New volume examines the mind of Gardner C. Taylor

VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS 8/14/20)—The critical volume “The Art of Eloquence: The Sacred Rhetoric of Gardner C. Taylor,” analyzes the art of Taylor’s preaching, according to the five classical canons of rhetoric: invention, discovery, style (eloquence), memory and delivery. It celebrates Taylor’s excellence in narrative eloquence—the heart of his persuasive proclamation—and shows how he employed the five canons in his sermons.

During his lifetime, the Rev. Dr. Taylor was hailed by TIME magazine as the dean of America’s black preachers. Newsweek honored him as one of the 12 greatest preachers in the English speaking world. A civil rights leader, a Presidential Medal of Honor recipient and a longtime pastor, Taylor was hailed as the “poet laureate of American Protestantism.”

The book provides homileticians and rhetoricians alike with an incisive and accessible understanding of the oratorical brilliance of the man whose eloquence transcended theological boundaries and sociopolitical and cultural constructs.

Providing a glimpse into Taylor’s mind is author Joseph Evans, dean of the Morehouse School of Religion and a member of the Homiletics faculty at the Interdenominational Theological Center. His numerous essays and articles have been published in scholarly journals and periodicals. In addition, he has published two books: “Reconciliation & Reparation: Preaching Economic Justice” (Judson Press, 2018) and “Lifting the Veil Over Eurocentrism: The Du Boisian Hermeneutic of Double Consciousness (Africa World Press, 2014).

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