Religion Commons^™

The Library Of Appalachian Preaching: A Digital Repository Of Sermons, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This poster was created for the March 2021 Appalachian Studies Association virtual conference. It introduced conference participants to the Library of Appalachian Preaching, a digital humanities project hosted at Marshall University. The Library offers online access to sermons and other addresses delivered within Appalachia, or elsewhere by preachers with ties to the Appalachian region. The poster provides an overview of all of the major elements of the Library. Information presented includes the three “phases” of the project; demographic information about the preachers; examples of the digitized sermons; and examples of biographical sketches and the User Guide, a Google …

The Library Of Appalachian Preaching: A Digital-Humanities Project At Marshall University, Robert H. Ellison, Larry Sheret

English Faculty Research

This article provides an overview of the sermons in the Special Collections Department at Marshall and a description of the Library of Appalachian Preaching, a project that will make these materials universally discoverable and accessible online. In addition to the sermons themselves, the Library will include biographical sketches of each preacher featured in the project and a robust User Guide, a Google sheet which users can search, sort, and download to help make their research as efficient and productive as possible

Cardinal Newman's Pilgrimage, In His Own Words, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the text of a presentation given at Marshall University on October 14 and 17, 2019, to commemorate the October 13 canonization of John Henry Cardinal Newman. As the title suggests, it draws largely upon his autobiography, an autobiographical novel, and his published letters to trace the trajectory of his religious life, from the earliest glimmers in his mid-teens to his conversion to Catholicism at the age of 44.

“To Defend The Citadel Of Its Faith From All Assaults": Hermann Adler And The London Society For Promoting Christianity Amongst The Jews, Robert H. Ellison

English Faculty Research

This article employs sermons as a lens through which to examine Jewish-Christian relations in Victorian England. It focuses primarily upon discourses preached by clergy affiliated with the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, and on rebuttals delivered by Hermann Adler, a London rabbi who would go on to become Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. Attention is also given to reviews of Adler's work, and to responses to those reviews. These reviews and reviews-of-reviews are evidence that there was an active conversation taking place in the pulpit and the press; the article seeks to show that preaching is …

Turning “Bad Jews Into Worse Christians”: Hermann Adler And The London Society For Promoting Christianity Amongst The Jews, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This paper explores how sermons contributed to Jewish-Christian relations in Victorian England. I begin with a rhetorical analysis of sermons preached on behalf of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the largest and best known missionary organization of its kind. I then examine a collection of sermons in which Hermann Adler, then rabbi of London’s Bayswater Synagogue and later Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, pushes back against their efforts, offering the “true explanations” of passages which, in his view, had been improperly employed by Christian preachers. Finally, I trace a kind of “feedback loop” in which …

Four Case Studies In Teaching Sermons At A Public University, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

In this paper, delivered at the March 2017 meeting of the Northeast Modern Language Association, I discuss my experience with teaching sermons at Marshall University, a public institution in Huntington, WV. I have done this in four classes over the past several years: “Good Essays” (a 200-level general-education course in the English Department); “God Talk” (another gen-ed course, team-taught with a faculty member in religious studies); “Sermon: Text and Performance” (a 400-level class in the Honors College); and “The Victorian Spoken Word” (a graduate seminar in English).

The audiences were very different, as were the texts we used (Newman, Spurgeon, …

Pusey's Sermons At St. Saviour's, Leeds, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

"E . B. Pusey as a Preacher." It would not be surprising to find such a phrase as the title of a nineteenth-century work. Authors in both Britain and America used it in books and articles about numerous ministers, literary figures, the Apostle Paul, and even Jesus himself.¹ Edward Bouverie Pusey, in fact, was the subject of one such piece: a review of Sermons for the Church's Seasons from Advent to Trinity, published in the Spectator on 11 August 1883.

Such a scope would, however, be too broad for a scholarly study in the twenty-first century. Pusey's canon …

Introduction To A New History Of The Sermon : The Nineteenth Century, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the introduction to A New History of the Sermon:The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It discusses the concept and history of "rhetorical criticism," and seeks to lay a foundation for the rhetorical study of the Anglo-American pulpit.

The Tractarians' Sermons And Other Speeches, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the first chapter of A New History of the Sermon: The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It provides an overview of the Tractarians' homiletic theory, and examines the various genres of their oratory: sermons (both "plain" and "university"), lectures, and episcopal charges.

The Tractarians' Political Rhetoric, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This article examines the political speaking and writing of John Keble, John Henry Newman, and other leading figures of the Oxford Movement. It argues that while they were essentially conservative in the pulpit, where they spoke as official representatives of the Established Church, they were more critical and outspoken in other works, where they enjoyed more of the freedom afforded to private citizens.

Religion And The Academy: Report On The Western Conference On British Studies Roundtable, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This article is a report of a roundtable I moderated at the 2006 meeting of the Western Conference on British Studies. It proposes some directions religious studies might take in the 21st century; it is also the first publication to mention of the British Pulpit Online, an emerging digital resource for the study of the sermon from 1688-1901.

“’National Apostasy,’ Tracts For The Times, And Plain Sermons: John Keble's Tractarian Prose.”, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

John Keble is perhaps best known for The Christian Year and his work as Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1831 to 1841. In this essay, I argue that his prose is worthy of study as well. I focus on "National Apostasy," the sermon that John Henry Newman saw as the inauguration of the Oxford Movement; the 8 pieces he contributed to the Tracts for the Times; and his many contributions to the Plain Sermons, by Contributors to the "Tracts for the Times."

Prophecy And Anti-Popery In Victorian London: John Cumming Reconsidered, Robert Ellison, Carol Herringer

English Faculty Research

John Cumming (1807-1881) was the popular minister of the Crown Court Church of Scotland in London's Covent Garden. This article examines his views on the end times and the Roman Catholic Church, two of the favorite subjects of his preaching.

A Rhetorical Comparison Of Spurgeon, Newman, And Macdonald, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the first book to employ the methods of orality-literacy scholarship in the study of nineteenth-century preaching. The debate over whether sermons should be read from the manuscript or delivered extempore is analyzed, and the Victorian practices of attending preaching services on Sunday and reading and writing about sermons throughout the week is discussed. The second part of the book analyses the rhetoric of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, John Henry Newman, and George MacDonald, and ends with a comparison of these three preachers' sermons on the death and resurrection of Lazarus.