections are made, and this is at the center of any world
view analysis. Redfield, as noted in the preface, says a world view is ”the way
man, in a particular society, sees himself in relationship to all else.”
Essentially, it is the construction of a universe along an axis from self to not-
self, including nature, others and God. The rhetorical and relational aspects
of a conversational paradigm such as I’m suggesting allows us to explore both
ends of this axis: the self is seen in the rhetorical aspect of this tension and the
not-self is seen in the relational aspect. My analysis has focused on the social
and spiritual relational concerns, but an analysis could be undertaken which
examined discourse in terms of the relationship of speakers and writers to the

physical environment as well.

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What has been discovered then about the world view(s) of these six young
evangelicals? I offer these condensations of the observations at the end of
previous chapters as representative and not comprehensive. We have, after
all, only carefully considered the way they see themselves in relationship to
three not-selves: conversion, Scripture, and Christ.

0 Conversion is an unrecapturable event in the past. Generally, these
students see it as the beginning of a process, what they call over and over
again a struggle. It is not hopeless however. This struggle is characterized by
what I have called ”confidence in providence.”

0 Scripture represents an important symbol system in the background
rather than the foreground of their consciousness. Their language is not
characterized by extensive citations, but in intentional creative work it offers
a rich resource of allegory and allusion.

0 Christ is to some degree a projection of self, easily conceptualized as
conversational partner. He is seen primarily in terms of his humanity rather
than his divinity.

Are these findings generalizable? No. As I have said, the goal of discourse
studies is not to generalize but to particularize. But these particular students
have constructed these particular aspects of their worldview in community,
which may suggest that the rhetoric of evangelical pulpits is not always
maintained in the relational concerns of those who sit in evangelical pews, or
by those who attend evangelical colleges.

And now it is time for the last verse. Just like when I was a kid, we’ve
sung the song through several times. We sometimes ended on a different

verse than the last one. Today it is verse two:

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Just as I am, though tossed about
with many a conflict, many a doubt,
fightings and fears within, without,
Oh Lamb of God, I come.

The preacher is putting the pressure on now. ”The symbolic boundaries of
Protestant orthodoxy are not being maintained,” says Hunter. ”An increasing
number of evangelicals no longer really believe in the sanctity of these
symbolic boundaries....It is not as though these evangelicals no longer believe
in God, his authority, or the authority of scriptures, or the divine sanction of
the traditions... It is that they have trouble believing them simply and
literally.”

Wait, another sinner has come forward to repent. Maybe it’s Brad. There

is time for one more verse.

Just as I am, thou wilt receive,
wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;

because thou promise, I believe—
Oh Lamb of God, I come.

A promise from God? I expect that too has rhetorical and relational

dimensions, part of a conversation in every sense.

POSTSCRIPT

I offer here a few suggestions about what this project might mean to
teachers, researchers, and others interested in the relationship between world
view and language.

The conversational paradigm has implications for teachers of writing. If
they can get students to think self-consciously about the conversational
aspects of their work, that is about both their rhetorical and relational
concerns, the students may be able to make better choices during the
composing process. This could be accomplished in classes and workshops by
examining ordinary conversation and how it works, drawing on the work of
conversational analysis. This would be useful work since it provides a vehicle
for some students to move from the known (conversation) to the unknown
(composition).

Scholars interested in hermeneutics generally can also make use of this
paradigm. There are many different analytical tools available to examine the
rhetorical or relational aspects of various texts. But by doing both (examining
the fault line as I have called it), insights can be gleaned which may be helpful
in understanding how relationships are constructed and examining how
world views are maintained or changed. Religious scholars, for example,
might examine biblical texts and both public and private prayer from this
standpoint.

As I suggested in chapter eight, further insights into the evangelical
subculture could be gained by doing discourse study in other conversational
forms as they relate to other symbolic boundaries. For example, I can use the

data I’ve collected to examine other questions. How do evangelicals handle

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data I’ve collected to examine other questions. How do evangelicals handle
issues of gender and authority? What is the role of media in the language of
evangelicals? Studies of this type would contribute to further understanding
of the evangelical world view.

