Faith's post is really excellent, and I sense that she knows a lot more about the issues that Crowley is dealing with than I do. As an agnostic who grew up with a non-practicing Jewish father and a once-Catholic mother, I found all this reading on apocalyptism fascinating, but fascinating for perhaps all the wrong reasons--fascinating because I was drawn into lurid accounts of strange sects.

Still, as I said in class the other day, something bothered me about the tone of Crowley's book. Her preface indicates that she is hyperaware of her need to be respectful and objective: "How can outsiders discuss insiders' beliefs with anything like fairness and accuracy" (ix). Thus, I was surprised at how much this book deals with apocalyptism and how little it deals with rhetoric.

The first half of the book, though reading a bit like a dissertation (long sections on ancient rhetoric and long sections on postmodern and poststructuralist theory, which read like literature review chapters, or a defining of the terms chapter, from a dissertation), but I hung in there because I assumed that the set up was heading in the right direction: a detailed analysis about how contemporary hot button issues, issues which divide people who are often not willing to listen, can be addressed by a postmodern twist on contemporary rhetoric. I am not sure Crowley really addresses this. In the final pages of her book, Crowley remembers to speak about rhetoric, giving her readers four quick tips on how to argue with people who will not listen to you: 1) Tell Stories! 2) Turn to Conjecture! 3) Grab the Person's Attention! 4) Acknowledge Values! 5) Disarticulate a Particular Belief!

I don't mean to sound mocking, but these solutions come so fast and so quick that the reader doesn't really come away with a good understanding about how the contemporary liberal thinker should engage another thinker who is unwilling to listen. Indeed, Crowley often sounds as if she admits that the whole endeavor is fruitless. She repeatedly admits that although groups from different sides should respect each other's values, "these are precisely the conditions that fundamentalists (of all kinds) refuse to meet" (196).

In fact, the second half of Crowley's book hardly addresses rhetoric at all. Yes, I found the discussion of LaHaye interesting, though I found it odd that Crowley seemed to only use LaHaye as the figurehead of apocalyptism. Like Kevin, I found the discussion of 9/11 interesting, but I honestly had no idea what larger point Crowely was trying to make.

Oddly, Crowley's book reminded me of the work of Michael Moore. I think I am the only member of the left who doesn't like Moore. I thought that Fahrenheit 911 was a poorly focused film that--like Crowley's book--wasn't sure what it really wanted to say. Crowley, perhaps disenchanted with the George W. Bush years, took a look around her and, like so many of us, didn't like what she saw. Yes, the Bush administration has close ties to Christianity, and for the most part these ties aren't good. And Crowley's original idea is a good one: to look at the current debates that seem to divide people and see if there's a way to bring rhetoric into the mix. But Crowley gets off track, so shocked yet attracted to the world of fundamental Christianity that she loses sight of her project. Toward a Civil Discourse reads like a review of Crowley's research into the far Christian Right, information that has already been written by others. The "new" angle that Crowley wishes to add to the mix--ancient rhetoric, with a twist, as a possible solution--never really takes flight. It's almost as if Crowley forgot what she wanted to write about because she got so caught up in learning about a world she knew little about.