In 2006, Barack Obama delivered the keynote address at Call to Renewal's Building a Covenant for a New America conference. The conference was generally calling for increased attention to poverty, and in his keynote (available in full here: http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal/ ), Obama focused on the importance of religious rhetoric in politics: "if we truly hope to speak to people where they're at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own - then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse."

This quote caught my attention for a few reasons. I currently teach a course called "The Rhetoric of Miracles." The course looks at a range of texts - articles, novels, film, and music - that somehow privilege the term "miracle" in their arguments and themes. Each of these texts both depart from the religious context of miracles and yet reconstitute this context in different ways. In other words, these texts occupy a space not quite secular, not quite sacred.

In _Permanence and Change_, Kenneth Burke calls for a similar sort of religious rhetoric as a response to the "technological psychosis" that skews our cultural thinking toward the secular, the scientific, and the rationalistic. For Burke, the corrective to this psychosis "must almost necessarily show some superficial affinity with the religious rationalization. For man is essentially human, however earnestly he may attempt to reshape his psychological patterns in obedience to the patterns of his machines—and it was the religious rationalization which focused its purposes upon the controlling of human forces (the organic productive forces of the mind-and-body itself)" (63). Burke goes on: any corrective to the scientific rationalization “must certainly move in the direction of the anthropomorphic or humanistic or poetic, since this is the aspect of the culture which the scientific criteria, with their emphasis on dominance rather than upon inducement, have tended to eliminate or minimize” (65). Ultimately, Burke wants to privilege the "poetic" over the "religious" but notes some overlap between the two. Burke puts us in space similar to that of the "miracle" texts - not quite secular, not quite sacred.

From Obama to Burke, we have a range of authors arguing for and encouraging religious rhetoric. In the rhetoric classroom, many of us imagine ourselves turning our students into good citizens by promoting critical thinking skills. While it certainly seems possible to balance religious rhetoric and critical thinking skills, the arguments for religious rhetoric often seem to be aiming for something beyond the rational. I'm not sure of the best way to articulate this; I don't think we need to equate this "beyond the rational" with the supernatural or metaphysical. If anything, the argument seems to resonate with post-structuralist insights that see reason as a particular frame rather than a universal or transcendent given. The revitalization of religious rhetoric in some ways serves to point to this frame in order to recognize what exists beyond it. This beyond need not be divine, but it is no longer reason.

Does this call for religious rhetoric have any place in the classroom? I think it is important to keep in mind that this rhetoric has more to do with language than with religious doctrine. This is certainly not a call to organized religion. Paul Maltby argues that the language of the beyond (Maltby specifically refers to the rhetoric of "the visionary moment" and the "sublime") obscures the necessity and value of critique. Obama, Burke, and others suggest that such language will be a necessary aspect of our critical endeavors. Does the latter call strike a chord with anyone? Should we be teaching something beyond critical thinking skills? Perhaps even calingl these skills into question? The question could also be considered in terms of rhetorical situation. For many students, religious rhetoric dramatically informs their rhetorical situations in the world (not to mention the global political situation). Is there a responsible way to tap into this language? As rhetoric instructors, are we committed to the cause of secularism?