I have not examined it here, but the oral character of this subculture
would be an interesting study. Because these students see Christ as a
conversational partner, they think (as most evangelicals do) of God
”speaking” to them. Chidester observes: ”Protestant religion is characterized
by an almost exclusive dominance of the auditory mode, in the centrality of
the Word, the sermon and fides ex auditu” (Chidester, 1982). Is
evangelicalism in some sense a preliterate culture, since its biblical text
continues to be perceived as spoken, as alive?

Finally, I believe this project contributes to discussions about ethnography.
How effective can one be as both member and observer of a community?
What is the role of the subject in the research process? I hope I’ve been
transparent enough and thorough enough to help answer these questions.

And I hope I’ve raised some more.

APPENDICES

APPENDD( A

World View:
Definitions and metaphors

Angie and the other students at Cedar Bend share what anthropologist
Marguerite Kraft calls an ”integrating core.” In the case of these young
evangelicals, that core is held together by, in Weaver’s term, the ”tyrannizing
image” of their subculture— the incarnation of God as man. This core is their
world view and is reflected in their conversations in general and their
narratives in particular. Conversation involves communicating this world
view to others, a rhetorical dimension, and creating this world view in
conjunction with others, a relational dimension.

This appendix explores in a general way what the term means and various
metaphors which have been or could be applied to it. It does so without
reference to the data collected at Cedar Bend Farm, but the analysis of that
data in this project serves, among other things, to suggest ways in which
world view can be examined through the use of the conversational paradigm
suggested in chapter three. New ways to think about world view are needed
because the term itself, despite common usage in intellectual circles, lacks
clear definition.

The problems in defining the term can be illustrated with two examples.
Consider Richard Tamas’ book, The Passion of the Western Mind:
Understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view. This book is an

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historical look at the issue of world view which ”explores the evolution of
the Western mind” (Tamas,1991). The first chapter is ”The Greek world
view.” Throughout the book he then traces the impact of Greek thinking—
and concepts such as archetypal forms—on the classical, medieval and
modern periods, coming finally to bear on the ”postmodern mind.” He
concludes that contemporary intellectual ambivalence is due to a joining of
”masculine” and ”feminine” perspectives, a marriage toward which he says
”masculine” Western intellectual traditions have always been inclined.

However, in a five hundred page book subtitled ”Understanding the Ideas
That Shaped Our World View,” he never once defines the term. This is true
of other works which include the term in their titles: ”Do Men’s and
Women’s World Views Differ?”(Jensen, McGhee and Jensen,1991) and
”Effects of World View on Purpose in Life” (Molcar and Stuempfig,l988).

A second example of the confusion surrounding this topic is the way it is
often defined so broadly as to be analytically useless. Consider Hoffecker’s
Building a Christian World View. He says a person’s world view is ”the
collection of his presuppositions or convictions about reality, which
represents his total outlook on life.” These presuppositions, he says, remain
”unidentified and unexamined.” He does not say so, but apparently when the
presuppositions are identified and examined they become convictions. At
any rate, taken together, they ”govern every dimensions of life”
(Hoffecker,1986).

This is an important task, this governing of every dimension of life. Why
then is the term undefined or broadly defined or poorly defined? Is the term
manageable at all, given its invisible and pervasive character? Part of the
problem with defining the term is its interdisciplinary usage. Take the two

examples already cited. Tarnas uses it as a rough equivalent of an historical

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intellectual era while Hoffecker, although approaching it from a historical
perspective, gives it philosophic and religious significance.

Confusion abounds. The term appear as one word (Noebel,1991), as two
words (Kearney,1984; Sires,l976) and as a hyphenated word (Jensen, McGhee
and Jensen,1991). It can mean a way of looking at things, as in ”an existential
world view,” as well as a comprehensive look at things, as in ”developing
economies: a world view.” Originally associated with anthropology, at least in
American intellectual circles, the term has been adapted and applied to
discussions of theology, hermeneutics, phiIOSOphy, psychology, history,
literature, business and any number of other disciplines and interdisciplines
(Rosenau,l992). Synonyms and near synonyms are common, including
German philosopher Habermas’ ”life world” and missionary anthropologist
Fision’s ”mind world.”

