1、Mormon OratoryAn IntroductionGideon O. Burton / Brigham Young University“And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do thatwhich was justyea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than thesword, or anything else, which had happened unto th
2、emtherefore Alma thought it wasexpedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.” Alma 31:5Mormons do not generally think of themselves as orators. By and large Latter-day Saintsconsider themselves to be regular folks, while orators are great statesmen and public figures likeAbraham Linc
3、oln, Winston Churchill, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Oratory connotes a certain levelof high-toned rhetoric that may even feel fundamentally foreign to LDS sensibilities. Politicalrhetoric, after all, is tainted with bombast and deceit. Mormons do, however, consider themselvesto be speakers. We give “
4、talks,” but we dont declaim; we may teach, but we dont harangue; wemay proselyte, but we dont propagandize.But Mormons nevertheless participate in a long tradition of Christian oratory that can be saidto begin with Jesus himself. Christs sermons and teachings have flooded the world with “the word,”t
5、he message of salvation, and that message about the Mediator is mediated through language,through discourse, through speaking and teaching, preaching and praying, blessing and confessing,chastising and consoling, and every act of Christian service that depends upon speech. Heavenlycommunion requires
6、 earthly communication.Latter-day Saints, as those of so many other faiths, make the study of the spoken word aprominent part of their private and public devotion. We turn to written sermons for both doctrine andencouragement: the Sermon on the Mount, Peters Pentecostal sermon, Pauls Mars Hill speec
7、h tothe Athenians, and in the Book of Mormon the stirring speeches by King Benjamin, Abinadi,Burton / Mormon Oratory / p.2Amulek, Samuel the Lamanite, Alma, or Christ addressing the ancient Americans. As Christians andas Mormons we preserve and prize the spoken word. We reread it and quote it and sh
8、ape ourthoughts into the framework of the spoken words of ancient and modern prophets. For Latter-daySaints, living within a theology that insists upon the reality of ongoing revelation, the written wordin scripture becomes continuous with the spoken word heard from the mouths of contemporaryprophet
9、s and local leaders who speak Gods present will; patriarchs and priesthood holders whopronounce blessings; missionaries who preach and teachers who teach. In short, Mormons believeGod continues speaking, presently and powerfully, and this conditions Latter-day Saints to attendto and to expect vital
10、spiritual guidance through Gods written and spoken word, past and present.Scripture is living for Mormons; the echoes of Gods spoken word never diminish, but are onlycomplemented and amplified through the vigorous voicing given them by believers in a hundredspeaking contexts.Oratory is not just a su
11、bject of study for Latter-day Saints; it is an ongoing practice. Ours isa lay church in which members of the congregation take turns at the pulpit preaching, and in theclassroom teaching, and on the streets testifying. Public speaking has always been central to theMormon faith. The proselyting that
12、helped Joseph Smiths fledgling church emerge from thebackdrop of nineteenth century America was accomplished through preaching, and the millions ofadherents who have for nearly 200 years grounded their faith in the restored gospel of Jesus Christhave shared and shored up their faith through constant
13、 communication. Consider the fact that everyweek of the year some 20,000 sermons are given across the pulpits of Latter-day Saint wards andbranches. To this can be added the speeches given at every fireside, funeral, or patriotic assemblyin which Mormons regularly gather. For Latter-day Saints as fo
14、r other faiths, it is not sufficient toBurton / Mormon Oratory / p.3receive the word; it must be shared and celebrated in many different places to many differentaudiences through formal and informal speaking.Most Mormon speaking goes unrecorded, but the official speeches of church leaders havebeen p
15、reserved and published from the beginning, and those sermons now constitute an impressiveliterary and oratorical heritage. I estimate that some 8000 sermons presented at the semiannualGeneral Conferences of the church have been published and circulated, and dozens more are addedto this twice a year.
