Little Lion Man

It seems that through manipulation of the sermon Paine, and perhaps others, were able to incite the colonists to turn patriotic. Dr. Byrd emphasizes in his book the importance of the sermon during war, and especially during the Revolutionary War, - he says that “preachers took up arms… turning their pulpits into weapons.” Washington saw the important of the sermon, which is obvious through his emphasis on maintaining talented army chaplains. Dr. Byrd says that the reason for A Common Sense’s success was because it was more like a sermon than a pamphlet. However, A Common Sense was not a sermon, it was a pamphlet that was written like a sermon. It was read out loud to people all over the colonies, so it was treated more like a sermon. In our society it is very rare for people to read aloud. We are expected to read on our own. We might hear sermons in church and if they are good we will tell our friends to podcast them, but we wouldn’t read it to them. This is an experience of which we are mostly unfamiliar and perhaps it is because we are a (mostly) literate society. And so I pose the question: If Paine had been a part of a fully literate society would A Common Sense have had as much of an impact as it did in that society? Or was it the settings that the pamphlet was read, the communal settings, which made it so impactful?