At a deeper level, the problem of definition is also rooted in the
conflicting world views of those who use and define the term. Idealists and
pragmatists, modernists and post-modernists each camp has a different set of
presuppositions about where these different presuppositions come from and

how we use them.

World view—an historical perspective
According to Kearney there are two world view schools, both of them
rooted in idealism in general and in modern American anthropology in
particular (Kearney,1984). The first of these is identified with Boas and his
concept of culture. Boasians work by constructing a cultural history of a local
culture by compiling an exhaustive list of its cultural elements.
One of Boas’ students was Edward Sapir who defines culture as a world

outlook and says in doing so he wishes

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to embrace in a single term those general attitudes, views
of life and specific manifestations of civilization that give a
particular people its distinctive place in the world.
Emphasis is put on how what is done and believed
functions in the whole life of that people (Sapir,1949).

Ruth Benedict was another student of Boas, best known for her Patterns of
Culture (1934). This study of Dobuan, Pueblo and Kwakiutl cultures was also
influenced by Spengler and his leitmotzfs, Dilthey and his weltanschauung,
and Gestalt psychology, which developed out of experiments with perception.

Benedict believed each of the three cultures could be reduced to a single
psychological rubric and this conclusion has been often and justly criticized.
One criticism involves the absence of any explanation of personality
acquisition, a criticism addressed by Benedict’s most famous student, Margaret
Mead. Mead’s culture and personality theory is different from world view,
however, since personality theory is interested primarily in the affective
dimensions of life (emotions, needs) and world view is more often concerned
with the rational dimension (logic, systems of thought). The two cannot be
entirely separate, of course.

Largely independent of and concurrent with the work of Boas and his
students at Columbia University, Robert Redfield, a sociologist and social
anthropologist at the University of Chicago, began to study world view
looking for universals rather than patterns. He defines world view as ”the
way a people characteristically look outward on the universe” (Redfield,1953).
His concept is mainly descriptive and his universals include a sense of self,
distinctions between humans (gender, age, race, tribe), relationship to the

non-human (nature, God), and attitudes toward time and space.

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World view— a Christian perspective

Both traditions of world view study have influenced the work of
evangelical scholars, although Redfield’s approach is dominant. Sire, who
studied at the University of Chicago, follows the Redfield school in The
Universe Next Door. Sire says a world view is ”a set of presuppositions (or
assumptions) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic
makeup of our world” (Sires,l976). He develops a set of questions each world
view attempts to answer and then compares the answers of theism, deism,
naturalism, existentialism, pantheism, and new consciousness. The

questions are:

1) What is the prime reality, the really real?
2) Who is man?

3) What happens to man at death?

4) What is the basis of morality?

5) What is the meaning of human history?

His answers have since become the criteria for defining world view in
studies by some evangelicals. Molcar, for example, studies the effect of world
view on purpose in life, identifying the world view of students at California
State University by asking them to select one of a set of five statements
characterizing perspectives on God, humans, death, morality and history as
developed by Sire (Molcar and Stuempfig,1988).

Both Hoffecker and Noebel take an approach similar to Sire, using
categories rather than questions. Hoffecker compares world views on the
basis of their perspectives on God, anthropology and epistemology
(Hoffecker,1986). Noebel discusses three world views (Christianity, Marxism,
secular humanism) in terms of ten categories derived from a series of lectures
by James Orr in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1891. In the lectures, ”The Christian

View of God and the World,” Orr says a Christian is committed ”to a view of

 

150

man, to a view of sin, to a view of redemption, to a view of God in creation
and history, to a view of human history found only in Christianity”
(Noebel,1991).

Such an approach is similar to that of Blamires, who describes the ”marks
of a Christian mind” as a supernatural orientation, an awareness of evil, an
acceptance of authority, a concern for persons, and a sacramental cast. He calls
these ”a few of the presuppositions which constitute its (the Christian mind’s)
frame of reference (Blamires,1963).

