This article analyzes the rhetorical strategies of a nineteenth-century American professor of sacred rhetoric, Austin Phelps, in his opposition to the Spiritualist movement. Phelps’s approach encapsulates the most effective arguments used by a class of thinkers who were liberally educated, held great respect for science, and for whom biblical accounts of demonic activity continued to shed valid light upon modern-day phenomena. His booklet Spiritualism: The Argument in Brief (1871) employs elements of legal reasoning, especially a stasis approach—finding the “stopping points” in a judicial case—and apophatic strategy: using definition by negation to convince an audience to accept the rhetor’s definition of a key concept or term. “Counselor” Phelps grounds his arguments and conclusions in common experience, historical consciousness, commonly held religious belief, moral obligation, and professional duty. Far from being an unsophisticated rant about devils, Phelps’s treatment of Spiritualism was a high point of reasoned, classically argued discourse in the special domain of religious rhetoric: the supernatural.

Direct references to the biological inferiority of individuals or groups of people have almost completely disappeared from mainstream public discourse. In an era where hierarchies of power cannot be justified by appealing to the inherent inferiority of any race, gender, or sexual orientation, power must be dispensed and withheld through more genteel forms of discourse. The concept of Othering is commonly employed in the humanities and social sciences as a forceful but subtle substitute. Othering refers to a discursive process of separating We from Other as a means of constructing hierarchies of power. Although scholars from a variety of disciplines have explored these forms, this article offers a fresh perspective on the Othering process by analyzing the relationship between marriage and the construction of exclusive communities. Specifically, we cite the Old Testament book of Ezra, where we find an unusually narrow definition of a Jew. There, the We and the Other are defined not by genealogy or kinship but by the experience of exile in Babylon. The insiders, the We, had been to Babylon, the Others had not. The term “Holy Seed” is used for this group, which in Ezra’s view comprises Jews. Even if a woman married a Jew and had children by him, she was not considered part of the We, and must be expelled. Ultimately, we use the relationship between Othering and marriage in the book of Ezra to inform other contemporary forms of Othering that operate in our current historical moment.

This article examines how George Whitefield’s and Jarena Lee’s spiritual autobiographies employ Methodist hymns in order to constitute a transnational evangelical community. Using James Jasinski’s theoretical frame of “constitutive rhetoric” and Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concepts of “presence” and “communion,” I show how these ministers deploy hymns in order to integrate disparate Christian communities by inviting readers to reenact vicariously their conversion experiences and faith-based journeys and invoking the presence of God through “I”-centered and Christ-centered psalms that transform the individual evangelical’s reading activity into a collective worship experience.

Kagura is one of the oldest forms of Shinto folk performing arts in Japan. Performed as part of local religious festivals, it is considered to be a means of communicating with kami (deities). This article offers an ethnographic study of WASHINOMIYA SAIBARA KAGURA to explore the communicative dimensions of Shinto. The purpose is twofold: (a) to seek religious conditions that allow the Japanese to communicate about kami; and (b) to add an East Asian cultural insight into our understanding of intercultural communication and religion. The study demonstrates the ways the members of the kagura group communicate about the kagura and how the group shares the kami, focusing on the interaction during the kagura practices.

This article explores the ways in which metaphors are constructed and extended in the foundational Quiverfull text, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ by Rick and Jan Hess. Although biblical metaphors are used throughout the text, careful analysis reveals that those metaphors are in fact grounded in secular reasoning that taps into to popular cultural anxieties regarding national and economic security.

A number of studies across disciplines have examined the influence of popular music on identity; however, comparative study of Christian music genres, which are clearly racially marked, is lacking. Based on Tajfel and Turner’s social identity perspective, this article examines the ways in which Black listeners of Black gospel and White listeners of Contemporary Christian music (CCM), evaluate themselves and one another. Although there have been popular speculations about these differences, there is no empirical evidence of these assumptions. Findings suggest that while in-group members are generally more favorable toward their music than the out-group, privilege allows for Black listeners to be more open toward White majority music while the opposite is not true.