This essay considers Phillip E. Johnson’s “Wedge Strategy” for Intelligent Design (ID) advocacy, assessing his contribution to an eighty-year history of public education controversy. Starting with the 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, and culminating in the 2005 case of Kitzmiller v. Dover in Dover, Pennsylvania, this ancestry discloses interesting developments in rhetorical strategy. Though past studies have considered the creation–evolution debates as confrontations between religion and science, this piece is primarily interested in how these contests frame the opposition between liberality and illiberality. As Johnson and his allies asserted that ID was true, they were just as adamant that it would set people free. In making this claim, they drew on rhetorical resources previously employed by advocates of evolution, refashioning theistic appeals to positive liberty in the negative frame of academic freedom, and hoping thereby to affect a reversal of roles with their scientific critics. Important to discussions of public school science curricula, this analysis is also revelatory about liberal discourse writ large.

This article interprets a live electronic music DJ performance by Armin van Buuren at Ultra Music Festival 2019 in Miami as a religious, rhetorical text. It considers the methods of van Buuren and why he appeals to a younger generation that is seeking spirituality outside of traditional religion. Electronic music has long been identified by scholars as having a spiritual ethos, and van Buuren’s style epitomizes what is described as “technoshamanism.” His performance and the behavior of the audience can be described as religious behavior and manifests the dogma of the electronic music scene: Peace, Love, Unity, Respect.

Drawing on insights from revivalist Jonathan Edwards, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and communication theory about inoculation, I examine Hell Houses, haunted house–style events designed to scare audiences into becoming Christians. Performances rely on inoculation to demonize outgroups and reinforce in-group commitment. While scholars identify Edwards as a rhetorical ancestor of Hell House tactics, inoculation reinforces in-group identity in a way that fits Edwards’s critique of “counterfeit love”—excessive in-group affection. The counterfeit love Hell Houses promote is bolstered by what Nietzsche termed ressentiment, Christian morality’s oppositional antagonism. Deconversion narratives from ex-Hell House actors suggest that reifying an oppositional group identity may ultimately undermine evangelistic goals.

Research on spirituality at the end of life is extensive. Most research prescribes why care workers should talk with patients and their families about spirituality, who should talk with them, and how care workers should do it. Few studies address the experiences of discussing religion with families at the end of life. In this study, semistructured interviews with nurses, patient advocates, chaplains, and social workers (n = 65) described their experiences of religious discussions with family members. Generally, families seek spiritual reassurance for their decisions, including that their decisions align with the will of God and their religion.

While Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and James Lawson are credited as the forces behind the Memphis sanitation strike, local faces galvanizing the movement are infrequently studied. The sacred rhetoric of African Methodist minister Rev. Henry Logan Starks—known as the “Gentle Giant” and trained in the tradition of holy defiance, transformative resistance, and Black liberation—is remembered and recalled as theologically transformative and prophetically provocative. Using ideological criticism, this essay will analyze the phrase “You are somebody” as an example of prophetic rhetoric and rhetorical re-conditioning.