But all of these approaches have a weakness: the categories derive from
the world view of the cataloger. World views are compared from the
perspective of the analyst, but an analyst with a different world view might
not accept the categories as valid or even important. For example, Kearney,
whose model we examine shortly, maintains ”The concept of world view, as
a variant of American anthropology, is best regarded as embedded within
American liberal bourgeois culture” (Kearney,1984).

Charles and Marguerite Kraft, on the other hand, have followed Boas
rather than Redfield and Sire in their anthropological approach to missions.
In her dissertation at Fuller Theological Seminary, Marguerite Kraft uses
ethnosemantics to study the world view of Nigerian tribes. By analyzing
lexical terms she discovers dominant categories in the thinking of a particular
tribe and then describes how those concepts can be used to communicate the
Gospel message.

Her definition of world view is not unlike that of Sire and others
following the Redfield school. She sees it as ”the central set of concepts and
presuppositions that a society lives by” (Kraft,1978). She says:

Worldview is learned unconsciously early in life and is
not readily changed. As a child learns how to interact with
his surroundings in a socially acceptable way, he is

151

developing a worldview which will influence his actions
the rest of his life. This will be the integrating core at the
center of his perspective on reality. Worldview bridges the
gap between the objective reality around him and the
culturally agreed on perception of that reality within him.
This integrated core provides the framework for accepting
or rejecting new elements in life. As he comes into contact
with new ideas and elements, they are borrowed only if
they fit into his worldview or if they can be recut or
recolored to fit (Kraft,1978).

Her husband Charles, following the same line, says world view has five
functions: explaining, validating, reinforcing, integrating and adapting
(Kraft,1974). These last two functions are particularly interesting. According
to Kraft a world view has an integrating function because it orders
perceptions or reality into an overall design and has an adapting function
because it is resilient, reconstructing old and new understandings to maintain
equilibrium. As Kraft notes, religion has similar functions.

But the approach the Krafts use is not without its problems. Kearney
observes that enthnosemantic approaches to world view are limited to
semantic domains for which speakers have names. World view study,
however, deals with larger domains with deeper structures. Enthnoscience is
also labor intensive and is thus limited to finite domains, unable, for the
most part, to ”investigate how the idea systems relate to behavior, nor how
they change through time” (Kearney,1984).

In fact, Kraft tried to do both. She attempted to use world view to account
for specific behaviors in the culture and collected data over three ten-year
intervals. But Keamey’s concerns do seem to justify making ethnoscience a
tool within the larger framework of world view theory, a field for which
discourse studies may be more heuristic. Kearney, a Marxist, seems especially

concerned about the tendency of ethnosemantics to focus on nouns rather

152

than verbs, concerned, as he is, with action, or praxis as Marxists prefer to say.

It is a concern Christian scholars should share. Faith without works is dead.

World view— a Marxist perspective

Kearney’s own model, described in his book World View, defines world
view as ”a set of basic assumptions and images that provide a more or less
coherent, though not necessarily accurate, way of thinking about the world”
(Kearney,1984). He has studied Redfield’s model and extended its application
to world view studies by subjecting Redfield’s categories to a Marxist critique,
focusing his understanding of world view on what he calls logico-structural
integration.

By this he means ”some assumptions and the resultant ideas, beliefs, and
actions predicated on them are logically and structurally more compatible
than others, and the entire world view will strive toward maximum logical
and structural consistency” (Kearney,1984). The ”logical” aspect of this
paradigm is roughly analogous to the assumptions of a world view while the
”structural” aspect deals more with its controlling images, or ”templates.”
These interact so ”that a world view as a system has some independence of
material and social influences because of its own intemal dynamics.”

These dynamics are of course what a conversational model of discourse
reflects, the ways in which speakers or writers negotiate the tension between
their rhetorical intentions—the logical aspect of Kearney’s model—and their
relational needs—the structural aspect. These relational needs reflect their
need to fit into the social structures around them, to find and share

controlling images.

