Small Strokes Big Oaks

This is part of a series of posts about rhetoric and feminism.  I’ll be writing these responses every week as part of my graduate class about Topics in Rhetoric this semester, and I welcome any and all responses!

This week, a particular passage about passions from Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres really struck my interest.  Excerpts of this passage are as follows:

We should observe in what manner any one expresses himself, who is under the power of a real and a strong passion; and we shall always find his language unaffected and simple. It may be animated, indeed, with bold and strong figures, but it will have no ornament or finery. He is not at leisure to follow out the play of imagination. His mind being wholly seized by one object which has heated it, he has no other aim, but to represent that, in all its circumstances, as strongly as he feels it… Beware even of reasoning unseasonably; or, at least, of carrying on a long and subtile train of reasoning, on occasions when the principal aim is to excite warm emotions….Warm emotions are too violent to be lasting. (The entire chapter can be found here.)

In my experience as an activist and blogger, this idea can be applied to any number of passionate speakers using their passions to do wrong.  However, this week, I’d like to use this passage to discuss Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

Like many preachers, Fred Phelps is an incredibly passionate speaker.  The delivery of his speeches is, in some ways, memorizing. (In my opinion, this is more equated to not being able to take your eyes off of a car accident as you pass by it, but that’s neither here nor there.)  However, I feel if Blair were to see him speak, he would consider Phelps a passionate orator, and one to watch out for.  From what I understand, Phelps’ entire premise for his protests is that God condemns gay people to hell, and punishes not only people who are gay, but also people who are allies to the LGBT community.  Under his reasoning, 9/11, the school shooting at NIU, the violent murder of Matthew Sheppard, etc. all happened because of the gay people in the United States.

If you watch Phelps speak, you see his language is, as Blair states, “unaffected and simple.” (A good example of this is in a documentary titled Fall from Grace in which we see Phelps, his supports, and several other philosophers, evangelicals, etc. who disagree with his perspectives, which you can view here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5xHfDMGtD0 – Please know that there may be some offensive or triggering images and speeches here; this is simply posted as an example for this response.)  It is clear, even just watching him for a few seconds, that his mind is completely wrapped around the issue of gay people in our country.  His arguments are, therefore, singular and unimaginative.   He is certainly “not at leisure to follow out the play of imagination,” as Blair put it.

Blair ends this passage with a caution: “Warm emotions are too violent to be lasting,” but, unfortunately, Phelps has a relatively large following who seemingly devote their lives to protesting funerals, events, etc. that have anything to do with gay people or gay rights.  Why is this happening if we know that extremists such as this rarely prosper in the end?  If we have been formally warned since the 19^th century not to engage in this sort of rhetoric and those who do are not to be believed?

The only answer I can think of is that, for those who do not think critically about the arguments presented by Phelps, the logic works.  The passages he quotes are, in fact, in the Bible and, if you believe the Bible is the word of God, there is very little to argue with here.  However, if you dig a little deeper, or “follow out the play of imagination,” you will find what the other theorists in the video are discussing: These passages also state things like clothes made of certain fabrics should not be worn, and grain harvested from a farm with more than one type of seed should not be eaten, etc.  Contemporary religious figures like Phelps do not see the need to adhere to these rules, but do see the need to follow the rules regarding sexuality and preach that message passionately.

I believe the idea of a person speaking with much passion being a person without much rhetorical skill closely resembles Quintilian’s idea that a rhetorician must be a good man.  In this case, I would agree with Quintilian as well as Blair: to really use rhetoric, one must be using his or her oratorical powers for good.  I would not consider Fred Phelps a skilled rhetorician, no matter how many followers he manages to procure through his impassioned speeches.