Radical rhetoric and American community : threnody for Sophrosyne -- Old Testament prophecy as radical ursprach -- Prophecy as sacred truth : self-evidence and righteousness in the American Revolution -- Prophecy as krisis : Wendell Phillips and the sin of slavery -- The prophet's call and his burden : the passion of Eugene V. Debs -- The word in darkness -- A vision of the apocalypse : Joe McCarthy's rhetoric of the fantastic -- Prophecy as poetry : the romantic vision of Robert Welch -- Secular argument and the language of commodity : gay liberation and merely civil rights -- The seraph and the snake.