Official and Unofficial Civil Religious Discourse

This essay discusses Roderick P. Hart\u27s unique contribution to the scholarly investigation of civil religion in America. The essay also comments on traditional rhetorical constructions of civil religious discourse manifest in the presidential public address of George W. Bush. The essay concludes by offering evaluative commentary on three sets of innate tensions that complicate rhetorical constructions of civil religion: Church and state, republicanism and liberalism, and pluralism and secularism

LBJ, the Rhetoric of Transcendence, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was the result of a complex convergence of presidential public persuasion in a context of increasing domestic violence associated with a series of summer disturbances and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Analysis of Lyndon Johnson\u27s public discourse supporting the 1968 Civil Rights Act reveals that rhetorical transcendence was employed as a recurrent strategy in attempts to pass legislation

Theo-Political Conspiracy Discourse in \u3cem\u3eThe Wanderer\u3c/em\u3e

This study undertakes an intensive analysis of The Wanderer, an ultra·conservative Catholic weekly newspaper. It is argued that con· spiracy discourse in The Wanderer provides a continuous series of god and devil terms that playoff one another as generic warrants authorizing a domino effect that solidifies an over·arching rhetorical vision, which ultimately affects the interpretation of U.S. Roman Catholic Church doctrine and its application to a number of contem· porary socio·political issues. Discowse emanating from this particular publication is representative of a paranoid style and provides a case study for tracing operant terms in an ongoing backlash movement