This research explores the contribution of Ernst Cassirer to the relationship between communication and religion. Religion, one of Cassirer's fundamental symbolic forms, is read through the phenomenological categories in Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics. Communicology is briefly described as the science of embodied discourse. The semiotic logic (phenomenology) beneath Cassirer's dialectical thinking is revealed. Peirce's progressive, reflexive logic of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness proves insightful as a way of comprehending the breadth and depth of Cassirer's symbol of religion in relation to ‘life’ and ‘spirit,’ ‘basis phenomena,’ and myth and religion. We conclude that in religio it is not the symbol that is sacred. Rather, communication is held sacred.

Increasingly, human rights collaboration involves faith-based organizations whose members see social activism as an extension of their religious identities. This raises an immediate tension because collaboration requires negotiation of identities, challenging the convictions that motivate religious believers’ involvement. Thus human rights collaboration offers an important context to explore tensions of identity and religious faith. This study reports on a human trafficking collaboration in Mexico, with a particular emphasis on the communicative tensions of integrating a distinct religious identity while collaborating with others. Grounded Practical Theory is used to identify practical challenges, communicative responses, and situated ideals that constitute this problem domain.

This paper offers a rhetorical criticism of the hymn “Amazing Grace” by John Newton. Specifically it seeks to answer the question of why a song created for religious audiences has such wide appeal beyond the confines of the church. To explore this question, the methodology of Barry Brummett and Kenneth Burke are applied to the hymn’s lyrics, and the theoretical approach of Deanna and Timothy Sellnow are applied to the hymns music. In the end, it is found that “Amazing Grace” offers equipment for living with life’s trials through the homology of the grace anecdote.

Applying ritual theory to practices surrounding sacred images in sixteenth-century European Christianity illustrates an underappreciated power of visual means for constituting and communicating religious belief systems. In addition to constructing belief systems for religious practitioners and enabling expressions of devotion, sacred images facilitate and sometimes dictate changes in religious belief systems. Understanding the promotion of change in religious belief as a distinct, unique power of sacred images is valuable in a religious environment characterized by change through pluralism, conversion, and the spread of religions through media.

This essay examines how Dorothy Day established a diverse readership in the first decade of the Catholic Worker. I argue that Day uses rhetorical transcendence to bring the resources of her religious faith into the public sphere while establishing her discursive ethic of fostering common ground. My analysis demonstrates that Day invented human dignity and social action as ultimate terms that effectively persuaded beyond her own faith community, prompting a new, diverse community of action. As rhetorical invention, transcendence creates discursive spaces in which people with diverse ideologies may act together—spaces that ameliorate public discourse.

Individuals with HIV/AIDS were recruited from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to complete a survey analyzing the relationship between religiosity and willingness to seek treatment for HIV/AIDS. Willingness to seek treatment is conceptualized as a three-dimensional construct including a patient’s propensity to seek out information about their illness, to be assertive in medical interaction, and to non-adhere to medical advice. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed religiosity to be negatively correlated with nonadherence and positively with seeking out of information and assertiveness. Significant differences also emerged between the three nations on the dimensions of willingness to seek treatment.