The Rhetoric of Operation Rescue: Projecting the Christian Pro-Life Message

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The Rhetoric of Operation Rescue is a comprehensive examination of the rhetoric of Operation Rescue, a pro-life social protest group (prominent between 1988 and 1992) that orchestrated blockades of clinics where abortions are performed. Steiner examines how the group sought to persuade peopleprimarily conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christiansto join their ranks, as well as how they sought to use their form of social protest to achieve their public policy goals. In so doing, Steiner explains both the group's initial success (beginning with its 1988 "Siege of Atlanta" protests) and its ultimate failure. More fundamentally, though, Steiner shows how the group appealed to the convictions of conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in the United States. He shows how the rhetoric of Operation Rescuefor those conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists that found it convincingshaped fundamental understandings of what their Christian faith means, how to practice it in an authentic manner, and how to engage in public dialogue and political activism.

Reviews

"should be reading for anyone with a stake in the abortion controversy in America" "no one interested in the intersection of American civic and religious life can afford to ignore this book" Evangelical review of society and politics, October 2008 -- Guy Lancaster, student in the Heritage Studies Programme at Arkansas State University
"He is evenhanded in displaying both his sympathy for evangelicalism and his criticisms of the missteps in communication that have minimized the voice of the right-to-life movement to secular Americans....Steiner always clarifies meanings and explains the theories that he applies, so that any reader with an interest in modern evangelicalism, the right-to-life movement, or the church in the political arena will be interested in this book and the conclusions Steiner draws which pertain to evangelicalism in general." - The Christian Librarian -- Grace Veach * Christian Librarian, The *

Author Bio

Mark Allan Steiner is Assistant Professor of in the School of Communication and Arts at Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia.