New History of the Sermon

Robert H. Ellison, Ph.D. (1995) in English, University of North Texas, is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Marshall University. He has published on the Oxford Movement and is working on a study of the Victorian “lay sermon.”

• CONTENTSPermissionsList of IllustrationsList of ContributorsIntroductionRobert H. EllisonPART ONETHEORY AND THEOLOGYThe Tractarians’ Sermons and Other SpeechesRobert H. EllisonRichard Whately and the Didactic SermonCarol PosterThe Rhetoric of Henry Ward Beecher and Frederic W. FarrarRegarding Biblical CriticismTomas H. OlbrichtPART TWOSERMON AND SOCIETY IN THE BRITISH EMPIREMissions, Slavery, and the Anglican Pulpit, 1780–1850Bob TennantBritish Sermons on National EventsJohn WolffeCatholic Preaching in Victorian England, 1801–1901Jessica A. Sheetz-NguyenAnti-Catholic Sermons in Victorian BritainMiriam Elizabeth BursteinNineteenth-Century British Sermons on Evolution and The Origin of Species: The Dog That Didn’t Bark?Keith A. FrancisThe Victorian Sermon Novel: Domesticated Spirituality and the Sermon’s SensationalizationTamara S. WagnerPART THREESERMON AND SOCIETY IN AMERICAThe Anti-dueling MovementThomas J. CarmodyThe Itinerant Pulpit of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU): Teachers or Preachers?Dorothy LanderMidway between Slavery and Citizenship: Black Freedmen in White Protestant Sermons in the ImmediatePost-Civil War PeriodDavid M. TimmermanSacred Rhetoric and the African-American Civic SermonJoseph EvansThe Modern Renewal of Jewish Homiletics and the Occurrence of Interfaith PreachingMirela Saim“As a Musician Would His Violin”: The Oratory of the Great Basin ProphetsBrian JacksonThe Antebellum American Sermon as Lived ReligionDawn ColemanBibliographyIndex

"...The editor, Robert H. Ellison, who is himself the leading authority in this field, has clearly worked hard to include material beyond the predictable path of evangelical revivalists and Protestant city pulpits, including at least one and sometimes two chapters each on Mormons, Catholics, African Americans, and Jews..."Timothy Larsen, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, March/April 2014"...For readers who are seeking a collection of serious, substantial studies across a wide array of topics that are essential to any learned approach to understanding the importance of preaching in the English-speaking world of the nineteenth century, this text may be indispensable..."William B. Lawrence, Church History, vol. 82, issue 02, June 2013, pp. 472-474"...We can hope that the Victorian sermon will be taken up with increasing interest by both literary scholars and historians. A New History of the Sermon is a vital, exciting, and rigorous contribution to this emerging field of study."Timothy Larsen, Victorian Studies, vol. 54, no. 1, Autumn 2011"...While Ellison's interest in rhetoric may seem to make this collection of greatest interest to literary scholars, any historian of nineteenth-century Anglo-American religion should be able to find something useful here."Bethany Kilcrease, Anglican and Episcopal History, December 1, 2011"...This new volume...is a work of considerable significance for Victorianists, for while the Victorian practice of religion has long been considered a major element of nineteenth-century culture, it has not drawn fitting attention in this more secular age..."Margaret Markwick, Review 19, 2011-08-15 (http://test.nbol-19.org/view_doc.php?index=181)