Content analysis of television advertising by national religious denominations suggests these institutions have accepted a rational-choice view of their place in American religious pluralism. Their ads employ more generic imagery than religious symbols and emphasize religions’ ability to meet psychological and social needs more than traditional benefits of religious participation. Presenting a religion as a provider of more than explicitly religious benefits is consistent with active competition for practitioners desiring the best cost-benefit ratio from their religious choice.

A rhetorical analysis of the Mars Hill Church’s internal communications reveals three stages of the church leadership’s use of relational metaphors leading up to Mark Driscoll’s recent resignation from the church, which he founded. This article examines how these metaphors were an attempt at actional legitimation through spiritual tyranny. Spiritual tyranny, with roots in the concept of emotional tyranny, can be defined as the use of spiritual authority in a manner that is seen as destructive, controlling, or unjust. The essay ends with an explication of the harmful effects of Christian metaphors on congregations under the control of a spiritual tyrant.

Using an American tract of the early 1800s, Religion Exemplified in the Life of Poor Sarah, this study explores the power of the exemplar to occlude Native American history. In addition, this study addresses the confusion over the authorship of Poor Sarah and why authorship, in this case, is significant to contemporary American (and Native American) historians and Native Americans, especially the Cherokee. Finally, this historical criticism investigates the role played by Federalists in funding the production and distribution of the conversion narratives in order to expose and underscore the political and economic collusion behind the promotion of the tracts. This study follows the history of Poor Sarah as it moves from New England to the Cherokee Nation, from the past to present, and concludes the necessity of historical criticism in the study of ethnic marginalization and communication and religion.

John of Salisbury (1115/20-1180) defended the liberal arts as his preferred educational system throughout Metalogicon. This article addresses the following question: what are the implications of John’s position about the relationship between rhetorical education and ethical praxis? First, Metalogicon is framed as John’s defense of rhetorical education. Second, John’s definition of rhetoric is interpreted as a synthesis of Ciceronian rhetoric and Aristotelian dialectics. Third, ethical praxis is framed by John as the telos of rhetorical education. The Cornificians served as the antithesis of John’s promotion of the traditional education system of Western Europe. Metalogicon serves as a religious teaching manual because John argued that educators should ground their actions in ethical frameworks articulated by the Catholic Church.

This exploratory study into differences in the experience of direct divine communication (DDC) presents the results of depth interviews with 32 Catholic women religious. It analyzes the sisters’ phenomenological experience of DDC individually, across their religious orders, and in comparison with the experience of evangelical Protestants as reported in previous DDC literature. Findings indicate considerable differences across Catholic religious orders but relatively little (measurable) difference between Catholics and Protestants.