Ethics and Rhetoric: How to Market Your Faith Without Sinking to the Squalor

This sermon was given on 14 September, 2014, by Doug Trenfield.

Reading 1:

Some displays of rhetoric are clearly unethical. These occur, for example, when a speaker uses flourishes to make himself seem impressive or half-truths to manipulate his listeners. At its worst, rhetoric can become mere propaganda.

Nevertheless, these are the abuses and not the uses of rhetoric. Rhetoric has a vital role in both speaking and writing. It involves the skill of ordering ideas so that people are able to follow a sequence of thought. It includes the removal of obstacles that would impede legitimate persuasion. An effective rhetor is able to lead his listeners or readers to observe the world from a new and different points of view so that they can intelligently consider it's legitimacy. 

     Kevin T. Bauder, reviewing Weaver's The Ethics of Rhetoric

 Reading 2:

Matilda Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death

Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,

It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;

Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,

Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,

Attempted to Believe Matilda:            

The effort very nearly killed her,

And would have done so, had not She

Discovered this Infirmity.

For once, towards the Close of Day,

Matilda, growing tired of play,

And finding she was left alone,

Went tiptoe to the Telephone

And summoned the Immediate Aid

Of London's Noble Fire-Brigade.

Within an hour the Gallant Band

Were pouring in on every hand,

From Putney, Hackney Downs, and Bow.

With Courage high and Hearts a-glow,

They galloped, roaring through the Town,

'Matilda's House is Burning Down!'

Inspired by British Cheers and Loud

Proceeding from the Frenzied Crowd,

They ran their ladders through a score

Of windows on the Ball Room Floor;

And took Peculiar Pains to Souse

The Pictures up and down the House,

Until Matilda's Aunt succeeded

In showing them they were not needed;

And even then she had to pay

To get the Men to go away,      

It happened that a few Weeks later

Her Aunt was off to the Theatre

To see that Interesting Play

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.

She had refused to take her Niece

To hear this Entertaining Piece:

A Deprivation Just and Wise

To Punish her for Telling Lies.

That Night a Fire did break out--

You should have heard Matilda Shout!

You should have heard her Scream and Bawl,

And throw the window up and call

To People passing in the Street--

(The rapidly increasing Heat

Encouraging her to obtain

Their confidence) -- but all in vain!

For every time she shouted 'Fire!'

They only answered 'Little Liar!'

And therefore when her Aunt returned,

Matilda, and the House, were Burned.

                                Hillaire Belloc

Sermon: Ethics and Rhetoric: How to Market Your Faith Without Sinking to the Squalor

by Doug Trenfield


My Father. Can I brag a bit about my dad? I don't think I have before. I know I've bragged about my mom. Dad was extraordinary, too. In his way, just as extraordinary as Mom. Dad came from good folk. Born in 1924 outside Follett, Texas, on the Box T Ranch. They did pretty well, even through the Depression, but demand for cattle was relatively inflexible. People needed meat. But it was still a hard life. 

Dad was the only one of his brood to graduate from college. The others--he had two brothers and three sisters--loved learning, but in 'dem days a college degree wasn't necessary for one to make a good life. One of his brothers settled into a career with the USPS. Another kept the ranch after their dad died. All of them settled within a day's drive of the homestead. Except Dad.

Dad got hisself an ed-jee-cay-shun. Went as far as he could. Got a doctorate. And when he got his doctorate he took us away from his family to Indiana, because when you're a prof, you've got to move. Ain't that many jobs. And his family was cool with that. Dad had been, after all, always a little different. Well-loved and loving of his family, but a little different. 

But I want to dwell a bit on how he was like his family, what he took with him and kept with him for all his days from being in the Trenfield clan. A commitment to honesty. I'm sure he lied some. Who doesn't? How else could he have stayed married for 49 years? But I seriously don't think he even lived a lie for even a short time or lied in any major way. But being honest, doncha' know, is more than not telling lies. Oh, Dad was committed to that as well, but sometimes we're dishonest with others because we're dishonest with ourselves. Well, that's a little harsh. Not so much dishonest with ourselves, but having aspects of ourselves we don't yet understand. Dad was a staunch supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, yet when my older sister Gail, a teenager at the time, maybe 1970, brought home a black boy friend, Dad hit the roof, though I don't think he knew why. Obviously some racism had found harbor someplace that was beyond the reaches of his intellect. 

So my obsession with honesty--which certainly doesn't mean I am an exemplar of an honest person--comes from my upbringing, hence my interest in today's topic, Ethics and Rhetoric. I'd wanted to do something on this for a while, but wasn't sure how it would connect with the seven principles (I think it relates to number 2 the best, although some might say that at times treating someone kindly might mean obscuring certain truths) and issues that we face at church. And I didn't want to use the pulpit to just carry on about my stuff unless it could be your stuff too. But then a month ago, while researching for my talk on Standing on the Side of Love, I was struck by how slick the related site was. And this was when my head started spinning, spinning trying to follow the dialogue in my head.

"I believe Standing on the Side of Love is a good thing."

