In this study, we examine the interrelationship between language, faith, gender, and environmental attitudes, revealing how men's andwomen's language within their denominational faith perspectives prescribe competing environmental behaviors. We interviewed students at three west Michigan seminaries, dividing each seminary group into men and women participants. Each group listened andresponded to a set of real-life narratives and Biblical verses. In an attempt to understand the seminarians' environmental perspectives, we conducted a rhetorical analysis of the discussions of the men's and women's transcripts. A distinction between the men's and women's views and relationships to nature was evident through themes, language used, and stories told. Women at the Reformed seminaries expressed a personal connection to place and a vision of nature as part of their community, indicating that these future ministers may be more likely to work with their congregations on environmental issues.

From a study of 59 adult women's stories about self-esteem, a commontheme emerged from 41 of the stories - that faith experiences play an important role in those women's self-esteem. This paper explains both the positive and negative roles played by Christianity and the church, and relationships within the church, for these women's self-esteem. The positive influences on self-esteem were typically held by the women who spoke of a "personal" relationship with God vs. a "church"-centered relationship with God, leading the author to propose that God can be considered as a "significant other" for the theory of symbolic interactionism. Implications for communication scholars, in terms of expanding the theory of symbolic interactionism to include a "divine other" and one's faith experiences, are explored.

This study describes a phenomenon in political rhetoric labeled The Pharisee Effect. The term describes those situations in which religious appeals are used within the political context and have a boomerang effect on the targeted audience, i.e., the audience reacts negatively to the appeal. The authors argue that the phenomenon of the Pharisee Effects fits within general game theory in that the political context encourages an escalating exchange of messages which can lead one of the participants to engage in rhetoric that voter consider unacceptable. When the religious appeal goes too far, it may be subject to negative evaluations regarding the speaker's intention or motivations. These negative evaluations could fall into one of five different categories: (1) self-serving motivations, (2) hypocrisy, (3) inappropriateness, (4) fanaticism, or (5) a ''holierthan-thou" attitude.

While the Vatican embraces the web for its potential to connect directly to its wide base of followers, it also confronts increased competition amidst a large number of attractive religious alternatives on the web. Drawing upon classical conceptions of ethos and also contemporary theories of identity, this investigation reveals that a large range of techniques is possible to negotiate these demands. This case study demonstrates how a group's special circumstances could call for a different set of rules regarding ethos and identity, and serves as a beginning for those wishing to evaluate the ethosbuilding techniques of online religious groups and as a historical account of the Vatican's online persuasive strategies at one point in its evolution.

Factors such as religion and spirituality influence identity formation. Though parents serve as the primary influence on identity in childhood, the search for identity becomes more independent as adolescence progresses. Upon departure from the parent's home, factors outside the family, including peers and the media, take on greater influence. Undergraduate students (N = 100) were surveyed regarding religion and spirituality in relation to media consumption, gender and communication with parents, and selection of a religious versus secular college. Positive results were indicated for religious identification and use of religious and spiritual media, as well as for communication with parents about religion and spirituality. Additionally, religious identification was apositive factor for selecting a religious college.

For the majority of known history, the deaf have been considered social and spiritual outcasts. Limited knowledge of deaf impairment restricted deaf communication in society and the church, as well as in education. This essay contrasts historical practices in deaf education with those of two Benedictine monks, Pedro Ponce de León and Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée, who are considered the first to have educated the deaf. Furthermore, this essay suggests a contemporary model for deaf education based on the Rule of Saint Benedict as applied by the Benedictines in early deaf education.

This paper aims to bring clarification and justification to the common assumption that The Epistle to Diognetus is a second-century Christian apology. The essay begins with an analysis of the rhetorical situation of Diognetus and then proceeds, in the second section, to a rhetorical analysis of several other second-century apologies in order to illustrate how they contrast and compare to Diognetus. In the third section I argue that, despite the differences between the works considered, they are all united in the fact that they arise from similar rhetorical situations.

The visual and spatial orientation of Western and Greek thought is analyzed against the aural and temporal perspective found in a Jewish and Hebrew mode of thought These different modes of thought have directed the use of language and communication within these two groups; by comparing these two methods of communication, we are able to locate and discuss the strengths and the weaknesses of each. A new balance between the two can encourage a more effective and affective communication.

This study investigates how first-time religious missionaries use communication to readapt to life outside the mission field after returning home. The findings suggest that returning missionaries used communication to facilitate the reentry. In-depth qualitative interviews with 14 Christian missionaries revealed three common experiences: reconciling the missionary identity, reentering the social context, and transitioning to the post-missionary life, as well as four types of communication used to facilitate the reentry: storytelling, disclosing, connecting with God, and silencing. These findings provide insight into the experience of returning missionaries, their spiritual development, and use of communication.

