Blackwell Reference Online

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The relationship between rhetoric and religion is fourfold: (1) rhetoric is a tool used by religious groups; (2) political rhetoric draws upon religious language; (3) religious systems contribute to the discursive constructions of their adherents’ worldviews; and (4) religious traditions contribute to rhetorical theory and practice. Religious systems use rhetoric as a tool for interfacing with outside groups and communicating with adherents. Interfacing with outsiders includes efforts to share the message of the faith but also to create relationships with other groups. In the case of Christianity, the imperative to evangelize is especially strong, and Christian groups have been innovative in their rhetorical practices. Long a staple of Christian rhetoric, the sermonic →  Genre has become indispensable in the American context – used by the evangelists of the First and Second Great Awakenings, including Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney, as well as twentieth-century evangelists, such as Aimee Semple McPherson, Oral Roberts, and Jimmy Swaggart. These twentieth-century preachers were among the first to appropriate media technologies – film, →  Radio , →  Television , and the →  Internet – for religious purposes (→  Cinema ). In the Catholic church, the pastoral letter remains an important tool for communicating with believers, and Carol Jablonsky (1989) explains that American ... log in or subscribe to read full text