Ithaca College

Christopher House’s essay “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: A Wounded Healer, The HIV/ AIDS Rhetoric of Rev. James L. Cherry,” has been designated a “Top Student Debut Paper in Rhetorical Studies” by the National Communication Association’s Religious Communication Association. He will present the paper in New Orleans in November.

Using oral history methodology and Burkean theory of identification, this paper elucidates the religiously grounded HIV/AIDS pulpit oratory of Rev. James Cherry, D.D., pastor of Aenon Baptist Church, Rochester, NY. Attention is given to Cherry's use of persuasive sermons to help people of African descent reconfigure at-risk behaviors in order to counteract the disproportionate presence of the disease in his community. The paper argues that Cherry effectively frames his oratory on HIV/AIDS within the rhetoric of the wounded healer—one who has experienced some measure of emotional, physical, and/or spiritual brokenness as both a point of departure and a point of identification in (re)creating balance and harmony in the community.