I’ve been noticing some subtle criticism of Barack Obama — criticism that he is a gifted orator.<\/p>\n
Wait, being a good speaker is bad<\/em>? You’re not going to convince this preacher that the spoken word should be suspected. The spoken word has the power to transform people for the better, to inspire them, to move them to give selflessly of themselves to the highest ideals. At least, that’s what we preachers like to think we do (or try to do) when we preach.<\/p>\n Julius Lester puts it this way in his blog:<\/p>\n “To stand in the Lincoln Memorial and read the words of Abraham Lincoln, to stand in the Jefferson Memorial and read the words of Thomas Jefferson is almost a religious experience because their words lift our souls out of the day-to-day and into the realm of the ideals that have shaped our nation, ideals that have been lost, especially over the last eight years.” [Link<\/a>.]<\/p>\n Amen, amen. Never underestimate the power of the spoken word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been noticing some subtle criticism of Barack Obama — criticism that he is a gifted orator. Wait, being a good speaker is bad? You’re not going to convince this preacher that the spoken word should be suspected. The spoken word has the power to transform people for the better, to inspire them, to move […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}