When I turned on the TV that Saturday just as Bishop Curry began to speak, the cameras were turning their ever-watchful eyes on the dignitaries in the front pews.
The Queen seemed to be uncomfortable, and Prince Charles and Camilla Bowles were exchanging glances, avoiding eye contact with the Bishop.
They were in the front row, in spitting distance of the Bishop’s zeal. The Bishop was warming to his theme, leaning into the lectern and smiling his beatific smile.
Suit the action to the word
I have to say my mind went to the magnificent advice that Hamlet gives to his players when instructing them on how to perform:
…do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
…suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature…
Differing Tastes
Now, we all have different tastes when it comes to preachers. My wife Sharon and most of our friends thought the Bishop was fabulous. But I was not alone in thinking that the Bishop was on the edge of tearing his passion to tatters..
And maybe that’s what he needed and wanted to do. He was knocking on the carapace of English reserve, while I was feeling embarrassed for my louder, more overtly expressive countrymen.
When someone starts to get hot under his or her white collar, when he or she starts to “tear a passion to tatters,” I tend to detect a manufactured performance. Maybe that’s just me, my curmudgeonly, waspy inclination, but I prefer my sermons more matter and less manner.
Differing circumstances
Kenneth Burke, in his book A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) argued for the importance of decorum when speaking to groups.
Every audience and circumstance is different, so a speaker must adjust to the expectations of the moment.
You persuade a man only insofar as you talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image [and] attitude.
Memorable & effective
Were we to follow Burke’s rules, Bishop Curry may not have succeeded in his effort to persuade, but he was certainly memorable.
In an Anglican temple, he quoted Martin Luther King, enslaved Africans, and, blessing the marriage of an English Prince and an African-American actress, he did in words what Harry and Meghan hope to do in deeds–temper the divisions in the broken world and lend it greater smoothness.