Phillips Brooks: Pulpit Eloquence

(Hardback)

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Description

Phillips Brooks, author of the carol O Little Town of Bethlehem, was the rector of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston for 22 years and the Bishop of Massachusetts for 15 months until his death in 1893. This volume in the Great American Orators series focuses on Brooks' oratorical style and the public's response to his rhetoric. Chesebrough provides a biographical sketch of Brooks' life emphasizing the development and use of his oratorical skills and placing him within the secular and ecclesiastical contexts of his times. Attention is given to Brooks' development as a public speaker and to his manner of sermon preparation and delivery. Three of Brooks' sermons are printed in their entirety: Abraham Lincoln, The Cradle of the Lord, and Help from the Hills, preceded by introductory remarks and a brief analysis of the sermon. This examination of Brooks' rhetoric will appeal to scholars of rhetoric and of American theology and American religious history, especially Episcopal history.

Author Bio

DAVID B. CHESEBROUGH is a member of the graduate faculty with the Department of History at Illinois State University. He is the author of God Ordained This War (1991), No Sorrow Like Our Sorrow (1994), Clergy Dissent in the Old South (1996), Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery (Greenwood, 1998) and of Theodore Parker: Orator of Superior Ideas (Greenwood, 1999).