The Samson Society and the Rhetoric of Authentic Christian Brotherhood A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY James Ralph Verhoye IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Adviser: Arthur Walzer June 2015 © James Ralph Verhoye, 2015 Acknowledgements I have a long list of people to thank, so I will get right to it. To begin, I would like to thank Nate Larkin, founder of the Samson Society. Your openness and willingness to share information with me is greatly appreciated. At the University of Minnesota there are several people from the Communication Studies department who deserve my thanks and appreciation, for a variety of reasons. They are: Bea Dehler, Dr. Ernest Bormann, Dr. George Shapiro, and Dr. Scott Poole. I also need to thank Dr. Jeremy Rose, who is a great friend and colleague. I am also grateful for the work of my committee members. First, Dr. Jeanne Kilde from the Religious Studies department generously provided her guidance and expertise. Second, Dr. Mary Vavrus served as the “chair” for my oral defense and provided helpful comments. Third, Dr. Ron Greene offered thoughtful suggestions and input. Fourth, my adviser Dr. Art Walzer took me on as an advisee and spent a generous amount of time assisting me with my dissertation, and for that I am most grateful. Also requiring my thanks at the University of Minnesota is Anne McBean and her colleagues at the Center for Sexual Health. To my friends and family, I am immensely indebted. In particular, thank you to my amazing friends Paul Meyer, Dave Forbes, and Robert Allenby. Also, a special thanks to Joel Pittman for your friendship and for introducing me to Nate Larkin and the Samson Society. I wish my father Karl was still alive to see this achievement, but I know he is proud of me, and for that I am grateful. To my mother Ann, I thank you for being there i for me and pushing me as a young person to use the intellectual gifts I have been given. I appreciate your love and support so much, and I appreciate the encouragement of your husband Bob as well. To my brother Bryan, his wife Shelly Marie, and daughter Molleigh Rae, thanks for all your love and support. To my sister Carolyn, you are always so encouraging. Thank you so much for all the love and support. To my children, Alex, Robert, and Olivia, I appreciate you and love you beyond words. You all came into this world at the beginning of this Ph.D. journey, and I am so happy to finally be able to share the conclusion with you. To my wife Anna, I could go on for pages, but suffice it to say, you inspire me and I love you so incredibly much. This dissertation would absolutely not have been possible without your love and support. ii Dedication To Anna, my amazing wife, and Alex, Robert, and Olivia, my incredible children. iii Abstract This study employs a multi-tool critical method to explain the rhetorical strategies used by parachurch evangelical Protestant men’s ministries. A specific case analysis is provided of the rhetoric of Nate Larkin and the ministry he founded, the Samson Society. The rhetorical tools used to analyze this rhetoric are: audience addressed and audience invoked; constitutive rhetoric; the cycle of guilt-purification-redemption; identification; invitational rhetoric; and, the rhetorical tropes of metaphor, metonymy, and irony. Data for the study were selected from the following rhetorical artifacts: 1) Nate Larkin’s (2005) unpublished book proposal; 2) Nate Larkin’s (2006) memoir, Samson and the Pirate Monks: Calling Men to Authentic Brotherhood; 3) the Samson Society’s Statement of Faith, Ministry Teaching Curriculum, and Group Meeting Format; 4) Nate Larkin’s (2012) recorded speech from an evangelical Protestant men’s conference; and, 5) the web site and podcast of the Samson Society. This study found that Nate Larkin and the Samson Society address a particular demographic of evangelical Protestant men. In addition, in his rhetoric Larkin is invoking an audience through casting them in the roles of “friend,” “Samson,” “traveling companion,” “voyeur,” and “Christian brother.” Larkin’s rhetoric and the rhetoric of the Samson Society proffer four narratives, which act constitutively to situate the ministry within the larger, transhistorical “body of Christ.” These narratives are Larkin’s life- story, the masculine ideology of the Samson Society, the formation of the Samson Society, and the religious ideology of the Samson Society. Collectively, these narratives offer evangelical Protestant men a forum for “recovery” from the destructive effects of iv sin through engagement with Larkin’s modified 12-Step principled ministry. As a case study in the rhetoric of “authentic Christian brotherhood,” the Samson Society offers valuable insight into the discursive practices of contemporary evangelical Protestants, as well as parachurch evangelical Protestant men’s ministries in a post Promise Keepers era. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction and Orientation to the Study ........................................................1 Chapter 2: Audience .........................................................................................................61 Chapter 3: The Life-story Narrative of Nate Larkin ........................................................76 Chapter 4: Samson vs. David: The Masculine Ideology of the Samson Society ...........110 Chapter 5: The Formation Narrative of the Samson Society ..........................................128 Chapter 6: The Charter: The Religious Ideology of the Samson Society ......................139 Chapter 7: Conclusion ....................................................................................................160 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................162 Appendices .......................................................................................................................175 vi But I will hold on hope, and I won’t let you choke on the noose around your neck. And I’ll find strength in 1 pain and I will change my ways. I’ll know my name as it’s called again. CHAPTER 1 Introduction and Orientation to the Study An estimated one in ten adult Americans over the age of eighteen is currently in some kind of recovery from substance abuse or addiction (New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, 2012). This represents over twenty-three million people (Census, 2014). The story of addiction and recovery has become a familiar one to many, and it began in the early 2000s for former evangelical Protestant pastor Nate Larkin. During his adult years Larkin had spent roughly “$300,000 on porn and hookers” (Larkin, 2012). He had been trying to hide it all from his wife, Allie, but was ultimately discovered. So, as is the case with some who struggle with sex addiction, he turned to the 12-Step recovery group Sex Addicts Anonymous (S.A.A.) for help. While the S.A.A. 12-Step group he attended weekly was central to Larkin’s recovery, it did not totally satisfy him. Born out of his own personal need to commune with other evangelical Protestant men, and finding this lacking in his 12-Step group, Larkin and twelve friends formed a parachurch evangelical Protestant men’s ministry in early 2004 (Larkin, 2006). This ministry would come to be known as the Samson Society, and its identity is informed by parachurch evangelical Protestant men’s ministries and principles from 12-Step recovery groups such as the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous (Alcoholics Anonymous, 2001; see Appendix A, and Appendix B). 1 Mumford and Sons, “The Cave.” Sigh No More. Glassnote Entertainment Group. 2010. 1 Justification for the Study Parachurch evangelical Protestant men’s ministries, such as the Samson Society, are a very popular and influential phenomenon in the United States and in several other countries and they merit academic investigation. Compiling an exact number of men engaged in these ministries is problematic, given the diffuse and ever-changing nature of these organizations. As such, the total number of men involved is unknown; however, at the height of its popularity in the late 1990s the parachurch evangelical Protestant men’s ministry Promise Keepers self-reported more than a million men attending events annually (Promise Keepers, 2014). Patrick Morley’s men’s ministry, Man in the Mirror, claims that more than ten million men have read its materials or participated in the ministry in some way over the last twenty-five years (Man in the Mirror, 2014). The Samson Society estimates at least ten thousand men have been involved in its ministry over the last ten years and it continues to grow its membership (Larkin, 2014). The subject of this dissertation is the rhetoric of parachurch evangelical Protestant men’s ministries; however, rather than conducting a study of all of these ministries, which could produce superficial conclusions, I will instead undertake a rich, detailed study of one typical ministry with the goal of producing specific conclusions about how these ministries function. Specifically, I will conduct a rhetorical criticism of the Samson Society and the rhetoric of its founder, Nate Larkin, in an attempt to generalize about how these religious ministries persuade men to join them and what strategies are used to sustain men’s involvement over time. This investigation will also provide insight into the masculine and religious ideologies of these ministries, which