This article examines the role of epideictic rhetoric as a tool for promoting civic virtue in the public realm through the application of Kenneth Burke's theory of identification and John Dewey's explanation of an aesthetic experience. Long the jurisdiction of Aristotle's logical arguments, civic discussion usually works within the realm of forensic or deliberative persuasion. However, scholarship in the last fifty years suggests there is an unexplored dimension of Aristotle's discussion of epideictic and emotion that needs to be examined in an attempt to identify its usefulness as a tool for examining human experience and practical behavior in the political realm. I attempt to add to the discussion by exploring the presidential funerals of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan as opportunities for a nation to display a hero's virtues as extensions of society's virtues. Virtues often define what a nation considers good which, in turn, influences the nature of the discussion and often determines political action.

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Analysing the repeated debates within American conservatism over the place of Abraham Lincoln within American history.

The American Romantic writers laid a broad foundation for the historic and heroic Abraham Lincoln who has evolved as our national myth. The writers were attracted to Lincoln by his eloquent expression of the body of ideals and beliefs they shared with him, especially the ideal of individual liberty and the belief that achievement of the ideal would bring about an amelioration of the human condition. The time, place and conditions in which they lived enhanced the attraction, and Lincoln's able leadership during the Civil War strengthened their estimation of him. His martyrdom was the catalyst which enabled the Romantic writers to lay the foundation of the Lincoln myth which has made his name synonymous with individual freedom everywhere even today.

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While few would deny America is the most powerful nation on earth, there is considerable debate, and controversy, over how America uses its foreign policy power. This is even truer since the “unipolar moment,” when America gained sole superpower status with the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In the Cold War Reinhold Niebuhr was the main theological voice speaking to American power. In the Unipolar world, the Religious right emerged as the main theological voice, but instead of seeking to curb American power the Religious right embraced Neoconservatism in what I will call “Totemic Conservatism” to support use of America's power in the world and to triumph Manifest destiny in American foreign policy, which is the notion that America is a chosen nation, and this legitimizes its use of power and underpins its moral claims. I critique the Niebuhrian and Religious right legacies, and offer a classical realist strategy for theology to speak to America power and foreign policy, which avoids the neoconservative and religious conservative error of totemism, while avoiding the jettisoning of Niebuhr's theology by political liberals, and, the political ghettoizing of theology by his chief critics. This strategy is based on embracing the understanding of classical realism, but not taking the next step, which both Niebuhr and neoconservativism ultimately do, of moving from a prescriptive to a predictive strategy for American foreign policy. In this thesis, I argue that in the wake of the unipolar moment the embrace of the Religious right of Neoconservatism to triumph Manifest destiny in American foreign policy is a problematic commingling of faith and politics, and what is needed instead is a strategy of speaking to power rooted in classical realism but one which refines Niebuhrian realism to avoid the risk of progressing a Constantinian theology.

Es handelt sich um die Forschungen zu der Auswanderungsbewegung der sog. Altlutheraner unter Führung des Dresdner Pfarrers Martin Stephan nach Missouri/USA. Ein zufällig gefundener Vermerk des Radeberger Superintendenten Martini 1839 wurde zum Ausgangspunkt der Recherchen zu Martin Stephan, der sich mit seinen Vertrauten im Radeberger Bad /Augustusbad aufgehalten hatte. Ein Großteil der Vorbereitungsarbeiten für die Auswanderung, einschließlich der konkreten und abschließenden Auswanderungspläne entstanden hier im Augustusbad. Der Spuk fand ab Frühjahr 1838 rund um das „Radeberger Bad“, Lotzdorf und Liegau statt, argwöhnisch beobachtet von der Dresdner Polizei. Unter Führung Stephans erfolgte 1838 die sächsische Lutherische Auswanderung mit über 700 Anhängern aus Sachsen und Thüringen in die Vereinigten Staaten. Damit wurde der Grundstein für die heutige „Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod“ gelegt, die heute zweitgrößte lutherische Kirche der USA, die sein Nachfolger, Pfarrer C.F.W. Walther, gründete und die heute über 2,3 Millionen Mitglieder in den USA verzeichnen kann.