by Arthur O. Roberts

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review by Michael Graves

AUGUSTINE ADAPTED and echoed Cicero's dictum that sacred oratory should instruct, delight, and move listeners. This new anthology of public addresses by Arthur O. Roberts presents us with a collection of texts that frequently accomplish all three Augustinian aims.

For almost six decades, Roberts has raised an eloquent and authentically evangelical Quaker voice both within and without Quaker circles. This chronological and developmental selection celebrates the period from 1967 to the present, revealing Roberts as a master rhetor in rhetorical situations that would present challenges to any speaker. As well, the reader encounters Roberts responding to ritualized, predictable rhetorical circumstances that nevertheless can befuddle a speaker by their very pedestrian context. Perhaps all typical Sunday morning sermons now fall in the latter category. Roberts rises to both occasions.

In his theoretical writing, Kenneth Burke, countering Aristotle, did away with the classical notion that rhetoric and poetic were essentially different species of appeal; Roberts does the same thing in his speaking practice. The first time I heard Roberts speak (at Granada Heights Friends Church in the 1960s), I was bowled over by his ability to interweave original poetry with accurate and targeted biblical application. This easy, unforced interplay of poetic and rhetoric is one of the delights of this volume. The later sermons in the anthology show an increased readiness to combine poems into the structure of the sermon.

The anthology's subtitle, “Sermons and Addresses,” hardly captures what the reader actually encounters in the book. The sub genres include poems, instructional (exegetical) sermons, prophetic sermons, reflective biographical pieces, autobiographical reflections, ceremonial addresses, and even some selections from “Roberts' Reflections”—his monthly e-letter for Friends pastors in the Northwest—as a coda.

Some of my favorite selections include Roberts's sermon at Reedwood Friends Church on September 2, 1984. Here he offers strong and prophetic advice on the believer's relationship to work. Roberts asserts that, “Workers of the world are overburdened by systems that have become deified” (23) and announces that, “the workplace is where people best experience the sacrament of Christ's presence.” How many of us experience this at our work? Roberts presciently preaches on a topic that will rise in significance in the next two decades.

Roberts's eulogy for his beloved friend, Jack Willcuts, on September 23, 1989, is eloquently understated. Always a master at word choice, Roberts captures in this memorial Willcuts's “style” of Christianity with these words: “Jack was an evangelical with liberal social concerns—like Jesus” (97). Roberts ends the eulogy appropriately by connecting Willcuts with Simon Peter: “Peter, the rock. That's our friend Jack, an ordinary person who became a rock. And an apostle of the Lord.”

Another favorite of mine is drawn from Roberts's sojourn with Calvinists at Yachats Community Presbyterian Church. For more than a decade Roberts worked within the demands of adherence to the lectionary and the church calendar, yet flourished preaching among people whose roots are in the soil of his mother's strict Presbyterian heritage. Among Presbyterians, Roberts employed the “doctrine-use” format of sermonizing, where the doctrine is raised from one of the scriptural choices of the lectionary. Then the implications of the teaching are deduced and applied to the hearers. On November 10, 1991 (and later on May 25, 2005, at Waldport Presbyterian Church), he chooses the text from Zechariah 2:13: “Be still before the Lord, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.” In the sermon Roberts helpfully instructs Presbyterians on the usefulness of silence, asserting: “Accept silence before the Lord not as a luxury, but as a necessity for effective Christian witness in the world…discover within yourself a holy space for listening and obeying the word of the Lord” (127). It's a message that Presbyterians need to hear and evangelical Friends need to reclaim. The sermon reveals Roberts's adroit sense of audience analysis and rhetorical skill, gifts and skills also seen to great effect in his brilliant Carey Lecture at Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends in 1988 (65-73) and his “Be Strong in the Lord,” an address to “younger folks” at Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends Church, July 23, 2003 (255-261).

This anthology may be one of the best examples of a contemporary Quaker journal. It reveals sequentially the mind and heart of its author. At times, it has an eerie, prophetic tone—I suppose because some of the things Roberts speaks about in the 1960s still plague us. The book presents us with timeless truths situated within contextually bound rhetorical situations. The anthology is vintage Arthur O. Roberts—and that's a reference to cars, not wine! He is our Augustine, Bernard, Wesley, and Spurgeon. The Sacred Ordinary should be required reading for all aspiring Quaker preachers—that is, if they seek to preach eloquently. Young preachers would do well to imitate Roberts and learn what perspicuity is all about.

The rest of us also need this book. It should be on every evangelical Quaker's bookshelf. We will need to avoid reading this book too fast. One sermon a day will suffice. Then let the sermon sink in throughout the ensuing hours and days. We'll be better people for it.

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