153

Kearney has in fact modified Redfield’s categories. He does not include
God, as Redfield did, but explains God in terms of ”projection” and

”reification.” He writes:

Humans seem to be uncomfortable not having answers to
basic concerns such as life, death, illness, cosmology and
their own destinies in general. Consequently humans tend
unconsciously to supply satisfying answers that often have
little bearing on the things they purport to explain. In
supplying these answers, people draw on their experiences
and understanding in other areas of life and fashion
answers out of this material. This process is referred to as
projection and the ideas, the symbols, the false knowledge
so created are uncritically assumed to be ”out there” in the
real world. These images are thus reified, made things,
assumed to be aspects of the environment, when in fact
they are reflections of the environment (Kearney,1984).

This, in Keamey’s view, explains ghosts, spirits and gods. He quotes Marx:
”The productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed
with life.”

This is not radically different from sociologist Peter Berger’s discussion of
religion in the context of ”world building.” In The Sacred Canopy he sees
world building as an ordering, or nomizing (naming) activity. This nemos
acts as a ”shield against terror.” The tendency, says Berger, is ”for meanings of
the humanly constructed order to be projected into the universe”
(Berger,1967). This, he maintains, is the basis of religion.

Projection and reification do occur, of course. We create social, political
and religious images which take on ”real” character in our thinking and are
in fact different from the persons themselves or from God Himself. But
Christians locate God on Keamey’s model (see Figure 3) differently than

Kearney does.

154

Kearney locates God inside the circle, as a construct of a projective system.
Christians can concede that their understanding of Him is partially generated
in such a fashion, but He is also outside the circle, modifying the
environment. By ”outside sources of change” Kearney means ”any influence
from outside the environment that intrudes into it and alters it to the point
that it results in inhabitants perceiving it in a new way” (Kearney,1984).
The Christian sees the supernatural as one of those influences which intrudes
into and alters the world and our perception of it. t .

Figure 3: Kearney’s cross-cultural model of world View

   

 

 

 

 

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World view—a metaphorical perspective

Before drawing any conclusion about any of these definitions or models, a
number of metaphors can be examined which also help clarify the issue of
world view. Some of these can be classified as mechanical metaphors. Sire
adapts Alvin Toffler’s filing cabinet metaphor from Future Shock (Sire, 1979).
This metaphor suggests our basic presuppositions are the files we use to sort
new information, and thus are ultimately the basis of our perception. When
we encounter a new idea we either file it if it is an idea consistent with our
view of reality or discard it if it is not. If the new idea is compelling enough

or if the social pressure to accept it is strong enough, that is, if it suits our

155

rhetorical and relational needs, we may create a new folder altogether. That is
one reason why a study of college students seems fertile regarding this issue:
they are engaged in the process of creating and sorting files.

Kearney also uses a mechanical metaphor. He suggests that world view is
like computer software. This is not uner a filing cabinet, but faster and
more sophisticated. It also provides for linking files. Aside from the physical
abilities and limitations of the nervous system, he says world views
”determine perceptual selectivity and serve to organize received information
and recombine it in new patterns” through principles of logic, world-view
universals and ”other innate or acquired structures.”

Another metaphor is a skeleton. Anthony Wallace says the human brain
contains ”a unique mental image of a complex system of dynamically
interrelated objects” called a ”mazeway.” But he believes many different

kinds of behavior are based on relatively few assumptions:

A world view is not merely a philosophical by—product of
each culture, like a shadow, but the very skeleton of
concrete assumptions on which the flesh of customary
behavior is hung. World View, accordingly, may be
expressed, more or less systematically, in cosmology,
philosophy, ethics, religious ritual, scientific belief, and so
on, but it is explicit in almost every human act

(Wallace, 1970).

Vision itself is another biological metaphor, the one on which the term
world view is based. Sire compares world view to tinted glasses, coloring our
perception of things. Wallace, as just noted, says a mazeway is a ”unique
mental image.” This leads to another class of metaphors, metaphors of space.
These suggest world view affects what we see and how we see it.

