Abstract

What is the status of faith-based discourse (and by extension, of the discourse of conviction) in societies characterized by a plurality of moral and religious options? How do the various factions found within a pluralized public setting receive faith-based discourse? Moreover, how does a faith-based speaker square the self-affirmative move towards the other with his or her own particular beliefs? These concerns raise the questions of “what one should do” and “how one should speak” in order to maintain a lively and liveable tension between affirming one’s convictions, on the one hand, and nurturing social cohesion, on the other. Despite the negative judgement which has been cast upon the art of persuasion since the beginning of modernity, a rhetorical approach to these questions is possible ; one which I will endeavour to demonstrate in this article. I begin by pleading, along with many other contemporary authors, for a return to a right understanding of rhetoric. The art of persuasion offers a fruitful theoretical framework for developing a heuristics aimed at understanding faith-based discourse in the context of liberal democracy. Rhetoric can in no way be reduced to mere ideological manipulation. I continue reflecting on these questions by presenting two models for faith-based discourse in the public sphere, viz., the models proffered by Hollenbach and O’Malley, both of whom reflect on Vatican II.