ANALYZING THE DISCOURSE OF ONLINE EVANGELICAL ALTAR CALLS by Clint D. Bryan A ...

241 Pages·2016·1.04 MB·English

“HEADS BOWED, EYES CLOSED”:
ANALYZING THE DISCOURSE OF ONLINE EVANGELICAL ALTAR CALLS

by
Clint D. Bryan

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements of the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in English

Middle Tennessee State University
May 2016

Dissertation Committee:

Dr. Mohammed Albakry, Chair
Dr. Elyce Helford
Dr. Patrick Richey
I dedicate this dissertation to my wife Sally, without whose undying support this dream
would never have been fulfilled.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My wife Sally is solely responsible for my return to graduate school. She serves as my
inspiration and my best friend. I am grateful to Tyler and Abby for their faithful support
through this arduous process. I also wish to thank my sister Cori and my son Philip for
always being in my corner. I would like to thank Dr. Mohammed Albakry for helping to
refine my writing as a scholar. Thank you, sir, for always treating me as a colleague. I
appreciate the helpful insights of Dr. Elyce Helford and Dr. Patrick Richey, outstanding
voices in their respective academic fields. My fellow graduate students and professors at
Middle Tennessee State University each made valuable contributions to the academic I
am today. I am profoundly blessed to work alongside remarkable faculty members and
administrators at Northwest University, Kirkland, Washington.

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ABSTRACT
This discourse analysis study examines the final moments of selected online
sermons delivered by America’s leading evangelical pastors and speakers, paying
particular attention to the language employed in the presentation of Christian gospel
tenets, the public invitation for salvation, the altar call that identifies new followers, and
the benedictory prayer meant to conclude each preacher’s remarks to the faithful. Machin
and Mayr (2012) provide the theoretical framework of multimodal critical discourse
analysis, a social semiotics approach, for interpreting the lexical elements, the nonverbal
communicative movements, and the optics of each video (if taped) to uncover the
embedded power relations of the sermonic discourse and the myriad ways in which the
preachers carefully construct personas for accomplishing certain rhetorical aims. By
uploading these audio and video tracks to the Internet, ostensibly for the purpose of
proselytization, these evangelical ministers have blurred the lines between insider and
outsider language by foregrounding the types of in-group discourse normally reserved for
religious services held within the confines of brick-and-mortar church buildings.
Moreover, archived sermon videos become linguistic artifacts that last well beyond the
time of the sermons’ performance on Sunday mornings. Putting these sermons online and
thereby obliterating the narrow boundaries of the traditional evangelical church audience,
these preachers have opened a fairly ossified discursive form, the evangelical altar call, to
linguistic scrutiny that provides valuable material for scholars interested in contemporary
American religious discourse and practitioners (i.e., preachers interested in gearing their
lexical choices to the understanding of potential parishioners unfamiliar with this
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language). Using Kenneth Burke’s (1970) seminal definition of religious conversion as
persuasion effected toward initiates’ adopting a new language spoken by the faith
community, this study asserts that this corporate indoctrination into new ways of
speaking begins with the salvific prayer.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... viii
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................1
A level(ing?) platform ......................................................................................................5
Background of the discourse ............................................................................................7
Purpose of the study .........................................................................................................8
Research questions .........................................................................................................10
Significance of the study ................................................................................................12
Delimitations and limitations .........................................................................................13
Central thesis ..................................................................................................................14
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW / METHODOLOGY ..................................15
Literature review ............................................................................................................16
Methodology ..................................................................................................................26
Conceptual frameworks ..................................................................................................36
CHAPTER THREE: FAITH LANGUAGE: Talking the Talk, Walking the Walk ..........42
What is said (Content) ....................................................................................................41
Structural oppositions ............................................................................................44
Salvation formulae .................................................................................................47
In-group language ..................................................................................................55
Intertextuality .........................................................................................................62
What is unsaid (Context) ................................................................................................70
Salience ..................................................................................................................72
Speaking event contextualized ...............................................................................78
Spatial references ...................................................................................................82
Larger discursive choices .......................................................................................84
Implicature .............................................................................................................88

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CHAPTER FOUR: THE PULPITEER: The Craft of Sermonizing ..................................90
How it is said ..................................................................................................................91
Verbs ......................................................................................................................93
Nominalization .......................................................................................................99
Transitivity/agency ..............................................................................................107
Overlexicalization ................................................................................................115
Pronoun usage ......................................................................................................124
CHAPTER FIVE: “CAN I GET AN AMEN?”: How Preachers Persuade .....................129
Figurative language employed .....................................................................................129
Metaphors for faith, conversion, and response ....................................................131
Recontextualization..............................................................................................143
Lexical fields constructed ....................................................................................147
Persuasive tactics enacted ............................................................................................150
Emotions ..............................................................................................................152
Urgency ................................................................................................................155
If-conditionals ......................................................................................................160
Playing the “God card” ........................................................................................165
CHAPTER SIX: “I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL”: Audience Connections .....................169
Speaker’s role performed .............................................................................................169
Speaker positioning ..............................................................................................171
Naming .................................................................................................................178
Self as example to follow/shun ............................................................................181
Audience response invoked ..........................................................................................184
Implied speech acts ..............................................................................................187
Response/physical actions ...................................................................................192
Audience interaction connected ...................................................................................194
Privacy/confidentiality .........................................................................................196
Speaking on others’ behalf...................................................................................200
CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION: Implications for Future Research .......................202
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................213
APPENDICES .................................................................................................................228
Appendix A: Definition of terms..................................................................................229
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LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1: American Evangelical Megachurch Pastors Studied .......................................34

viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Fig. 1: Rambo’s (1995: 107) Matrix of Transformation ................................................18

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1

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
“The evangelist’s soapbox is obsolete. Accepting Christ and committing sin against Him are both done
sitting at a computer screen today.”
—L.D. Breen, “Newsmax’s Top 100 Christian Leaders in America,” 20 April 2015, Newsmax

Chapter Abstract
This introductory chapter situates this study in the middle of the contemporary
phenomenon of American evangelical megachurches’ turning to new media for
proselytizing the masses. After locating the scholarly gap this study attempts to fill, the
chapter lists the guiding research questions, emphasizes the significance of this study to
scholars and practitioners, acknowledges the inherent limitations of the study, and posits
the central thesis of the dissertation.

In December 2015, the streaming entertainment service Netflix, purveyor of
movies and television programs (as well as original programming), sponsored new
content in a genre that it had never tried previously: American evangelical church
services. The video juggernaut that regularly categorizes film choices into subgroups
such as “Films with a Strong Female Lead” and “Gay and Lesbian Movies,” announced a
new label: “Special Interest.” Among those first programs include titles such as “Starting
Over” by Andy Stanley, a pastor from Atlanta; “Fifty Shades of They,” a sermon series
by Dallas-area minister Ed Young of Fellowship Church that alludes to E.L. James’s
trilogy of novels Fifty Shades of Grey; “Winning Life’s Battles” with evangelist and best-
selling author Joyce Meyer; and “#Death to Selfie” by Steven Furtick of Elevation
Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.