This essay unpacks the evolving form and rhetorical resonance of the popular contemporary Christian worship song “How He Loves,” which troubles norms of mainstream sacred music on several levels. I argue that its violations of lyrical norms give the song rhetorical resonance for young people seeking an “authentic”/romantic experience of God in worship, while its musical form works, with varying success, to rhetorically transform the troubles of earthly existence into windows on divine love. Through Sellnow and Sellnow’s critical lens, I examine three different artists’ lyrical/musical renderings of the song to compare how (well) they bring that illusion to life. I then analyze the video of the third version, showing how the Illusion of Life critical framework could be expanded to examine visual intensity/release in relation to music and lyrics. My analysis highlights the tensions between authenticity and artfulness in contemporary worship music and demonstrates the value of a fine-grained, close-reading approach.

Plato has widely been interpreted as an enemy of rhetoric. His Gorgias is especially used as evidence that he despised rhetoric as a deceitful producer of opinion (doxa) and upheld philosophy as the true art of knowledge (episteme) discovery. However, in his Theaetetus, he complicates the concept of knowledge, and can be interpreted as developing an art of persuasion that is concerned with the production of faith (pistis) rather than knowledge or opinion. The result of rereading Plato as such tempers the disciplinary narrative concerning Plato and strengthens James Kinneavy’s thesis that relates the development of Christian faith with Greek rhetoric. Reevaluating Plato’s epistemology in relation to the concept of pistis not only nuances the discipline’s understanding of Plato, but also challenges advocates of a “Christian rhetoric” to reconsider the relationship of faith and reason in relation to persuasion.

Kathy J. Pulley is a scholar of religion and a leading proponent of women’s rhetorical agency in her denomination of Christianity. She was the first woman to preach a Sunday morning sermon in the presence of women and men in the Churches of Christ since the Stone-Campbell Movement’s split in the early twentieth century. In a religious culture shaped by a history of patriarchy, Pulley combined prophetic and pastoral rhetoric to lead organizational change in an egalitarian direction. This paper analyzes her sermon through lenses of prophetic and feminist rhetoric, integrates literature from rhetoric and homiletics to develop the concept of pastoral rhetoric, and presents implications for ecclesial engagement with social controversies.

This study analyzed the image of Judge Roy Moore as it changed during the 2017 Alabama Special Senate Election. Specifically, this study sought to determine whether the surprising loss in the election, which resulted after allegations that he dated and assaulted teenage girls while serving as an assistant District Attorney, could be attributed to the Pharisee Effect. The analysis concluded that two elements of the Pharisee Effect were in play during the campaign. Specifically, the charges contributed to an image of hypocrisy for Judge Moore, while accentuating the concept of fanaticism that was already associated with his image. As such, the Pharisee Effect appears to be one element that contributed to his eventual loss in the election.

Using a dialogic lens, this study investigated the discursive construction of family articulated by Centennial Park residents who practice plural marriage. In talk, Centennial Park residents marginalize the dominant cultural discourse positioning the nuclear family as the ideal family form by advancing a competing discourse. Specifically, Centennial Park residents advance a discourse, nuclear families are limiting (and thus not ideal), which privileges plural families over traditional cultural models of family. This competing discourse idealizes the capacity building potential of plural families, while positioning the nuclear family as one that is restrictive (i.e., inhibiting the potential of what could be).

This article synthesizes studies of the emotions or passions (pathē) with Burkean logology to argue for a concept of patho-logology, which, consummating in the god-term love, transforms our understanding of Burke’s larger corpus and implies that rhetoric is a connecting link between religion and science. Patho-logology’s companion-concept, terministic-affect screens, allows the description of ways of seeing that involve the pathē. Love is the god-term of a patho-logological terministic-affect screen because “God is love,” illustrating a relationship between Burkean identification and its related term consubstantiality. Patho-logology complements John Hatch’s notion of dialogology, helps people to get along, and unifies the Judeo-Christian-based logology with the Talmudic tradition of not confining logos to propositional logic alone and improves understanding of Aristotelian pisteis.

The gendered evangelical subject is constituted by a discursive formation with a premodern genealogy refracted through a modern epistemology. To support this claim and demonstrate how the formation determines evangelical discourses on gender, the study applies Foucault’s theory of the discursive formation to deconstruct evangelical gender ideology. The formation’s genealogy is traced to the New Testament “household code” and its epistemology situated in the Enlightenment-inspired doctrine of biblical “inerrancy” by which the code is deemed authoritative. How the formation regulates evangelical responses to modern feminism is reviewed, along with recent movements within evangelicalism toward reordering its “biblical” discourse on gender.

This essay explores the apologetic value of arguments for faith that are built upon premises accepted by the skeptic—the kind of argument originally denoted by the term ad hominem. I illustrate the apologetic efficacy of ad hominem argument by working with the premise of ‘factuality.’ The skeptic supposes that facts may lead to scientific inferences but not to metaphysical ones compatible with religious faith. But, by examining the meaning of factual knowledge more closely, I undertake to show that it necessarily leads to conclusions about moral truth and freewill that lie outside the limits presupposed by skeptics. I conclude by considering how this argument type enables apologists to circumvent what Eric Voegelin has called modernity’s “prohibition of questions,” its tendency to rule out arguments for faith on procedural grounds.

Today, increasingly more Indonesian young women wear the hijab. This trend continues in Indonesia with the booming of pop culture – including fashion, film, and music – featuring Islamic themes. This article analyzes how the hijab shapes identity. In-depth interviews with 10 hijab-wearing university students were conducted, and results were analyzed using the perspectives of Social Identity and Identity Negotiation theories. The hijab is an important cultural symbol of social identity. The social categorization is evident in the respondents’ perception of non-hijab-wearing Muslim women; and their social identification is reinforced by the media’s portrayal of women in hijab. Fashion also plays a crucial part in identity negotiation.