Sire, for instance, uses the notion of a universe, arguing that while world

views have a larger collective sense, such as a Christian world view, they are

156

idiomatic: hence the title of his book The Universe Next Door in which he
argues that each individual has a unique vision (Sire, 1979). In How to Read
sSowly he uses a more manageable metaphor, that of a map, a ”map of
reality.” He says:

Like any map it may fit what is really there or it may be
grossly misleading. The map is not the world itself, only
an image of it, more or less accurate in some places,
distorted in others. Still, all of us carry around such a map
in our mental makeup, and we act on it (Sire, 1979).

This spatial image has been explored indirectly in hermeneutics with the
concept of horizon, a central notion of Thiselton’s The two horizons. His
book on philosophical hermeneutics explores and relates the work of
Heidigger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein. The underlying problem
of hermeneutics, according to Thiselton, is two-sided: ”the modern
interpreter, no less than the text, stands in a given historical context and
tradition” (Thiselton,l989). He borrows the term horizon from Gadamer
who uses the analogy of conversation. In Truth and Method Gadamer writes,
”In a conversation, when we have discovered the standpoint and horizon of
the other person, his ideas become intelligible, without our necessarily
having to agree with him” (Thiselton,l989).

Thiselton says Gadamer’s Horizontverschmelzung, or ”fusion of
horizons," describes the problem and the task of hermeneutics, a problem
otherwise known as the hermenufical circle. Briefly, questions put to the text
are reshaped by the text itself. This cyclic process (Thiselton prefers spiral
process) continues as we come to understand a text. To get into a text at all,
however, requires pre-understandings (Thiselton,l989). In hermenutical

terms some pre-understanding is necessary to interpret a text.

157

World view extends that idea to the world itself. A world view is a set of
fundamental pre-understandings which constitute a standpoint from which
we see things. In biblical hermeneutics understanding occurs as our horizons
overlap with that of the writer. In conversation the same thing happens as a
speaker or writer shares or comprehends the world view of the listener or
reader. But a world view is not just a way of making sense out of what we see
or hear; it is a way of making sense out of everything we touch or taste or
smell or see. And, to extend the metaphor, it defines the limits, or the
horizon, of that of which we can make sense.

Horizon, in this hermenutical sense, raises a different set of metaphors,
metaphors rooted in social interaction. Wittgenstein’s concept of a cage may
be a negative image of horizon as discussed above. But his concept of
language-game has been quite influential in philosophy, in hermeneutics,
and in the social sciences, and Thiselton discusses his view at length
(Thiselton,l989). In Wittgenstein’s thinking all language is part of a given
language-game. Meaning depends on use, which depends on training. The
language—game is not law-governed, but regulated by custom or convention.
Consequently, language is always context dependent, and there are different
contexts. Language is rooted in ”forms of life” which are ultimately the
”scaffolding of our thoughts.”

Wittgenstein doesn’t use the term world view, but the ”scaffolding of our
thoughts” sounds like the set of assumption about reality we call a world
view. But can a world view be seen as a ”form of life” with a particular
”language game”? Wittgenstein sees religion as a language-game, but he says
we have different language-games at different times and for different reasons.

Stanley Fish, a literary critic, argues that we can have different strategies

for making sense of language. His notion of interpretive communities is

158

based on ”shared interpretive strategies,” a set of assumptions about what
counts. He claims a person can belong to more than one interpretive
community. That’s why the same reader may get different meanings from the
same text. A lot of people can also belong to the same community. That’s
why different readers can get the same meaning (Fish, 1980).

Gill describes interpretive communities in a way which reflects the notion

of world view. He writes:

An interpretive community, be it ancient Israelites or
present-day speech-act theorists, is basically teleological
because it imposes on the experiences of its members a
sense of that for which an event occurs, a direction or goal
which gives meaningfulness and value to their lives (Gill,
1983).

