This paper analyzes African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth in the context of two rhetorical paradigms—womanist theology and Black feminist standpoint epistemology—in order to highlight the ways that she used the podium and the pulpit to validate the black woman’s experience and her particular embodied ways of knowing. Significantly, Truth asserted her authority in public spaces as a black woman whose life was rooted in Afro-centric thought and tradition. The paper enhances scholarship in the field of theological-based rhetoric and extends the work of rhetorical scholars who have focused on her famous speech, “Aren’t I a Woman.” The paper highlights Truth as a maverick feminist theologian who was instrumental in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements.

Racist ideologies have dominated the discursive landscape of American Evangelism for centuries. Charland’s (1987) theory of constitutive rhetoric explores the relationship between rhetoric and ideological interpellation. Subsequent scholarship examined the outcomes of constitutive rhetorics in a wide variety of rhetorical situations. However, scholars have not exhausted theoretical extensions of the theory nor potential areas for its usage. In particular, scholars have regrettably overlooked potential insights from religious discourses. To compensate for this oversight, I analyze how a rhetor used constitutive rhetoric to resituate Christian identity into a more inclusive ideological framework, by dislocating connections between race and biology. My analysis advances three arguments on the nature of constitutive rhetoric, encourages sustained engagement by scholars with religious discourses, and draws attention to the complexities of (re)articulating a Christian voice on perceived racial differences. First, I argue that constitutive rhetoric’s suitability to a particular rhetorical situation depends on its ability to address multiple layers of social identity simultaneously as a means of negotiating and navigating tensions and conflicts between existing and emerging subject positions. Second, I highlight the potential for a rhetor to embody a constitutive rhetoric as a means of grounding ideology in lived experiences. Third, I demonstrate the power of constitutive rhetoric, especially religious discourses, to inscribe moral frameworks onto subjects. From this study, scholars will gain a better understanding of the interdiscursive relationship between subject positions, recognize the potential for a rhetor to embody a constitutive discourse, and gain a better grasp of the action-imperative of constitutive rhetoric. Finally, I conclude by charting future directions for the development of Charland’s theory.

In 1866, Mary Baker Eddy claimed to receive a divine revelation, one concerning a new scientific principle—namely, that matter was unreal. Over time, this revelation became perfectly clear to Eddy, but convincing others of its truth demanded a careful, sophisticated rhetoric. This essay adds to existing scholarship on the early Christian Science church by exploring the work of an organization charged with communicating Eddy’s revelation—the Christian Science Board of Lectureship. I argue that the Board of Lectureship drew people into Eddy’s revelation by empowering them as agents in a new intellectual culture. At a time when mainstream science, medicine, and theology were becoming increasingly specialized and inaccessible to ordinary Americans, the Board of Lectureship’s message of agency rendered popular audiences integral to the truth of Christian Science. In the end, Eddy’s lecturers advanced a new rhetoric of revelation—one based not on faith and transcendence but on the practical, intellectual efforts of ordinary people.

Religious organizations have increasingly used the Internet to recruit and socialize new members, with the number of congregational websites in America quadrupling since 1998. Despite such exponential growth, few communication scholars have focused on congregational websites and the often ambiguous messages they convey. In this study we explored the use of shell nouns (Schmid, 2000) on more than 100 congregational websites in the major metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Tampa Bay. Results not only revealed the prevalent use of “family” and “community,” but also the way these ambiguous terms stipulated a specific set of actions in order for new attendees to become official members: (a) communal learning, (b) sustained attendance, and (c) public service. Thus, the ostensibly inclusive vernacular of “family” and “community” was actually shown to constitute an exclusionary organizational structure that marginalized anyone unable to fulfill its specific requirements.

The people of the United States and elsewhere who consistently continue to suffer systematic economic, social, and political injustices are often overlooked and unacknowledged in the field of Communication Studies. It is this kind of degrading, humiliating, and marginalizing existence of the “suffering other” that urgently exhorts us to cultivate and practice compassion in our discipline. In this essay, I argue that it is simply not enough to have a social justice focus in Communication Studies. By using Tibetan Buddhist teachings, especially the Dalai Lama’s on compassion, I argue that there is also an important need to augment social justice with attention to the role compassion plays in addressing social injustices from a spiritual perspective in the field of Communication Studies. I also explore some ways compassion can be cultivated in our students.