“It Belongs To God”: The Rhetoric of Fundraising Speeches by Church Leaders

Abstract

Language is the most widely used medium to achieve persuasion. The study of rhetoric in religion aims at identifying the persuasive strategies in speeches of religious leaders. It is against this background that this study was conducted. The current study explored the rhetoric embedded in the speeches of Charismatic church leaders during fundraising in church through the lens of Aristotle’s Classical Theory on Rhetoric, (logos, ethos and pathos) and other rhetorical devices such as tropes and schema. The study was grounded in the qualitative research approach, with (26) speeches which constituted the data for the analysis. The analysis revealed that church leaders used the second person pronoun ‘you’ and active verbs such as ‘give’, ‘bring’, ‘take’ among others to persuade their congregants. The data disclosed that ethos, logos and pathos posited by Aristotle as persuasive technique were one of the effective tools the speakers used to achieve persuasion. The study concludes that the appeal to emotions (that is, pathos) influenced persuasion more than the other modes did. The study contributes to studies on the rhetoric of religious genres, especially, in fundraising that has received inadequate attention.