The Decline of Oratory and Preaching Part 1

Well, it's been a volatile few weeks in British politics which I've done my best to follow along with on the other side of the Atlantic. Probably the most significant event was David Cameron's speech at the Conservative Party conference. It seems quite possible that this speech has prevented an election being held which could very significant for the course of British politics for years to come.

Of course, the remarkable thing is that it is very rare in contemporary politics for a single speech to affect political events. Can anyone remember any of Tony Blair's speeches? The only one that springs to mine is the one he made in Parliament on the eve of the Iraq War and though it was an effective case for the invasion (I listened to it on a pocket radio while I was cleaning radiators in an old people's home, don't ask) Blair already had the votes in the bag and the speech changed nothing. Other than this one struggles to remember a single speech or piece of oratory that has changed the course of events in any significant way. When the Guardian newspaper selected its rather eccentric list of 'Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century' the most recent speech was, bizarrely, Earl Spencer's eulogy of Princess Diana in 1997 and the next most recent was a speech by Margaret Thatcher, a speaker whose conviction far outweighed her ability, in 1980. The last third of the century could only muster these two efforts out of a list of fourteen.

Oratory used to be a far bigger factor in British politics than it is today. One can see this by the number of politicians of the past that had a reputation for great oratory: John Bright, William Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain, Lloyd George, Churchill, Nye Bevan, Enoch Powell, Harold Wilson, Denis Healey, Tony Benn and even Neil Kinnock are all politicians that built, if not all, then at least some of their reputation and political success on their ability to orate in front of live crowds. And, as politicians, they were not alone. All causes, whether political, social, or religious, especially religious, causes were furthered by the spoken word. The arena in which ideas had to compete was that of the oration.

This time is now gone. The historian Simon Schama writes 'by and large the digital age is cool to rhetoric and, as the enthronement of the blogger suggests, prizes incoherent impulse over the Ciceronian arts of the exordium and the peroration.'

Well, I had the incoherent impulse to write about the plight of oratory in modern society. Now, to be honest, I am a bit of a geek and this is the kind of thing that interests me purely as a historical question. I believe, however, that there are serious implications to this subject for the method that God has ordained for the propagation of his Gospel is preaching - a particular form of oratory. Christian ministers are not at liberty, like the politician, to abandon it when it becomes a less popular medium. But, the effect of the shift away from oratory in nearly every sphere of life is that whereas once the Christian preacher was one among many orators and spoke to people used to listening to the spoken word harnessed in the cause of an idea, the Christian preacher now founds himself nearly alone as one who seeks to present a monologue to live groups of people in order to persuade them. I believe, then, that understanding why it is that oratory, after such a long pedigree of usage, is now so rare is important for the Christian preacher, whose methods are prescribed by Scripture, to know how to respond.

My hope is to write a series of posts dealing with three reasons why oratory has declined in use and what a Christian preacher's response should be. Of course, I don't know what I'm talking about so please critique or dismiss what I write at your leisure...