Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home represents a sweeping call for action on climate change. In this essay, I use hermeneutical rhetoric to explore the rhetorical strategies Pope Francis employed. In particular, I critically analyze each of the six chapters in the encyclical, focusing on the use of the phrase “our common home.” I argue that Pope Francis’s reinterpretation of the relationship among humans, God, and the environment positions efforts to address climate change as a moral imperative.

In his 2015 encyclical, Pope Francis advanced five edicts on global climate change. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler and Kathryn Yusoff, I seek to contribute to our understanding of contemporary religious and environmental communication by examining the complex racial dynamics of the Anthropocene and the use of universals for political claims to action and justice. Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’, I argue, advances a Catholic rhetoric of the Anthropocene. While his intimate letter incites change and action, Pope Francis’s failure to address the specificity of racism in the global climate crisis reinforces criticisms that scholars such as Yusoff and Butler have advanced against universalism and the Anthropocene.

In 2015, while many Americans acknowledged climate change as a threat, a majority did not view climate change as a religious or moral issue and were unaware of the impacts on the world’s poor. Pope Francis delivered his encyclical in this context and, by using familial metaphors, altered climate change perceptions. Evoking Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis used the metaphors of sister, brother, and mother to shift the audience’s perception of threat: Climate change is not an impersonal, distant risk but one that threatens family. Yet the familial metaphor’s limitation has been an inability to encourage sustained climate change action.

Recently, Pope Francis dedicated a Vatican property—the Palazzo Migliori—as a homeless shelter. Pope Francis’s decision marks the culmination of many papal pronouncements, especially his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, which provides a set of principles focused on taking care of both the environment and “the least of our brethren.” In this article, I engage in a rhetorical analysis of the pope’s theological and political framework based on what Endres and Senda-Cook (2011) call the “rhetoric of place” to explore how Pope Francis alters the symbolic meaning of Vatican property to advance social justice.

Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home has struck a deep chord with a broad audience. We explore the synergy between the ethical vision of sustainability in the Earth Charter and the encyclical. We position the document within the ecology and media landscapes. Laudato Si’ is remarkable among international statements in its explicit attention to education. We draw out the pivotal importance of education in order for its critical message not to be lost. We argue that education for Laudato Si’ can be advanced in traditional education—formal and non-formal, secular and religious—and in education through the media.

The social entrepreneur has gained prominence as a cultural figure whose inspirational storytelling promotes a working life good for the self and good for the world. Recent examples of allegedly aspirational but actually malfeasant entrepreneurs, however, have raised public questions about this figure’s promise to unite personal, professional, and public aspirations within a single identity. By critically examining the communication patterns of social entrepreneurs narrating personal and organizational spirituality, this article argues for a shift from inspirational identity narratives that assume an individualist and instrumentalist model of communication to fellowship narratives that assume a collective and participatory model.

One pervasive feature of modern public discourse is the theoretical clash between the sacred and the profane. This tension often manifests itself in interminable conflicts between appeals to absolute values and consequentialist calculations of outcomes. In this essay, I examine Blaise Pascal’s famous Wager argument in light of the sacred/profane dichotomy. I argue that the central logical conflict in the Wager is Pascal’s attempt to warrant a sacred belief (the belief in God) through a profane, consequentialist calculation (the outcome of a bet). Since sacred appeals permeate modern political discourse, this essay examines the role of the sacred and the profane as competing modes of reasoning. Finally, I envision how a responsiveness to these differing logics can create a new empathetic and charitable approach to political, cultural, and moral controversy.

Research outlines positive associations between religiosity, forgiveness, and relational satisfaction. This mixed-methods analysis examines how religiosity influences transgressions and forgiveness among friends. A total of 251 adults described transgressions and forgiveness in their friendships, forgiveness-granting strategies, relational outcomes, and religiosity. Religious participants utilized more nonverbal and explicit strategies to communicate forgiveness than non-religious respondents. Religiosity was positively associated with a stable relational outcome, following forgiveness. An inductive analysis illuminated differences based on religiosity. Whereas non-religious respondents and Protestant females favored the discussion-based, conditional, and explicit forgiveness strategies, Protestant males and Catholics tended to withhold forgiveness following a relational transgression or even terminate the friendship.

