During her brief life in the early nineteenth century, the Persian poet and theologian Táhirih advocated for a spiritual revolution. Authorities executed her for heresy in 1852. After death, Táhirih attracted admirers around the world; Western writers—especially women—have interpreted her history to argue for gender equality, religious renewal, and global interdependence. This Middle Eastern preacher has established a posthumous pulpit in the United States, as members of the Bahá’í Faith there have authored a dozen books about her. After introducing Táhirih’s rhetorical rebellions, this essay demonstrates her transnational influence by analyzing her afterlives in U.S. Bahá’í discourse.

This paper grounds the popular discussions of mindfulness in the U.S. that frame it as a self-help technique in the primary discourses of the Buddha, and cautions against an appropriation of mindfulness as an individualistic and a pragmatic tool. Specifically, I focus on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (The Foundations of Mindfulness) that is part of the “long collection,” Digha Nikaya (DN), which includes a detailed discussion of the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path that explore the problem of suffering and liberation from suffering in human experience. The noble eightfold path offers a framework for the systematic training of mental faculties through three groups that are interrelated: virtue, concentration, and discernment. Mindfulness is part of the concentration group, which is part of a training that equally emphasizes virtue (moral discipline) and wisdom (discernment). Finally, I discuss communicative and epistemological implications of mindfulness discourses that present ways of knowing and beingin-the-world beyond self-centeredness.

This article examines liturgy through a responsiveness-oriented rhetorical analysis. Responsiveness is an emerging conception of rhetoric that brings focus to how people change their own habits. For Christians, this article finds that liturgical call-and-response can develop people’s rhetorical responsiveness because the scriptedness of responding simplifies what people should do/say, putting more emphasis on people’s participation and their willingness to be drawn in. These findings are then extended through examining two moments in a larger project, which show that liturgy can be adapted for antiracist rhetorical work outside of worship services, in that liturgy allows people to listen, participate without dominating, and subordinate themselves to a common spiritual goal. Overall, this article contributes to work on religious rhetoric, race, and rhetorical theory.

When a mission ends, missionaries must make sense of their experiences, themselves, and their lives going forward. This process of sensemaking and its implications for religious organizations’ communication with members who occupy terminal roles is the focus of this study. Based on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews with former missionaries in one organization, two distinct and divergent patterns of missionaries’ sensemaking and role exit emerged. Finisher sensemaking involved deidentification with vocational ministry, leaving the sending organization, and (re)constructing multiple identities through an arduous process of identity work. Conversely, bypasser sensemaking drew upon the sending organization as a resource to sustain a deep identification with vocational ministry. Thus bypassers positioned themselves as essential members and reidentified with new roles in the organization. The ongoing study of communication in/about terminal roles in religious and other totalistic organizations is discussed as well as practical implications for organizations and their members.

Recent research has revealed a prominent ‘political parallelism’ phenomenon in the coverage of Islam and Muslims. The studies have evidenced that the coverage of Islam and Muslims is widely influenced by the ideological leanings of the newspapers. This paper is set to explore whether the ideological differences of the Australian newspapers are reflected in the coverage of Islam and Muslims during January 1, 2016, to March 31, 2017. Employing Van Dijk’s (1998) ideological square and lexicalization approaches within the CDA paradigm, this study examined editorials from two leading Australian newspapers. The findings have validated the existence of the ‘political parallelism’ discourse in the editorial contents of the selected newspapers representing Islam and Muslims.