While many individuals identify as Catholic and feminist, these two identities are often seen as incompatible because of stark differences in origin, beliefs, and political orientation. To understand this potential conflict better, this study uses a structuration view of identification to explore how individuals who identify as Catholic and feminist navigate tensions associated with these seemingly irreconcilable identities. Analysis reveals two strategies by which participants discursively navigate Catholicism and feminism: (1) highlighting endurance; and (2) minimizing difference. These strategies support and extend theory by revealing the tenuous, but enduring nature of involuntary identities, and showcasing transcendent possibilities.

The Catholic Church in Nigeria is vibrant. The presence of two emeriti Cardinals and a serving one in Abuja plus its array of human capital in terms of priests, religious and laity, as well as rich cultural dynamics, tells the story more. Despite this seeming flamboyance, the Church in the West African country has not reached its potentials. This qualitative paper, “Communication and Culture as Catalysts for Rewriting the African Narrative in the Nigerian Church” used the Cross-Culture theory as theoretical framework to ascertain the matter. It argued that lack of a unified theology of inculturation and implementing same, reliance on handouts from Europe and America, ethnicity and mediocrity are responsible for the backwardness. The study suggested developing an inculturated language of faith through creating a nexus between African communication and culture as ways of rewriting the African narrative in the Nigerian pastoral context. It concluded that effective communication and culture can create a new template not only in telling the Nigerian version of the narrative but in enabling the Church in Nigeria reach its full potentials.

Communication played a central role in the development of the early Christian Church. This paper will examine public relations practices in the ministry of the Apostle Paul, examining the accuracy of describing his communication activities as a form of public relations. Furthermore, we will examine claims by public historians about Paul’s missionary work as a “public relations campaign.” This paper will argue that although the modern practice of public relations navigates an increasingly complex environment, there are manifestations of what can be considered early forms of public relations in Paul’s campaign to spread the gospel.

This study claims the Mormon ideograph of <intelligence> limited church members’ capacity to conceptualize mental illness as a disease process and encouraged members to perceive prolonged mental illness as a failure of personal agency. I examine how two church insiders used culturetypal rhetoric to create a new emancipatory discourse that sanctioned medical intervention without requiring Mormons to surrender ideological commitments. Scholars have shown that altering ideographic control over a society is usually accomplished by those outside the power structure using counter-cultural rhetoric. Mormonism’s mental illness discourse demonstrates that insiders can introduce ideological reform without deconstructing a religious organization’s fundamental principles.

This paper analyzes two poems written by Sir Mohammed Iqbal, a 20th century philosopher-poet, who played a significant role in the Indian struggle for independence from the British Raj. I argue that in the Complaint and the Answer to the Complaint, Iqbal utilizes a Muslim jeremiad to construct an Indian-Muslim identity that is steeped in history yet looks towards new possibilities for people struggling under an oppressive colonial regime. The paper concludes that Iqbal combines elements of Biblical, conservative, and progressive jeremiads to dissolve the contradictions of tradition/progress and spirituality/political agitation that had immobilized his community.

This article explores how Internet memes about religion present a distinct range of frames that offer distinct understandings of how religion is viewed in American culture. Through a critical overview of four research studies conducted on different meme strategies, genres, and forms of humor used to represent religious cultures in memetic discourse, we discover a tendency towards primarily negative messages about religious traditions and their believers online. The results are that meme messages can be seen as promoting religious stereotypes and serve as microaggressions objectifying the religious other. Based on my 2017 RCA Scholar of the Year lecture, this article suggests Martin Buber’s I-Thou relation can be used as a framework for reading Internet memes about religion in ways that lead to dialogue over distancing of religious traditions.

Despite the steep decline in organized religious affiliation in the United States, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, has continued to see consistent growth and stability in the organization. One way this Church maintains its organizational and cultural structure is through its mission program. This program institutionalizes and standardizes a large-scale rite of passage so as to foster structural understanding and commitment. Using a structurational model of identification, this study examined the missionary experience of 38 prospective, active, and recently returned missionaries and how the missionary experience influences the rules and resources that make up an individual’s identity. Constant comparative analysis revealed that missionaries experienced a rite of passage through three identity-shaping processes: divestiture, individualizing the missionary identity, and mastering the missionary identity. Further, this study demonstrated that missionaries and returned missionaries use rules and resources developed through missionary service to influence the production and reproduction of the Mormon structure through individual development, family construction, and organizational service.

The globalizing potential of digital communication technology evokes frequent comparisons, both hopeful and foreboding, to the Judeo-Christian story of the tower of Babel. Under the guiding metaphor of Babel, this paper integrates the sociological and theological dimensions of Jacques Ellul’s scholarship in an attempt to better understand the profound implications of la technique. To Ellul, the Tower of Babel represents the alienation and sacralization characteristic of the technological society. Yet the metaphor also provides a ray of hope for human flourishing, leveraging media ecology in the service of interpersonal communication while responding to the totalizing demands of the digital age.

This article discusses the rhetorical and pluralistic underpinnings of the 2010 novel The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta. It examines how the novel’s characters manage their lives after the “Sudden Departure,” a mysterious eschatological rapture event. By emphasizing the role of cooperative communication, the novel provides “pluralistic theater” wherein ideological rearrangement and pragmatic reasoning unfolds. By evaluating The Leftover’s “pluralistic theater,” the article establishes the novel as literary equipment that can help readers contemplate the fabric of democratic living and sustainable communicative relations. Moreover, it unpacks the value of eschatology and spirituality in driving such didactic aims.