The theoretical clash between the sacred and the profane is one of the most compelling aspects of the way humans use discourse in the pursuit of truth. Rene Descartes’ method, understood as an attempt to rebuild a body of knowledge by calling all that is known into question, demonstrates this dynamic. As Descartes disavows all previously held assumptions, he makes a deliberate caveat to exempt his faith in God from suspicion. In this essay, I argue that the separation of Descartes’ faith from his method is a meaningful illustration of reasoning from the sacred. I demonstrate that a key role of the sacred is to shape the way a person reasons, even as a sacred belief can hold a vaunted, protected position in that person’s worldview. This status of a belief is characterized by two distinct logical structures: separation and security. Finally, based on this analysis, I explicate a few ways that this type of separation has telling implications for our contemporary moral discourse.

This article examines a specific Tunisian Muslim woman’s nude protest on social media and its misinterpretation by FEMEN, a Ukrainian radical feminist activist group intended to protect women’s rights. I argue that, although digital media seems to offer more inclusivity in the material world, subaltern bodies who use technology to transmit their message still cannot be heard. Thus, I offer actor-network theory as a different framework for tracking these types of conflicts, one that allows for intersectionality and non-Western religions to be recognized and acknowledged. Finally, I conclude that flexible solidarity is the logical relation of religion-as-networked-performance.

Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805–1844) set the doctrinal table of Mormonism through his revelations, other writings, and oral discourse. Despite the unorthodox nature of Smith’s ideas and his initial lack of oratorical skills, the church he founded has flourished despite determined opposition. This essay reviews Smith’s rhetorical development, including a review of the doctrinally rich King Follett Discourse through the critical lens of Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm, to account, at least in part, for the appeal of Smith and his ideas.

In the speech code of American evangelicalism, the symbolic term “Christian worldview” and its companion term “biblical worldview” are ubiquitous. Speech codes theory (SCT) holds that symbolic terms simply and quickly communicate complex ideas, values, and meanings that are taken for granted in the shared culture of a speech community. Symbolic terms accomplish this work by activating community members’ cognitive schemata or shared mental organization of cultural knowledge. The present study elaborates the historical and contemporary ideas, values, and meanings tacitly conveyed by “Christian worldview,” reports field observations of a one-year “worldview” small group Bible study and interprets this symbolic term as a defining marker of American evangelical culture. SCT holds that a distinctive culture manifests a distinctive speech code of socially constructed meanings that shape its cultural life. The study argues that the symbolic terms “Christian worldview” and “biblical worldview” shape American evangelical culture life according to meanings essential for interpreting that culture and for the discursive constitution of evangelical subjectivity.

Margaret Thatcher made history in 1979 when she became the first woman prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom. Unlike many of her predecessors, Thatcher regularly drew on her religious faith in her rhetoric and her approach to shaping policy. This article argues that Margaret Thatcher’s public speeches, memoirs, and official biographies of her life, when taken together, offer a coherent statement of her understanding of Christianity that we call a rhetorical theology. Thatcher’s rhetorical theology offers a justification for her fiercely individualistic public policies from within her articulated religious perspective. We analyze fragments of discourse by and about Thatcher that we argue constitute her rhetorical theology: an understanding of Christianity that offers a muted British version of the prosperity gospel to justify conservative economic and social policies.

This article clarifies and extends “going nowhere correctly” (Arnett, 2010) as a metaphor for religious communication scholarship. The temporal context of “going nowhere correctly” is clarified by analyzing Augustine’s philosophy of time in Confessions. The existential conditions are clarified by analyzing the play Waiting for Godot. I propose that in practical religious discourse, “going nowhere correctly” implies a religious discourse of speaking while dwelling, which amounts to a form of epideictic rhetorical discourse. Further, I propose that a turn to this epideictic discourse remedies some problems in contemporary religious communication.

“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” was the title of a 1922 sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick, announcing a question that fueled public dispute in the fundamentalist–modernist controversy in 1920s America. The question persists today, but this article turns to the metaphors of apocalyptic rhetoric and routine cynicism to suggest a deeper question energizing fundamentalist and antifundamentalist rhetoric: What does the future of faith look like in an era of cynicism? This article brings a philosophical hermeneutic approach to Fosdick’s sermon as well as the rebuttals of John Roach Straton and Clarence Edward Macartney. Macartney’s distinctive form of apocalyptic rhetoric, this article argues, offers a possible way to counter fundamentalism’s dangers without tacitly accepting its methodological premises of marginalization and polarization.

Even in academic spaces, the ontology of plagiarism is contested, but it is even more so in Protestant evangelical contexts. Thus the very notion of plagiarism in the academy—and now in religious spaces—is unclear and may be subject to criticisms of power and questions of who gets to define what plagiarism means. In this article, we aim to elucidate the reemerging conversation about plagiarism in sermonic discourse captured in the 2021 #Sermongate scandal. We introduce the systematic, histo-cultural factors which have worked to shape these ontological beliefs about sermonic plagiarism and advocate for a general set of plagiarism standards.

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.

This essay examines how the framework of semioethics coheres with Pope Francis’sexistential dialogue and its application to ethical praxis enacted through spiritual, social, andphenomenological “networks of neighborliness.” Through an analysis of Pope Francis’s 48th and53rd World Communications Day Messages, which emphasize his evaluation of globalcommunication production systems, specifically, socially mediated networks, this essay explainshow the mutual aims of semioethics and Pope Francis’s dialogic ethics coalesce around theinterrelated, material, and metaphorical coordinates of “the net” and “neighborliness” to invitean indifferent world to dialogic conversion.