Following the election of Donald Trump in 2016, both immigration and the refugee crisis became heated topics of debate within evangelical life as many feared possible terrorist attacks and cultural change, while others considered hospitality toward refugees as a core issue of the faith beckoning empathy and action. After framing Warner’s (2005) concept of poetic world making among religious publics and counterpublics through the use of sacred text, Leff’s (1997) discussion of hermeneutical rhetorics is invoked to reconsider differences within conservative evangelicalism, even while all interpretations are said to be grounded in Scripture. To develop a greater understanding of the differing vernaculars within evangelicalism and their enactment of imitatio, two sermonic discourses regarding immigration are placed in conversation to distinguish major differences between what is ultimately deemed a dominant political public and an orthodox counterpublic.

This paper argues that the twenty-year U.S. war in Afghanistan can persuasively be viewed as a holy war prosecuted on behalf of American-style liberalism. To make this argument, it develops a framework for understanding holy war as an issue of communication and draws on the work of Émile Durkheim, Patrick Deneen, James K. A. Smith, and Judith Shklar to situate liberalism as a religion. It then details how U.S. presidents proclaimed and prosecuted holy war in Afghanistan in five acts, showing how the conflict developed as a (liberal) religious war under Bush and continued until the August 2021 U.S. military withdrawal.

This study examines the effects of deductive and inductive preaching in a church setting. A sermon fulfills Bitzer’s description of a rhetorical event in context, exigence, and nature of utterance (1968). A series of deductive and inductive sermons was preached to gauge the preferences of listeners and impact of these rhetorical events on their lives. Two focus groups, as well as six interview subjects, participated in this qualitative study through pretests, post-tests, and interviews. Findings contribute to the field of communication by exploring ramifications of inductive and deductive preaching and the effects of each in a congregation situated in an increasingly biblically illiterate culture, specifically in the context of Churches of Christ.

Haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of New York have been aggressively targeted by anti-vax groups. Reaching the Haredim with misinformation is facilitated by the very accommodations used to keep the lifestyle separate and incorruptible. Actually, most rabbis, the experts on Jewish law, advocate for vaccination, and this comes straight from the communication of scripture. Despite the fact that the principles of a fundamentalist religion can complicate some life decisions, an understanding of religious law and a rabbi’s interpretation of scripture as the ultimate authoritative sources may best counter medical misinformation, both for the group itself and the public’s impressions of them.

This essay analyzes the form of Hillsong Los Angeles’s live Sunday services and Hillsong California’s digital services using Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic analysis. Specifically, it extends Burke’s concept of the “representative anecdote” to accommodate the sequence of formal choices made in Hillsong church services. Furthermore, it considers the dialectical interactions of this underlying narrative, the material aspects of the service, and ritual enactments of the discourse therein. The essay offers a processual look at how one of the most popular global church movements articulates an organizationally coherent message in a local setting and also contributes to our understanding how millennial-led ministries influence the contemporary religious marketplace.

Despite the Mormon Church having policies and doctrines that discriminate against 2SLGBTQIA+ folks, some queer people choose to stay in the organization. This study explores how collective forgetting is used as a strategy among queer Mormons as they navigate Othering. By employing a critical thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 15 queer and actively involved members of the Church, this research examines the tensions of remembering and forgetting discrimination and traces how official religious rhetoric influences interpersonal and identity decisions. Discussions on how the findings connect with whiteness and anti-queerness are presented within the context of the Church. Limitations and future paths of study are offered.

This essay examines Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley’s adoption of the Persona of the Humble Teacher while presenting a Bible study about sexuality to Alfred Street Baptist Church. The Persona of the Humble Teacher is a newly identified rhetorical persona that can be useful in discussions about debated topics within Christianity. In examining the methodology, the Humble Teacher uses rhetorical theology to bridge the educational gap between persons with opposing views. The goal is to increase the listeners’ consciousness by moving the listeners toward a deeper understanding of one another. In exploring the rhetoric of the Humble Teacher, I argue that Wesley develops the rhetorical situation as outlined in the seminal article “The Rhetorical Situation” by Lloyd Bitzer. Wesley uses both constitutive and invitational rhetoric to create the boundaries necessary for healthy dialogue. Given the Black church’s lack of discourse around LGBTQIA issues, religious leaders can adopt the Persona of the Humble Teacher as exemplified by Pastor Howard-John Wesley to engage in dialogue about sexuality and other taboo topics within the church.

In this study, we identify the privacy rules of people with religious beliefs different from the exclusivist Christian religious beliefs of their family members. Sixteen individuals with significantly different religious beliefs than their exclusivist Christian family members were interviewed to discern the privacy rules guiding their decisions regarding their religious belief revelations. An analysis of interview transcripts demonstrated that participants created privacy rules about what information about their religious beliefs to reveal and how to reveal information about their religious beliefs. Results are considered in light of preceding literature on religious belief revelation and privacy management.