The Art of Eloquence: The Sacred Rhetoric of Gardner C. Taylor

Evans (Lifting the Veil over Eurocentrism), dean of the Morehouse School of Religion in Atlanta, positions the preaching of Black minister Gardner C. Taylor (1918–2015) as a model for pastors seeking to “deploy the arts of rhetoric in their sermons.” Evans opens with an examination of Taylor’s rhetorical influences, such as the ancient Greeks, the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century, and famous Black orators including Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. Individual chapters examine how Taylor used particular elements of rhetoric (such as the repetition and alliteration “strange” and “shiver” in his most well-known sermon, “The Strange Ways of God”), and an afterword adapted from a memorial Evans wrote soon after Taylor’s death provides an impressionistic summation of Taylor’s life and his effect on those who heard him preach. While Evans’s academic analysis feels stiff compared to Taylor’s vibrant prose, too many tautologies (“the Victorian era became synonymously known with the reign of Queen Victoria of England”) make Evans’s narration fall flat. A reader familiar with Taylor’s sermons could find this a useful bridge to understanding the genre of persuasive writing, but general readers would be better served by an anthology of Taylor’s work. (Sept.)