Grounded in narrative inquiry and framed by narrative theoretical perspective, the present study addresses the following research questions: (a) How does a church and associated church foundation practice religious affinity fraud? and (b) What are the communication challenges and experiences families may undergo when a church and associated church foundation practice religious affinity fraud on their vulnerable family members? An in-depth narrative inquiry exploring one church’s practice of religious affinity fraud on a family serves as a cautionary tale for other families to make them aware of the deceptive strategies used by charismatic church leaders to steal from the elderly and help minimize the chances of this misdeed happening to their family. Findings provide an entry point for cultural change in church communities where affinity fraud is prevalent. They also provide insight to families, researchers, and lawmakers so they can better understand how they can effectively communicate with and safeguard the elderly population.

This narrative study investigated the perceived experience and navigation of identity gaps in intrafaith Protestant dating relationships. In-depth interviews were conducted with 16 self-identified Christians. Guided by the communication theory of identity, the analyses revealed identity-rooted dilemmas that disrupted the ideal Christian relationship trajectory. Under two identity gap motifs, four themes were uncovered: personal identity dissonance via enacted identity, perceived partner identity dissonance, church prescriptions and expectations, and intimacy boundary regulation and synchronization dilemmas. Three communication strategies were identified as attempts to navigate identity gaps: reinforcing faith-based identity awareness, practicing multiple interaction pathways, and tracking and sustaining third-party viewpoints.

Social media sites such as Facebook allow for the easy extension and support of imagined community within online spaces. This study seeks to examine the role of imagined community and framing in portrayals of Islam and Muslims within the comments of public media pages on Facebook. A comparative analysis of comments on news articles from conservative, mainstream, and liberal media sources was conducted to understand the quantity and content of Islamophobic comments on these pages. Comments on eight of the most popular conservative Facebook pages (seven news sites and that of President Donald Trump) were analyzed, and an online rating system was used to consider how far right a source is considered. Both the qualitative and quantitative data suggest imagined community exists within commenters on conservative media Facebook pages, particularly those rated further on the political right, reinforcing the use of Islamophobic rhetoric.

Three in ten Americans believe that the Bible is the Word of God and should be taken literally, word for word. Surveys and studies show this contingent of literalists is composed primarily of evangelicals and, for White evangelicals in particular, that biblical literalism is a strong predictor of their conservative politics. The present essay, based on a case study of an evangelical church observed over three years, argues that biblical literalism is not only a belief but also a culture. Further, literalist culture is constructed and sustained by interwoven discourses that dynamically circulate across the macro, meso, and micro levels of speaking practice in the evangelical social system.

Thomas Berry, geologian, has been called one of the leading commentators on religion and the environment. This paper compares Berry’s writings with Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’. Pope Francis and Berry both use the root metaphor of integral ecology that implies a connection and reciprocity with the universe. However, Berry focuses on the rights of the earth that has existed billions of years before humankind. Humans are part of the earth community. Pope Francis focuses on social relations between human beings and the consequences for the environment because of egoism and begins his analysis with the past 20 centuries. Berry does not disagree but gives a special place to the earth and believes once respect is given to the earth social problems will be solved. Pope Francis wants to awaken a dialogue, where Berry believes we have become locked into reified stories, some of them from the Judeo-Christian interpretation of the Bible. Berry uses the metaphor of a “new story.” His story leads to cosmogenesis, or a new created order. For both writers, the challenge is implementation before it is too late for the human community.

One of the problems with applying Maurice Charland’s theory of constitutive rhetoric to religious communication is that the theory is largely discursive. Yet embodied ritual is often crucial for understanding religious contexts. This study, then, seeks to theorize a constitutive rhetoric of practice, focusing on what Charland calls the ideologies of aesthetic experience. Using the Mennonite cookbook More-with-Less as a case study, I propose that practice, broadly construed, can be a constitutive rhetoric that interpellates the subject into the compressed narratives embodied in everyday actions.

“The Devil and Vaccination,” a satirical take on Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey’s poem, “The Devil’s Thoughts,” appeared in the July 1879 issue of The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review—a publication that published vaccine-skeptical writings. The poem told the story of the Devil visiting a prison, encountering several people including a father imprisoned for refusing to have one of his children vaccinated. In the present rhetorical analysis, “The Devil and Vaccination” was viewed through the lens of inoculation theory—a theory more commonly used to guide a social scientific approach to the study of resistance to influence (i.e., experimentally tested messaging effects). In this unique conglomeration of religious and health rhetoric, the poem seemed to reject both inoculation as a medical strategy and inoculation as a rhetorical strategy.