| Chapter 1: | The Da Vinci Code Controversy |
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An 18th century philosopher and minister, George Campbell, detailed the link between religion and ethos in his seminal work The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776). Much has been written on the topic since, but Campbell outlined a few precepts for consideration. To be sure, four categories make the leap into new technologies of the 21st century:
“These four principles constitute an evolved model of ethos starting with ancient rhetorical thought about spoken discourse, and ending with multimedia and hypertext” (Frobish, p. 40). This is to say that church messaging aimed at confronting assaults on church orthodoxy should strive to meet these goals in the area of message-sender ethos.
Such a consignment would have to frame the message sender as of reputable moral character, with qualities of candor and benevolence. Empathy (“community identification”) is subsumed by understanding the baseline interests of the faithful. The variable of “knowledge” should be patently explicit, with no attempts made to conceal truth.
We are finally left, under the ethos design, by the character of the message. Might it be petty or punitive? Instructive? Salvation oriented? Helpful or chastising? Friendly, or filled with damnation?
For a polarizing example of a low-sophistication message also imbued with low ethos (but high pathos), we could look at the “Hell-Fire-and-Brimstone” approach of the Rev. Billy Sunday, an American church revival leader of the early 1900s. His main assault targeted alcoholic beverages, which he viewed as demonic: