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.

This study presents an intertextual narrative analysis of 524 news stories on 11 high profile faith healing cases involving death or life-threatening illness of a child. Analysis traced growth of the public narrative of faith healing through elements of news production, distribution, and consumption. Findings suggest, first, an epic narrative form that allowed growth of a conceptual narrative. Second, results suggest that framing of news is influenced more by proximity of related historical events than proximity of the current action to the audience. Lastly, results suggest that where religion and law clash, media narrative resigns religion to antenarrative.