The Perils of Persuasive Preaching
This article is a reprint from Christianity Today cir. 1977, by A. Duane Liftin Though it is written primarily to the preacher, it holds great wisdom to the lay person who follows the Lord's command to "go into all the world and "preach" the Gospel" and is as pertinent today as it was in 1977. The study of human persuasion has a long and noble heritage, reaching back at least as far as the ancient Greeks and Romans. For most of its history the subject was pursued under the banner of “rhetoric,” but in more recent times it has been studied by social scientists under such rubrics as “persuasive theory,” “attitude change,” and “social influence.” The relation between secular views of…