VSInversion is at the heart of the Christian faith. From Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in John 3:3 telling him to be “born again”, to the dramatic encounter with Saul on the road to Damascus, to the many famous conversion stories that fill the pages of the history of the Church, the act of conversion is essential to Christian life and teaching.

Yet the understanding of what conversion is, the representations of that understanding, and the means of persuading people to it are far from static. Indeed, conversion assumed such prominence in Christian religious experience in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (first in England, then in America and beyond) that this revival gave rise to a movement that would come to be called evangelism. This “conversionism” was later identified by Church historian David Bebbington as one of the four defining elements of the evangelical movement, collectively known as the Bebbington Quadrangle.

The roots of the evangelical emphasis on conversion are planted in Puritan soil. Despite the Puritans’ undeserved reputation for dry reason and austere imagination, Puritan thinkers and writers produced lively and compelling prose (and poetry) imbued with both rich imagination and deep reasoning. The Puritans were, in fact, masters of rhetoric. But their eloquence was not for eloquence, which Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 1:17 (a warning later echoed by Augustine in On Christian teaching). There is a fine line between eloquence at the service of the Gospel and that which, by taking pleasure only in itself, drowns out the message. This is one of the themes skilfully tackled in The Rhetoric of Conversion in English Puritan Writing from Perkins to Miltona new book by David Parry, Professor of English at the University of Exeter.

Hidden Eloquence

It seems counterintuitive, perhaps, that Christians in the Reformed tradition who hold to the doctrine of predestination place so much emphasis on persuasive preaching. If salvation is predestined, why bother trying to persuade anyone? But, as Parry explains, the Calvinist view of predestination is not the same as a “deterministic fatalism which denies any role whatsoever to human action.” On the contrary, Puritan theologians believed, as Parry shows, that “God uses temporal means to accomplish his eternal purposes.” Persuasive preaching and writing are just such temporal means.

It is impossible, of course, to cover almost anything in Puritan history without addressing the complicated question of how Puritan is defined. Parry sketches out this problem and proposes that, for the purposes of his analysis, Puritanism is both a movement not only “to protest against perceived external corruption”, but also “focused on the internal spiritual condition of individuals”. In this regard, the powers of persuasion of these Puritan preachers and writers were, Parry shows, concerned not only with conversion but also with continued sanctification.

While the Puritans are famous for their “simple style” of preaching and writing, Parry demonstrates that this approach “was not a abandonment of eloquence”, but rather, and more interestingly, “a concealment of the eloquence”. Such a rhetorical strategy prioritizes “the transparent communication of truth over the ostentatious display of learning and eloquence”. Thus, the book explores the relationship between rhetoric and what was then called “practical divinity,” that is, pastoral teaching and care that attempts to help ordinary people apply doctrine and theology in their daily lives, first by converting, then by living. holy lives. For Puritan theologians seeking to persuade those under their influence and care, this meant using language in such a way as to transform a person’s reason, imagination, and will.

Although underestimated today, this complex relationship between rhetoric and theology is one about which our Puritan ancestors have much to teach us. To examine the persuasive appeal of a range of rhetorical strategies, Parry closely examines the works of a small but representative group of Puritans. The group includes those well known to most readers – Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, John Milton – as well as the lesser known but equally exemplary preachers Richard Sibbes and William Perkins.

Those familiar with writers like Bunyan and Milton – who, despite producing enormous bodies of treatises and didactic essays, are best known for their imaginative works – might wonder how such a commitment to truth rather than style applies to them. Parry answers that question insightfully and delightfully.

Another question is not simply how, but why, imaginative works of literature can be so theologically, as well as aesthetically, persuasive. Parry explains, “It is also the pastoral impulse to persuade their readers to save the truth that drives some Puritan writers to deploy the somewhat secretive modes of imaginative fiction.” Indeed, it is one of the great ironies of literary history that Puritan writers – in their distrust of fiction – instead wrote spiritual allegories, epics and autobiographies that laid the groundwork of the most important and influential literary genre of the modern era: the novel. .

Milton is the least “Puritanical” of the Puritans covered in the book, or perhaps the most theologically controversial. But Parry explains that despite Milton’s evolving and sometimes heterodox positions, his work operates with “a rhetorical enterprise akin to that of Puritan practical deity”. In other words, Milton tries in his writing – and his literary masterpiece lost paradise is no exception – to woo his readers “toward conversion, assurance of salvation, and a godly life.”

In the chapter on Milton, as well as throughout the book, Parry shines in literary and cultural criticism, as well as in ethnography, particularly when he describes conversion as the central resolution to lost paradise. The final books of this epic account of mankind’s fall, Parry shows, “dramatize the repentance of Adam and Eve after their fall in terms that are in significant continuity with Puritan understandings of conversion and regeneration.” .

Unsurprisingly, it is John Bunyan who best exemplifies how language works to transform all of our human faculties – reason, will and affection. Or, to use Grand-coeur’s words in the second part of The pilgrim’s journey, to “convince sinners to repent” and “to turn men, women, and children out of darkness into light and from the power of Satan into God.”

Bunyan understood that such persuasion, Parry says, was part of his own calling as a preacher. Moreover, Bunyan’s use of language throughout his writing reflects the evocative (and fundamental) Puritan idea that “it is a new language that gives access to the new world of the redeemed”. It is the language employed in the rhetoric of conversion so skillfully crafted by these Puritans that can “re-inscribe and reorient the mind, heart and will of its audience, bringing the ‘split self’ of the listener or reader to occupy a new and regenerated place. identity.” In their sermons and other works, the Puritans appealed to both reason and the imagination of their audiences in order to “reshape their cosmic imaginaries,” Parry continues, invoking the ideas of Peter Berger and Charles Taylor to explain how “the rhetorical mode of imagination…bypasses readers’ cognitive defenses in order to re-inscribe their imaginary from within.

Rekindle the fires of the imagination

I’m particularly interested in this aspect of Parry’s book because of my own current writing project on “gospel imagination.” For many, such a phrase immediately conjures up images of hobbits and talking fauns and bad Christian movies. But the fact is that the “imagination”, and even the “evangelical imagination”, forms a well, much deeper than what first floats to the surface by thinking about what imagination is, about what it means and how it is represented. Our collective imagination (the “well”) is fed by many hidden sources. This is something the Puritans knew deeply and Christians today understand too little.

readers of Christianity today Of particular interest is the fact that, as Parry says at the beginning of the book, the subjects of religious conversion and its representations are experiencing a resurgence of interest on the part of scholars of this historical and literary period. The rhetoric of conversion is an example. Part of a series of books on New Directions in Religion and Literature, featuring leading scholars in the field from a variety of theoretical and religious perspectives, The rhetoric of conversion is complete in its source material (both primary and secondary) and makes its own significant contribution to this period of literary history.

At the same time, the book is readable and engaging for a wider audience. It will benefit a range of general readers interested in literature, church history and theology. More importantly, for those with ears to hear, it will help to permanently rekindle the fires of imagination that have always carried the church.

Karen Swallow Prior is a research professor of English, Christianity, and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of Read Well: Finding the Good Life Through Good Books.