"I believe we should market Standing on the Side of Love because it is a good thing." 

"Marketing is not bound by ethics. And that's bad."

"We'll apply our ethics and it will be okay."

"Are our ethics really all that boss? Who's to say?"

"We're UU. Of course they are!"

"Isn't that what people I disagree with say?"

I hate it when that happens. Gives me a damned headache. 

By why, you may be wondering, is this dialogue anything more than an obsessive's rambling? Just tell the truth. Just represent our church, our ideas. Our initiatives, beliefs, principles. Honestly. See, this is where I get a little obsessive, but like all obsessives, I believe my obsessiveness is reasonable. You might disagree, but I'm going to make my case. 

Okay, marketing is rhetoric, and rhetoric is marketing. Rhetoric is ethics neutral. It's persuasion. It's a tool. Aristotle, who wrote the book on rhetoric--no really--defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." Any given case. That includes just and unjust cases. Before Aristotle, the Greeks considered rhetoric unseemly, something practiced by the unethical sophists (hence the term sophistry). As it was explained to me, Aristotle pretty much said, "Hey, if the bad guys use rhetoric, good guys better learn to use it too."

But that's not much help to me, because I'm not sure I'm the one who should get to designate who the good guys and bad guys are. 

I'm spinning my wheels, aren't I? I do that when trying to follow this dialogue between ethics and rhetoric. It isn't that hard for everyone. So I'll move on now to the subtitle of today's tal, Marketing Your Faith Without Sinking to the Squalor. In 1997, Phillip D. Kenneson, a professor of theology at Milligan College in Tennessee, and James Street, Pastor of North River Community Church in Lawrenceville, Georgia, published Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing. In his review, Jamie Dunlop writes:

[They] contend that the market orientation... changes not just a churches style but, contrary to the assertions of church marketing proponents, changes it's substance as well. Though the basic outline of the gospel may remain in tact [sic] in a marketing-oriented church, the God-given mission of the church has been exchanged for a focus on "effectiveness" and "customer satisfaction."

Or, in the famous words of Marshall McLuhan, "The medium is the message." We can't help that from being so. Whenever we choose to communicate something, we choose how we communicate it, and how we choose to communicate it becomes embedded in the message. 

And that's why it's so difficult to truly be honest. What is it to be honest? Was my dad dishonest when he said that he supported civil rights but got mad at my sister for bringing home a black friend in 1970? Am I dishonesty when I say my health is everything to me, but I eat a pint of ice cream tonight because I'm depressed? Nobody would say so in either case. But are we dishonest when we say we accept everyone, according to the third principle, but by our talk during coffee after the service make it clear that we really have trouble accepting fundamentalist Christians? Again, I think not, but we're moving into a gray area. And it's those gray areas that make me uncomfortable. 

But then, I'm obsessed. 

Look. I don't think we're in trouble here. If I were speaking to a Christian megachurch, I'd me more ardent in applying a strict application of ethics to our marketing. Meg Barnhouse, pastor at Austin's First UU, and I had an email exchange about marketing. I initiated the exchange in preparing this talk. I asked her to reflect on church marketing. First UU is a big church with lots going on, kind of like a Christian megachurch without, it always seemed to me, the pretense. And I only say "it always seemed to me" because the topic of this talk requires I thusly couch the observation. 

She wrote, "We do talk about having a marketing plan, mostly to let our current members know what is going on at the church. I think a marketing plan for outreach is interesting because it leads to a conversation about who you are trying to reach. It is embarrassing to have a conversation about trying to reach gay people or people of color, because those people find it a bit creepy to be targeted. I think.... good people doing good work is the best marketing plan."

Good people doing good work. Yeah, that's what I always liked about being here and going to Austin. And I think that's our best marketing. Are we good people? I'm not even going to obsess here. I believe strongly that we are. At a certain point, even I have to let go of my obsessing with whether my judgements are correct. We have to believe in the Philosopher-King in each of us, that part of us that because of good home trainin' and other kinds of training has a pretty good sense of what is right and what is wrong. 

After Sunday school one day, back in my Presbyterian days in Brownsville, a few friends and I were enjoying a bit of esoterica (kind of like I'm doing now by using the word esoterica) talking about how one can judge correct action. One of us threw in (it wasn't me), "Look. Ninety percent of the time you know what the right thing to do is. Flip a coin for the other ten percent, and you're be right ninety-five percent of the time if you'll just always do what you think is right." I don't know if he got the percentages right, but we took his point. 

I like how we market. We keep up, but we don't flas more than anyone else. Ten years ago, a web page and a blog would be--whoa, what do you need those things for?--maybe a little showy. Now it's just what a church does. And the best marketing is, as Meg said, good people doing good work. 

So I've got not much to say about how we market other than that I like it. But I home my talk today, my bringing you in to the obsession that I have with ethics and rhetoric, my meanderings, has maybe meant something to you personally. I joke, really, about being obsessed. Being obsessed is unreasonable. And I do firmly believe (or else I'm just obsessed) that the internal dialogue between ethics and rhetoric is an important one.