16、 The Journal of Discourses fills a shelf with 26 volumes of collected sermons,some 1424 individual speeches in all, and these span but a few decades of Mormon history. GeneralConference addresses are now published in multiple media on an ongoing basis, accumulating a vaststore of recorded public spe
17、aking. It is not just those speeches given at general conferences of thechurch that are published. A sizeable body of published speeches now exists from the variousdevotional addresses, forum speeches, and commencement speeches that have taken place at LDSinstitutions of higher learning, while other
18、 popular occasions for Mormon public speaking have inrecent years also become a steady tributary in the swelling river of Latter-day Saint public address:Womens Conference, Especially For Youth, religious symposia, academic conferences, etc.Mormon speeches have also circulated widely over the broadc
19、ast media (radio, television, internet),in audiotape, videotape, and DVD versions, and fireside circuit speakers have published their talksin book form or marketed these extensively through LDS retailers on audiotape and CD. Many Mormon speakers have received popular acclaim for their oratorical abi
20、lities (SidneyRigdon, Brigham Young, Matthew Cowley, LeGrand Richards, Neal A. Maxwell, John Bytheway,Susan Easton Black, Chieko Okazaki, Sheri Dew, etc.), but surprisingly few have been given seriousscholarly attention or rhetorical criticism. David Whittakers bibliography counts only a score ofBur
21、ton / Mormon Oratory / p.4formal studies of some 15 Mormonsall of them general authorities, none of them women, most ofthem from the nineteenth century. There is more that remains undone than done in analyzingMormon oratory.As a starting place for understanding the range of Mormon speaking, we might
22、 consider someof the major categories by which experts in rhetoric and public speaking analyze communication andapply these within a Mormon context. Most of these, by the way, have had next to no seriousattention yet given to them:To whom do Mormons speak? with what purposes? in what settings and on
23、 what occasions?What is characteristic of Mormon speaking as children, as adolescents, as adults, as teachers, asleaders?What determines the formality of Mormon speaking? Is Mormon speaking prepared orspontaneous, pre-written or extemporaneous? How do Mormons develop their speaking ability? What are
24、 measures of the success of Mormon speaking? What cultural habits have developed that now typify Mormon public address, and are thesecontinuous across the many places and time periods in which Mormons have lived and spoken?What standard patterns can be found in Mormon speaking? what lines of reasoni
25、ng, whatkinds of authority are appealed to? Are there typical patterns of arrangement within Mormonsermons?How do Mormons establish their authority when speaking?How do Mormons appeal to emotion within their speaking? What use is there of humor, ofBurton / Mormon Oratory / p.5personal anecdotes, of
26、emotionally bearing witness of belief? How does this relate to the messageand purpose of their speaking?What stylistic traits are sought for, avoided, or imitated within Mormon speaking? What methods are used for delivery in Mormon speaking? How do Latter-day Saints useinflection, pitch, gestures, v
27、isual objects, and media as part of their speaking? How do they makeuse of sound amplification? How do they accommodate the broadcasting of speeches, the translationof speeches?When are speeches recorded? transcribed? distributed? read in written form? How dospeeches incorporate material from other
28、speeches, or how do speakers draw from scripture, fromhistory, from contemporary culture to make their points?What does Mormon speaking actually do? What effects does it have? How does this squarewith the intentions of speakers and leaders? Lets take just the first of this series of questions to see
29、 how it plays out: To whom doMormons speak? On the most general level Mormon speaking can be divided betweencommunication oriented toward those outside the faith (proselyting) and toward those inside the faith(sermons to the converted). A third vital audience is God as He is spoken to through prayer
30、. Ofcourse one could further divide the Mormon audience into the various settings in which speakingis employed very differently: the General Conference setting, speaking from the podium of aMormon chapel, speaking in a classroom setting, communication within private interviews betweenleaders and mem
31、bers or between parents and children, speaking that takes place in home and visitingteaching settings, etc. Much could be studied about how Mormon speaking changes when theseBurton / Mormon Oratory / p.6different audiences or settings are anticipated, especially when one adds the complicating factor
32、 ofaudience size, mixed audiences (old/young, male/female, member/non-member, active/less-activemember, Americans/non-Americans, etc.), intimate speaking settings vs. mass audience settings, andof course the way that media, either by its presence or absence, affects a speakers understanding ofhis/he
33、r audience and the way he/she shapes, times, arranges, and presents his/her speech. Thequestion of audience very quickly moves to the question of setting, and the places and occasions forMormon speaking each have their own dynamic. Ultimately, studying Mormon speaking requiresthe sensitivity of an a
34、nthropologist in addition to the skills of a linguist, literary critic, or rhetorician.It sometimes requires the historians knowledge of places in the past or the sociologistsunderstanding of the cultural configurations that conditioned Mormon speaking in places as diverseas ancient America, 19 cent
35、ury New York, 20 century western American, or the 21 centuryth th stinternational settings for LDS speaking. Obviously there are a variety of fruitful possibilities for investigating Mormon speaking,beginning with an understanding of the various people, places, and events involved with LDS publicadd
36、ress. My students and I have put together a proposed table of contents for a possible anthologyof Mormon speaking. Its categories are a beginning for understanding the great variety of audiencesand occasions for Mormon speaking that have not yet been academically studied (see separatedocument).Mormo
37、n oratory is complementary with Mormon literature and history. Obviously asspeeches are recorded, printed, distributed, and read they become literary objects with their owndynamicsnew audiences, applied to new uses, and overall helping to contribute to a body of writingthat makes possible analysis a
38、nd interpretation unavailable when a speech is never written. TheseBurton / Mormon Oratory / p.7recorded speeches, like the thousands of poems, stories, plays, and novels penned by Mormons,contribute to a cultural record through which we can come to understand the values and characterof the LDS peop
39、le throughout their varied history. Of course some speeches become canonized asscripture, whether anciently (Book of Mormon speeches), currently (General Conference addressespublished officially as Gods word through modern day prophets), or privately (patriarchalblessings). Those who compose their speeches in written form also develop a personal literature, arecord not just of their speaking but of their thinking processes and their personality. #Draft: September 15, 2005
