Prophet, Pastor, and Patriarch: The Rhetorical Leadership of Alexander Campbell (review)

Alexander Campbell, father of nineteenth-century America's Restorationist Movement, was a man of profound rhetorical contradictions. He preached for unity within the Christian faith, yet his movement broke from the Baptists and eventually splintered into at least three distinct denominations. He was university trained and immersed in both classical and Enlightenment rhetoric, and yet he eschewed the trappings of classical eloquence in favor of a more natural, conversational style. He sought to restore the ancient church, but used the persuasive principles of modern science, such as Lockean empiricism. He was an outsider without ecclesiastical rank, and yet his rhetorical leadership, according to Peter Verkruyse, hinged on the claim that his restoration theology could not be more authoritative, or more central, to Christianity. In Prophet, Pastor, and Patriarch, Verkruyse gives us a thorough and attentive reading of Alexander Campbell's rhetoric as he worked within these contradictions in publications and speeches, forging "an evolving leadership ethos" that was "progressively adapted to the shifting needs of the movement" (50).

Near the end of the Revolutionary War, American religion began to transform itself through the impassioned work of largely uncredentialed populists whose charisma and rhetorical acumen did much to democratize the church. Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, itinerant preachers, African Americans, and women exhorters all contributed to a new atmosphere of anticlericalism, millennial expectation, innovative communication, and a new zeal for restoring the principles of the primitive church, long since lost. Under the leadership of Barton W. Stone, a Presbyterian minister in Kentucky, and Alexander Campbell, a handful of independent churches broke from other denominations to become the Stone-Campbell Movement, which would later fracture into the Christian Church, the Disciples of Christ, and the Churches of Christ.

Through "discursive activities" alone rather than any "external authority" or "official position," Campbell became the leader of this popular religious movement (153). "The Ancient Gospel," he argued in 1830, "will alone be the instrument of converting the whole human race, and of uniting all Christians upon one and the same foundation," a foundation built on a literal interpretation of the Bible (24). Verkruyse describes how, as a young student at the University of Glasgow, Campbell was immersed in the rhetoric of the new science including Baconian induction, faculty psychology, Scottish commonsense realism, and George Campbell's "affective" rhetorical tradition (30). In all his rhetorical practices in America, Campbell used "historical and inductive proofs" to demonstrate the ways in which faith in the ancient gospel followed a clear understanding of the "facts" of the scriptures, if expounded naturally and with "perspicuity" by the preacher (38, 45). In his own writing and speaking, Campbell sought to convey these truths in "pure speech" that emphasized the "natural relationship between words, ideas, and human understanding" (44). This quest for certainty through evidentiary rhetoric was the hallmark of American theology until after the Civil War.

To lay bare Campbell's rhetorical leadership, Verkruyse relies on a handful of the most popular theories in the discipline drawn from Aristotle, George Campbell, Maurice Charland, Richard Lanham, Chaim Perelman, Kenneth Burke, and Ernest Bormann. He uses these theorists not so much to add anything new to the conversation on rhetorical theory as to read Alexander Campbell rhetorically to account for the way that his leadership of the movement evolved through his discourse. The product of this inquiry is a monograph in which each chapter introduces a different rhetorical theory and applies it through close reading to a selection from Campbell's sermons or articles. His goal, as he tells us in the beginning of the work, is to read Campbell's rhetorical leadership "diachronically" as it evolved from an uncompromising prophetic ethos of ridiculing theological enemies, to a more reasonable and tolerant pastoral ethos, and finally, in Campbell's old age, to a patriarchal ethos through which he cast himself as the father and "chief executive visionary" of the movement (146).

Verkruyse's careful and close readings of...