In Clarendon, Texas, a debate emerged over the material (re)presentation of Christianity in the form of 10-foot crosses morally mapping the cultural landscape. To analyze the rhetoric of moral mapping, we examine how the transcendental embodiment of faith structures the landscape and mediates the ideological subject in order to assess the material function of Clarendon’s crosses. The disassociation between the interpretation of the Clarendon community as “Christian” and the complex reality of what it means to be an ideological subject constituted through—or apart from—religious identification necessitates a theoretical frame that addresses the crosses as structuring and structured experiences.

This paper analyzes the rhetorical exchange between the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which is responsible for safeguarding Catholic doctrine, and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization of U.S. Catholic nuns, concerning charges that the LCWR’s practices deviated from official Catholic teaching. The essay examines how each rhetorical entity addressed the other in a distinct rhetorical voice. The doctrinal genre explains the rhetorical approach of the Church hierarchy, whereas the prophetic voice and the deliberative voice illustrate how the women of the LCWR chose to respond to the censure by balancing their advocacy for a more responsive Church with their fidelity to Catholicism. I argue that although the LCWR’s rhetorical amalgam succeeded in ensuring a mutually satisfactory dialogue with the Vatican representatives, public statements about the resolution of this controversy reflect the ability of the doctrinal voice to subsume prophetic and deliberative voices, revealing an ongoing tension between the hierarchical and communal visions of the Church.

Set atop the highest point in the nation’s capital, The Washington National Cathedral is the sixth largest cathedral in the world. It has become a central site for the high holy rituals of American civil religion, hosting presidential funerals, National Day of Prayer services, and the tombs of national luminaries. Drawing on archival research, this essay situates the cathedral within a history of religious competition and national tension. The essay concludes that the cathedral’s roots lie largely in the fecund rhetorical soil of nineteenth-century nativism, the cultural prejudice that emerged in reaction to Roman Catholicism’s remarkable growth during that period. The essay further argues that nativism is an oft-overlooked yet defining type of civil-religious rhetoric.

Empirical research has found religious affiliation as one of the most important identity and mental health pillars for individuals; however, the common phrase for religious identification: “I am spiritual, not religious” is on the rise in young adults in the United States. Thus, there is a quintessential need for research on religion and communication in this context. Even though there has been little scholarly attention to the role of religion as an inhibitor for communication, communication apprehension scholarship has been providing robust empirical evidence to support this association such as religious receiver apprehension (RRA). RRA is conceptualized as the anxiety or fear associated with receiving either real or anticipated communication about religion with people of other religions. After validating the RRA scale as both generally valid and reliable in the context of this upward trend, 455 young adult participants completed surveys regarding their religious communication behaviors. Findings suggest a relationship between religious receiver apprehension and one’s religious communication apprehension; in other words, the anxiety related to receiving different religious information than one’s religious beliefs also results in higher levels of communicating about one’s religious beliefs. Furthermore, religious receiver apprehension was negatively related to one’s tolerance for religious disagreements as well as one’s attitude towards evangelism, but also for individuals’ religious commitment. Similarly, it is worth considering that the overall majority of participants indicate to belong to particular religious affiliations, as well as identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious”; this contradiction mirrored in reduced religious commitment seems to reflect an ideology of religious entrepreneurialism, which seems to be more likely tethered to the neoliberalist logic of individualization rather than a new empathetic understanding of religious pluralism, which is better explained as “believing and not belonging.”

This autoethnographic account chronicles my academic and religious/spiritual path to becoming a professor of Communication. Spiritual influences and significant life events related to prayer, education, teaching, and research serve as sign posts marking the way. The journey begins with a child scientist experimenting with life—and an adolescent discovering the joy of reading through an illness. The journey continues with a crisis in undergraduate years followed by indoctrination stories of graduate school. Securing and retaining an academic position in Communication reveals the complexities of negotiating research and teaching in higher education. After tenure and promotion, a concurrent spiritual awakening begins a two decade “prayer research journey.” Finally, the journey continues with the most recent transition, moving from a social science research orientation to a new methodological orientation toward scholarship called autoethnography. Questions for meditation and reflection periodically punctuate the journey as a way to engage with the reader and facilitate reflection for life praxis.