In the Name of the Father
The Rhetoric of the New Southern Baptist Convention
Carl L. Kell and L. Raymond Camp
Foreward by Kenneth Chafin

June
ISBN 0-8093-2220-X / cloth / $34.95s
272 pages / 6 X 9
Speech Communication / Rhetoric / Religion

At the watershed Southern Baptist Convention of 1979, moderate forces fell before the powerful oratory of the ultra-conservative faction, which has remained in power ever since. Communication professors Carl L. Kell and L. Raymond Camp investigate the rhetorical shift from moderate to ultra-conservative in the post­1979 Southern Baptist Convention, the largest denomination in the South and the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.

Drawing on sermons delivered at national conventions from 1979 to the present, Kell and Camp outline the discourses of fundamentalism, inerrancy, and exclusion. These discourses, the authors assert, point to the SBC leaders' call for a return to times before liberalism, feminism, and tolerance of varying sexual orientations allegedly brought chaos to society and shook believers from their theological foundations.

Viewing the work of preacher "warrior" James Draper as the official doctrinal statement on inerrancy, Kell and Camp analyze Draper's Authority: The Critical Issue for Southern Baptists and hone in on the pulpit rhetoric of other key preachers in the SBC. As a counterpoint to the official position of the SBC on excluding women as denominational leaders, Kell and Camp examine at length the apologia rhetoric of Baptist Women in Ministry. They also confront another issue that sparks a firestorm of anger—homosexuality.

In the Name of the Father will appeal to those interested in rhetoric, religion, and contemporary culture.

Carl L. Kell is the director of Development and Alumni Affairs in the communication and broadcasting department at Western Kentucky University, where he also teaches rhetorical strategies in American and Southern popular culture.

L. Raymond Camp is a professor of communication at North Carolina State University. He is the author of Roger Williams: God's Apostle of Advocacy and the editor of Persuasion in the Public Forum: Pulpit, Bar, and Council.

"The sharp turn to the right of the Southern Baptist Convention is an arresting cultural and rhetorical phenomenon. Kell and Camp provide an insider/outsider view of the turn, offering a sympathetically incisive critical analysis of the rhetoric that powered it. Scholars and students both of rhetoric and religion will find much in this book to commend its use."

—Helen Sterk,
Calvin College