Howard Thurman is attuned to bodies under threat. In this article, I argue that his use of vignettes offers a distinctive rhetorical strategy for addressing collective trauma. Through closely examining “The Third Component,” a sermon preached in 1958, I display his distinctive contribution to working with traumatic memories. In relying on a third memory—a memory of communing in the Presence of total regard—he connects religious experience to the somatic efforts to heal bodies from trauma. I make the case that, for Thurman, the work of racial justice depends on spiritual practices to hone attention and enable the awareness necessary for the work.

Building on Fraser’s account of religious persuasion through indirection, this essay explores how instrumental music can communicate faith, as demonstrated in a groundbreaking album by guitarist Phil Keaggy. I argue that while music functions as pure persuasion in its unfolding form, it can also facilitate ordinary persuasion on matters of faith by evoking particular impressions of religious pathos, ethos, and/or mythos, which may be reinforced in liner notes. When Keaggy, a pioneer of Jesus music, made an album of original instrumentals, a spiritually-themed story was added to ensure acceptance by that audience. This story conveys faith indirectly, while the music itself somewhat evokes the ethos and pathos of the gospel. After the story was dropped in the reissued album, key qualities of Keaggy’s music and ethos helped sustain his art’s potential to convey spiritual meaning. For communication scholars, discerning such potential requires closereading and/or audience studies.

The United States has witnessed a public display of outrage toward critical race theory (CRT). This opposition has been buoyed by White evangelical Christian polemics. I conducted a discourse-historical analysis of 21 statements, reflecting a diversity of voices within evangelical discourse (ED). First, ED constructs CRT as both bereft of theoretical validity and evil. Second, the discourse inverts the objectives of CRT by claiming those goals for its own. Third, ED seeks to strip CRT of its transformative and emancipatory power. Fourth, ED constructs CRT in ways that diffuse accountability. Finally, ED questions the faith of Christians who seek to learn from CRT. Reflection is offered for how CRT and Christianity might conspire together toward the aims of addressing racial inequity.

Faculty members face a great deal of uncertainty when hired by an institution. With a new work environment and unfamiliar processes, a faculty member can experience stress when starting a new position. To reduce possible feelings of isolation and dissatisfaction, colleges and universities can create onboarding programs that focus on specific needs that should be addressed. Faculty members hired to universities that align with their religious orientations may have nuanced retention and satisfaction experiences. This case study uses Jablin’s organizational assimilation theory (OAT) to understand how faculty members’ onboarding process affects their assimilation in religious colleges and seeks to understand additional factors that may lead to the overall satisfaction of new faculty members.

In response to an era defined by narrative contention and polarized communication, an increasing number of scholars have called for renewed attention to a Christian rhetorical theory. Such a theory would have to enable the Christian rhetor to articulate the definitive goods and values promoted by a Christian narrative, to identify points of difference with competing narratives, and to ground argument within philosophical reasoning that engages universal and transcendent truths. Therefore, this article suggests that a vibrant Christian rhetorical theory must be complemented by dialectic. Through an analysis of the dialectical topics of Boethius in De topicis differentiis alongside his “masterpiece of rhetorical philosophy” (Verene 2020, 333), The Consolation of Philosophy, dialectic is revealed as a valuable aid to the Christian rhetor seeking to ground argument in philosophical reasoning while being responsive to context, contingency, and difference in the current historical moment.