But while an interpretive community can and probably does share major
presuppositions of a common world view, they are not the same thing . A
community nurtures a world view, as Kraft observed. The world view also
nurtures the community, giving rise to the interpretive strategies it shares.
Our purpose in this study is to examine that which gives meaningfulness and
value to the lives of the students who participated in the project, and, in
doing so to increase our understanding of how their world view informs
their conversation. World view, as used here, is not a language-game or an
interpretive community, although both metaphors can contribute to our
understanding of how it works and what it is. World view is used here in the
sense of Kraft’s ”integrated core,” what the ancient Israelites called the heart.

Metaphors such as these help clarify the notion of world view, but the
search for the perfect metaphor is probably unnecessary and unwise.
Thiselton, following Wittgenstein, cautions against the power a picture has to
seduce us. ”What misleads us,” he says, ”is not simply the power a of a

model or metaphor as such, but the fact that all too often our way of seeing a

159

particular problem is wholly dictated by a single controlling picture. In these
circumstances it exercises a spell over us, which bewitches our intelligence
and blinds us to other ways of seeing the problem” (Thiselton, 1980).

Perhaps then there is wisdom in the multitude of models, definitions and
metaphors which have been described here. But at least a few observations

seem to be in order.

Observations

1) World view can be seen as a religious concept.

Such a conclusion has been hinted at above. Kraft, for example, gives
world view an adaptive and integrative function which Malinowski has
assigned to religion (Kraft, 1978). Redfield included God as one of the
universals with which world view deals (Redfield, 1953). And even atheistic
conceptions of reality such as Marxism are predicated on articles of faith.
Hoffecker says: ”We must not draw back from the conclusion that all of life is
religion...and all world views are religious, not just those expressed by
theologians....Every philosopher we studied intended, either consciously or
unconsciously, that his ideas be foundations for life” (Hoffecker, 1986). The
students we met in this study are not equally devout, but, in world view

terms, they are equally religious.

2) World view has its own ”hermeneutical circle. "

You cannot not have a world view, nor can you not have pre-
understandings which influence how you view the concept of world view or
the world view of others with a different world view. That is not to say that
a catalog approach to world view such as Sire’s is without merit. It has its

place in an interpretive community, and scholars outside that community

 

{MI-v. '0

160

can still use it to make progress toward a fusion of horizons. But the catalog
approach is limited and should be supplemented by other approaches and

tools.

3) Discourse studies, although generally ignored by Christian scholars,
have much to add to the discussion about the meaning and significance of
world view.

In some sense this is a difference between inductive and deductive
approaches. Do you start with generalizations or particulars? Both ways of
looking at world view may help, but starting with particulars allows scholars
to go beyond discussions of what world view is to discussions of what it does
and how it does it. In religious studies there has been little attention given to
how world view affects our language or behavior. Discourse analysis may
help reveal what the presuppositions of a world View are instead of what they

are supposed to be.

4) World view studies are problems in cross-cultural communication.

The work of world view studies has often been to compare one world
view with another. But motives vary according to the world view of the
researcher. Marxists such as Kearney call for more work on classes and
societies to aid oppressed peoples by helping them understand the mentality
of oppression (Kearney, 1984). Theists such as Noebel call for more work on
ideologies in order to aid non-theists in seeing the advantages of the truths
which theists maintain (Noebel, 1991).

Fish’s notion of interpretive communities is helpful here. As Gill notes:

Many interpretive communities believe that their
strategies produce truth, but the outside observer is more
likely to find that those strategies, knowingly or not, serve

161

the purpose of interpreting reality in ways that
communities believe are meaningful....Only when a
community understands the sources of its beliefs can it
examine them in light of other values. Then it can begin
to avoid the limitations of an entirely self-regulating
system, which must accept its priorities unexamined and
fail to persuade people of different values. Only when a
system has goals beyond itself can it find priorities for its
internal values that will be persuasive to people outside its
community (Gill, 1983).

Kearney’s model, which is essentially a cross-cultural one, is useful to any
interpretive community interested in examining the how and why of world
view rather than merely the what. Looking at how a basic set of assumptions
is articulated in discourse is fertile territory for researchers interested in world

view.

