ABSTRACT
This chapter examines key dimensions of Austin Phelps’s vocational rhetorical pedagogy. It begins by discussing Phelps’s view of sacred rhetorical education as Christian character formation—a fundamental part of preparing preachers to fulfill their divine calling. The chapter next turns to three aspects of Phelps’s vocational rhetorical pedagogy that were designed to train pulpit rhetors who were capable of influencing the world for good through preaching. Specifically, the chapter discusses the ways Phelps (1) encouraged his students to write regularly in order to develop a disposition of intellectual self-trust; (2) used feedback to cultivate in his students a sense of agency concerning their capacity to grow as discerning rhetors; (3) and taught reading as a means of nurturing generative thinking. In demonstrating how Phelps uses his vocational rhetorical pedagogy to shape students’ dispositions and character, the chapter shows how Phelps’s approach redirected the project of individual self-improvement and the managerial view of invention associated with current-traditional rhetoric and reestablished strong connections to classical rhetoric. It also discusses the ways Phelps’s vocational rhetorical pedagogy anticipates insights about the role of emotion in writing—a line of inquiry that is central to discussions of process and writers’ dispositions in rhetoric and writing studies. Finally, the chapter concludes with thoughts on the implications of Phelps’s vocational rhetorical pedagogy for twenty-first century rhetorical education.
