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.

This essay seeks to identify a groundwork for an ethics of death in response to existential questions that concern moving forward after the loss of a loved one. In doing so, considering perspectives on death from Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Josef Pieper, ethical implications of death are revealed and lead to identifying the coordinates of leisure, faith, and resilience coming together to weave a faith-based resilience. Faith-based resilience prepares one to be able to respond to an ethics of death in ways that forge new meaning after the death of a loved one disrupts personal existential meaning.

This narrative study examines the lived experience of leaving a church and the members’ communication of dissatisfaction as part of that experience through participant stories. Situated within Jablin’s (2001) organizational exit framework, this study included interviews (N = 22) with former members of multiple denominations of Christian churches. Results suggest several theoretical implications. First, the findings of this study suggest that narrative of the exit experience is excluded from grand organizational narratives within faith communities. Second, as members exit a faith community, they experience a tension between wanting to express dissent and a pressure to leave silently. Third, findings challenge current models of organizational exit, suggesting a view of exit that is tied both to organizational form and to the reach of the organization into the members’ lives.

Finland's Winter War (1939–40) against the Soviet Union had been defensive, but the so-called Continuation War that broke out in June 1941 was not. This offensive operation demanded thorough justification, because neither the troops nor the public were unanimous about embarking on an offensive campaign in alliance with Nazi Germany. The Lutheran clergy were important in legitimizing the war because priests had formal power deriving from the peculiar relationship between the Finnish state and the Lutheran Church, whereby they were de jure officials of the state as well as of the church. Drawing on Christian and biblical imagery to support the war, they reached a receptive audience, as nearly 96 per cent of Finns belonged to the Lutheran Church. This article uses Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad to analyze how the Lutheran clergy constructed their authority rhetorically during the Continuation War 1941–1944, strategically shifting the grammatical and theological foundation of that authority as the war progressed.

Despite the Supreme Courts’ June 26, 2015, ruling, which nationally legalized same-sex marriage, many conservative evangelical Protestants continue to oppose equal marriage rights for LGBT couples. Through a content analysis of online sermon transcripts, this project examines major themes in American conservative evangelical Protestant pastors’ rhetoric surrounding LBGT rights and marriage. Using framing theory and subcultural identity theory, three primary themes emerge from this sermon rhetoric: 1) alienating the LGBT community as a dangerous out-group, 2) enhancing in-group evangelical Protestant identities by emphasizing solidarity, and 3) mobilizing those identities to call for political action. The study’s results and implications for future research are discussed at length.

This article argues that a model for Christian participation in political debate can be gleaned from the work of Richard John Neuhaus. I articulate key characteristics of this model, then use it to evaluate Christian rhetoric favoring Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR). I find that while Christian pro-CIR rhetoric exemplifies a Neuhausian approach in many ways, it falls short with regard to its eschatological vision. Nonetheless, I argue that a Neuhausian model has the potential to revitalize Christian rhetoric in the public sphere and American political rhetoric as a whole.

Amos Kiewe (2011) provides a significant intellectual and practical service to the field of communication and to those seeking to understand evil that commences with the eclipse of the Other. His rhetorical analysis of anti-Semitism continues to unmask the marginalization and rejection of the different. The tone and purpose of his work originates in the title of Kiewe’s (2011) book, Confronting Anti-Semitism: Seeking an End to Hateful Rhetoric. This essay engages his didactic insights in three basic ways. First, I highlight particular parts of Kiewe’s book, engaging his project chapter by chapter. Second, while exploring this perspective, I offer comments that conclude each chapter description. Finally, I offer a response from the standpoint of three Jewish scholars central to my own work, Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), Martin Buber (1878– 1965), and Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995). I underscore macro arguments from each of these three scholars in order to explicate my response to Kiewe’s discernments.