From the distribution of religious tracts at Ellis Island and Billy Sunday’s radio messages to televised recordings of the Billy Graham Crusade and Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, American evangelicals have long made a practice of utilizing mass media to spread the Gospel. Most recently, these Christian evangelists have gone online. As a contribution to scholarship in religious rhetoric and media studies, this dissertation offers evangelistic websites as a case study into the ways persuasion is carried out on the Internet. Through an analysis of digital texts—including several evangelical home pages, a chat room, discussion forums, and a virtual church—I investigate how conversion is encouraged via web design and virtual community as well as how the Internet medium impacts the theology and rhetorical strategies of web evangelists. I argue for “persuasive architecture” and “persuasive communities”—web design on the fundamental level of interface layout and tightly-controlled restrictions on discourse and community membership—as key components of this strategy. In addition, I argue that evangelical ideology has been influenced by the web medium and that a “digital reformation” is taking place in the church, one centered on a move away from the Prosperity Gospel of televangelism to a Gospel focused on God as divine problem-solver and salvation as an uncomplicated, individualized, and instantaneously-rewarding experience, mimicking Web 2.0 users’ desire for quick, timely, and effective answers to all queries. This study simultaneously illuminates the structural and fundamental levels of design through which the web persuades as well as how—as rhetoricians from Plato’s King Thamus to Marshall McLuhan have recognized—media inevitably shapes the message and culture of its users.

<p>This dissertation deals with the encounter between Lutheran orthodoxy and conservative pietism 1720–1730. The aim has been to compare their views on society and man. </p><p>In the pietistic conflict, orthodoxy gave rise to attitudes which proved to be key to its view on society and man. It was a deeply rooted traditionalism, patriarchal order of society, demand for confessional uniformity and a corporativistic view on society. The above mentioned contained a specific view on the relationship between the church, state and individual. By using the Organism Metaphor, i.e. society depicted as a body, orthodoxy made visible the church’s collective unity. This body was also identical to the Swedish kingdom. If uniformity in faith and ceremonies was to be dissolved, it implied a disintegration of the social body and breaking of the bonds which held together both church and country. Uniformity was upheld through confessionalism and the partiarchal order of the church. The priests’ monopoly on official functions, and the legal calling created a barrier protecting this relationship to power. Where the views on society and man intersected, one specific theme can be identified – conscience. This spiritual function connected man to law, society’s patriarchal order and God. </p><p>I have emphasised five distinct traits of pietism: its polarizing tendencies, strong emotionalism, its reformist attitude towards church and social life, its egalitarianism and religious individualism. All of these traits collided with orthodoxy’s view on society and man. Pietism can be described as a massive christianization project, which included moral and ethic education of the people on an individual and collective level. Where pietism and religious individualism coincided with egalitarianism, a new discourse for conscience was established, where conscience became both an internal court of law – with God acting as judge – and a spiritual authority whose integrity grew in proportion to authority and church.</p>

This dissertation deals with the encounter between Lutheran orthodoxy and conservative pietism 1720–1730. The aim has been to compare their views on society and man. In the pietistic conflict, orthodoxy gave rise to attitudes which proved to be key to its view on society and man. It was a deeply rooted traditionalism, patriarchal order of society, demand for confessional uniformity and a corporativistic view on society. The above mentioned contained a specific view on the relationship between the church, state and individual. By using the Organism Metaphor, i.e. society depicted as a body, orthodoxy made visible the church’s collective unity. This body was also identical to the Swedish kingdom. If uniformity in faith and ceremonies was to be dissolved, it implied a disintegration of the social body and breaking of the bonds which held together both church and country. Uniformity was upheld through confessionalism and the partiarchal order of the church. The priests’ monopoly on official functions, and the legal calling created a barrier protecting this relationship to power. Where the views on society and man intersected, one specific theme can be identified – conscience. This spiritual function connected man to law, society’s patriarchal order and God. I have emphasised five distinct traits of pietism: its polarizing tendencies, strong emotionalism, its reformist attitude towards church and social life, its egalitarianism and religious individualism. All of these traits collided with orthodoxy’s view on society and man. Pietism can be described as a massive christianization project, which included moral and ethic education of the people on an individual and collective level. Where pietism and religious individualism coincided with egalitarianism, a new discourse for conscience was established, where conscience became both an internal court of law – with God acting as judge – and a spiritual authority whose integrity grew in proportion to authority and church.

No description available.