Ithaca College

 Christopher A. House, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, has recently published an essay: “A Wounded Healer: The HIV/AIDS Rhetoric of Rev. James L. Cherry: Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture, Fall 2020, Vol 55, 3 pp. 195-206.

Using oral history methodology and Burkean identification theory of identification, House elucidates the religious grounded HIV/AIDS pulpit oratory of the late Reverend James L. Cherry , pastor emeritus of Aenon Baptist Church, Rochester, NY. In this essay, attention is given to Cherry’s use of persuasive sermons to help people of African descent reconfigure at-risk behaviors to counteract the disproportionate presence of the disease in their community. This essay argues that Cherry effectively frames his oratory on HIV/AIDS within the his call narrative and a rhetoric of a wounded healer—one who has experienced some measure of emotional, physical and/or spiritual trauma as a both a point of departure and a point of identification in (re)creating balance and harmony in the community.