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105 8 — A Question of Truth reading the bible, rhetoric, and christian tradition Beth Daniell On the syllabus for my upper-division rhetoric course is the statement that one goal of the class is to explore is the relationship of language and truth. This topic, I find, very much interests undergraduates. In almost every rhetoric class I’ve taught, as we review the various stances between rhetoric and truth, a student has asked, indirectly or directly, in a response paper or in class discussion or in my office, some version of this question: “If we create truth or knowledge through language, and it’s all persuasion, then how do we know what is right? If rhetoric isn’t conveying some big-T Truth but is instead creating many little-t truths, what happens to morality? To the Ten Commandments? To the Bible?” This is a question college instructors must be prepared not only to respond to but also to respect. The young adults who come into our classrooms are moving into critical thinking and are being confronted with ideas that are new to them and narratives that run counter to the ones they learned in their home communities. Sometimes students respond to these new ideas with resistance : the questions provoked by this new information are just too scary. But sometimes students are not resisting; they’re just grappling with unfamiliar outlooks and perspectives, trying to make it all make sense. Many students 106 ■ beth daniell come to college from conservative evangelical or fundamentalist backgrounds and may be thus concerned about possible challenges to the truth of the Bible. This is true particularly in my part of the country, the South, which, you may remember, Flannery O’Connor called “Christ-haunted.”1 But in my experience many students who voice concerns about the truth of scripture come, as well, from the mainstream denominations—Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Church of Christ, Catholic. The students I am talking about are not the apocalyptic fundamentalists you’ve met in Sharon Crowley’s book Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism, nor are they necessarily like the conservative young woman named Mary in Nancy Grimm’s Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times or other fundamentalist students about whom academics become exercised.2 These are, rather, upper-division students, some from small towns but others from midsize cities or from one large metropolis, mostly middle class, who have done well in English, history, political science, or communications . They have chosen to take rhetorical theory, and they’ve been in the class for several weeks when these questions are voiced: if rhetoric isn’t just conveying some big-T Truth that already exists out there somewhere but is instead using language to create little-t truths for particular groups in particular times and places, then how do we know what is right? Our answers should be neither flippant nor disrespectful. I say this definitively , having myself committed both pedagogical sins. The first year I taught at Clemson University in South Carolina, the topic of evolution came up in an advanced composition class. One student spoke aloud the concern of many when she asked, “Dr. Daniell, you don’t believe in evolution, do you?” My reply: “Yes, of course I do. I believe in electricity, too.” Concern turned to horror as the students realized their professor was apostate. I spent two days explaining what a theory is and what evidence means as well as preaching heartfelt sermons on the importance of intellectual doubt—“There is more faith in honest doubt than in all the creeds.”3 And, though they listened politely, I never quite got that class back. I tell this story when people ask about how to handle questions of faith that come up in class because this narrative is an exemplar of how not to deal with such issues. Confronted with that question now that I am older and, I hope, somewhat wiser, I would lose the sarcasm and talk about the relationship of science and faith, hoping to help students recognize that where some people see a conflict, others see complementarities. The more I’ve thought about this question of the truth of scriptural texts, the more I’ve realized that the underlying issue is actually, more often than not, how people read. Despite the fact that most of my rhetorical theory students are English majors, they often seem to have missed the concept that there are many ways to read a text...

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