The Rhetoric of Operation Rescue

"Rarely does one find a scholar as academically erudite and thorough while being as accessible as Mark Allen Steiner. His treatment of Randall Terry's Operation Rescue in his book The Rhetoric of Operation Rescue is an excellent example of scholarship informed by the evangelical Christian tradition that has been long called for by scholars such as George Marsden in his The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. Steiner's book is a showcase for scholars desiring to blaze trails in a direction of scholarship that is informed by and relevant to their own faith tradition. Steiner is at once sympathetic to and critical of the evangelical and fundamentalist faith tradition(s) while "making sense" of the rhetoric of Operation Rescue and its implications to its cause and the grander study of rhetoric. Nestled in the tradition of understanding a text in its historical context, Steiner is still able to extrapolate the theoretical implications of Randall Terry's rhetoric and Operation Rescue. Of particular interest is Steiner's definition of "rhetoric," which he makes synonymous with the term "evangelism." Not only does Steiner shed light on the rhetoric surrounding the abortion controversy of the early 1990s, but he also delivers a heuristic understanding of how rhetoric functions in contemporary society. This book should be on the shelf of any rhetorician, anthropologist, or sociologist who desires to understand how religion informs and constructs not only public debate, but public reality. It is my pleasure to recommend this book to my colleagues interested in the rich tradition of rhetoric and its implications upon contemporary public dialogue." Robert M. McManus, Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies, Marietta College--Sanford Lakoff