5) World view is both rooted in and reflected in language.

Zhiming says ”language is able to describe the world by virtue of an
isomorphic fit between them” (Zhirning, 1990). In his analysis of language
and world view in ancient China he finds that Confucius and others did not
see language as a descriptive tool independent of the world it describes.
Thiselton shows the same to be true of Heidegger and Wittgenstein
(Thiselton, 1989). Wittgenstein said, for example, that ”only in the stream of
thought and life do words have meaning.” He sees language as a ”form of
life,” its uses (language-games) grounded in particular surroundings.
Discourse analysis, reader-response criticisms and other contemporary
approaches to language converge at this point (Marshall, 1983).

Feminist critics, for example, ”look at how literature comprehends,
transmits, and shapes female experience and is, in turn, shaped by it”
(Erickson, 1983). This concern has led to studies on women as both readers

and writers—in other words, on how language reflects and shapes a woman’s

f

162

world view. Feminist psychologists also use language as a basis for
examining world view. Jensen concludes that ”men and women have
differing world views which lead them to place greater importance on the
different adjectives associated with what might be called a masculine or
feminine perspective, as described by recent feminist writers” (Jensen et al.,
1991).

It is important then that any world view analysis concern itself with an
analysis of the language of its adherents, not merely the philosophical
formulations of the analyst. This is a focus consistent with Christ’s

observation that our words reflect the thoughts and intents of our hearts.

 

 

APPENDD<B
Student Responses to the Analysis

Linda, whose conversion narrative is discussed in chapter five

Relating with words someone else has written has always been a very
profound experience for me. It has been doubly so in reading someone else’s
words about me that seem to speak from my very core and bring back feelings
and emotions I experienced at a time in my life I haven’t thought about for a
while. Since Cedar Bend I have resolved my feelings for Steve and have
come to have a stable, fulfilling friendship with him. He lives in another
state now and we periodically keep in touch.

It was a scary experience to read what Wally wrote about me in this paper
because I am one who has prided myself in being able to keep a part of myself
hidden. I frequently have found myself talking to someone about a subject
while secretly in my mind I am talking about something else. Wally is the
first person I have known who has seen through this rouse by simply
examining my words. He didn’t prod me with questions until I came out

with what I was feeling, but by examining my words the curtain was lifted.

Brad, whose angel poems are examined in chapter six

It was popular culture’s immense fascination with angels that attracted me
to write about the subject. I looked at how ”pop” Christians had so recently
come to view angels, through the god-awful pulp fiction of Frank Peretti, and
how ”new-agers” had adopted for their angel imagery cute, well-meaning

creatures, and found both utterly unsatisfying and boring.

163

 

 

164

I thought it would be interesting to portray angels in their socially
acceptable role as guardians, but at a dimension of morality to their being, a
missing attribute of biblical angels. They were just as confused and morally
impaled as the rest of us. In fact, even they couldn’t live up to the
expectations we are given as Christians. This was divinity I could relate to,
faltering and beautiful all at once.

It’s interesting that Norm’s angels are in contrast with mine. They seem
angry and bitter, sad at the world’s state. He seems more comfortable with
Peretti’s angels. After being reminded, I did notice that Norm never
commented on my angel poems. What is interesting is that I don’t seem to be
involved in the conversation about his poem. In all honesty, I don’t

remember him reading that poem or discussing it afterward.

Jerry, whose homecoming skit is discussed in chapter seven

I agree with most of Wally’s analysis as laid out in chapter seven. The
rhetorical and relational aspects are very well laid out, and seem quite
plausible to me. There is one point with which I have a problem: the E-mail
message at the beginning of the chapter. I did not know how the message
would be used, and hence did not take the time with my discourse that I
would have had I know it would be used verbatim. [Jerry did give permission
for the E-mail to be used as data.] I believe that the analysis, when using only
the E-mail message as a point of reference, is correct. But had I known it
would have been used in this matter, I would have laid out my beliefs in a
much more coherent manner. In that case there would be, I believe, no

inconsistency in my views.

 

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