George Campbell and the ethics of pulpit oratory

George Campbell, eighteenth-century Scottish minister and rhetorician, uses a consistent model of religious and secular epistemology, which relies on experience and rational conviction. He finds that this model creates problems when applied to preaching, a field where the goal is typically practical conviction, or "faith," rather than the probabilistic rational conviction. The problems arise from an inherent clash between the dedication of the rational-empiricist theologian or secular scientist to his experiential means of discovery, as contrasted with the rhetorician's emphasis on the persuasive ends of his art.

Campbell illustrates this problem by showing the "excesses" or inappropriate modes of persuasion he believes it can cause. These excesses he identifies with "enthusiasm" and "superstition," prejudicial terms for the rhetoric and belief systems of Dissenters, Methodists, and other groups separate from or critical of the established churches of England and Scotland and for Catholics.

Campbell addresses these problems by creating a pulpit ethics composed of rhetorical elements: ministerial ethos, perspicuous style, and a non-coercive context. His solution, at the last, is to subordinate successful proselytizing to rational integrity of orator and audience. He ends up, perhaps unconsciously, using rhetorical terminology to ever-so-slightly "disable" the rhetoric of the pulpit when it threatens to overwhelm the conditions for rational conviction.