Rhetoric of Religion: A Map of the Territory

The connection between rhetoric and religion goes back, at least in emblem, to the Goddess Peitho herself, the personification of persuasion and receiver of supplicants who wish to win over their lovers with words (Stafford, 2000). Both rhetoric and religion appear to be universal to the human condition. Yet rarely are they correlated in the course of human inquiry. Thus, the rhetoric of religion is an immense undiscovered country, necessitating multiple critical and theoretical approaches and different hermeneutical stances and forms of knowledge. It can be approached from either coast, whether from religious scholars seeking insight into language use or from rhetoricians looking at religious motives in rhetoric. It has ...