Figuring Forgiveness: Dramatistic Aspects of Forgiveness in an Anabaptist Context

Abstract

This dissertation is a knowledge-translation project of artistic creation: the composition and performance of three sermons which bring Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical method to the topic of forgiveness in an Anabaptist context. It faces the special challenge of explaining from the cognitive perspective of a Burkean rhetoric of motives why Anabaptists – particularly Amish and Mennonites – forgive. And it faces the challenge of explaining that to an Anabaptist congregation. I ask, “What is involved when we say we are forgiving, and why are we doing it?” Where other treatments of the topic have foregrounded sociological or historical perspectives, this project illuminates the suasive and formative qualities of forgiveness as a distinctly rhetorical act, and comes at the topic from a perspective situated as both rhetorician and pastor within the Anabaptist tradition. The sermons not only function to communicate the analytical and substantiating power of Burke’s rhetorical method, but also enact that power in homiletic performance. As instances of knowledge mobilization, the sermons translate and apply the theoretical valence of Burke’s dramatism to the practical and contextualized task of preaching. In particular, the sermons mobilize Burke’s concept of identification and his theories of form to illustrate the rhetorical dimensions of forgiveness in divine, social, and personal domains. As creative pieces within an expository framework reflecting the homiletical vein of the rhetorical tradition, the sermons also channel Burke’s voice as a literary critic and explore Anabaptist texts such as confessions of faith, martyrologies, hymnals, and devotional books as “equipment for living,” while at the same time directly offering Anabaptist literary equipment themselves in the performance of the sermons. The first sermon explores forgiveness as an act nested within a scene of divine drama, framed within an exposition of Romans 5:1-10. The second sermon prioritizes aspects of the Agent:Act ratio within an exposition of Matthew 18:21-35 to explore how interpersonal identification shapes attitudes toward receiving and extending forgiveness. The third sermon prioritizes the Act:Agent ratio within an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6, exploring the formative relationships between language, devotional practices and attitudes of forgiveness. These three sermons are framed by introductory and concluding chapters which provide the theoretical context and offer a scholarly and expanded consideration of how Burkean rhetorical theories relate to forgiveness in Anabaptist practice and literature. The texts of the sermons are provided in both bare and annotated forms; the annotated versions provide additional scholarly analysis, with footnotes addressing performative, perlocutionary elements while the endnotes address broader analytical and critical features. The opening and closing chapters theorize the project, framing its autoethnographic features and situating it within broader questions of my own identity as a Mennonite scholar, pastor, and preacher. Ultimately, this dissertation argues, through both the literary performances and the scholarly apparatus, that a full comprehension of forgiveness in an Anabaptist context means understanding its broader rhetorical dimensions, and that the application of a Burkean rhetoric of motives provides a more rounded appreciation of the symbolic forces that both form and are informed by Anabaptist values and beliefs about forgiveness.