Introduction

For those of us who lived through the 2000 presidential election, the influence of religious belief on the candidacies of George W. Bush, Al Gore, and Joseph Lieberman was a topic of continuing fascination. While civil religion has long been a part of the American experience, the rhetoric used by Bush, Gore, and Lieberman seemed to transcend the more mundane rhetoric of civil religion—America as God's new Israel, the city set on a hill, the errand into the wilderness, and other ideas and images drawn primarily from the Hebrew scriptures. Instead, we were treated to many more particularistic versions of what religious experience meant to public service—Bush identifying Jesus Christ as the philosopher who most affected his thinking, Gore drawing extended analogies from the story of Cain and Abel and the parable of the sower, and Lieberman finding analogues for environmental policy in the Ten Commandments. And that was just the beginning. It was the most overtly religious presidential campaign in history, and I spent a good deal of time studying that dimension of the contest.¹

With the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency, that language of religious devotion continued to characterize many of his public statements—from his inaugural image of an angel riding in the whirlwind and directing our footsteps to his 2003 State of the Union address where he noted that "We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not claim to know the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history."² If we have learned anything about George W. Bush in the last four years, it is that his faith informs his worldview, his thinking, and his language choices whether or not there is a campaign going on. Clearly his religion is a major source of his rhetorical invention. And if that is true of George W. Bush, might it not also be true for people in other walks of life not quite so public as the American presidency? I was contemplating these questions when I attended the 2004 Southern States Communication Association convention in Tampa, Florida. Quite by accident, I ended up one evening having dinner with three prominent rhetoricians—Robert Hariman, John Louis Lucaites, and John Angus Campbell. By and by the conversation turned to religion as a source of rhetorical invention. It was a fascinating conversation that sparked the idea for this special issue.

Rather than assigning people to examine the religious invention of actors in the public arena, I decided to ask respected members of our own profession—the professorate—to reflect on how their own individual traditions inform and shape their own rhetorical invention as scholars. Specifically, I sought out scholars from as many different religious and theological traditions as I could imagine and then asked them to write an essay about how their own tradition has served as a source of rhetorical invention in their own lives. Here are the directions I gave to each writer:

Questions such as the following might prove productive:

1. 1. Are there any standard topoi in your tradition that affect the way you think about rhetorical invention?

2. 2. Are there particular ways of reasoning/arguing in your tradition that could be carried over to rhetorical invention more generally?

3. 3. Are there standard narratives, stories, myths in your tradition that you call upon when practicing your own brand of rhetorical invention? Perhaps consciously, perhaps only semi-consciously?

4. 4. Is some aspect of your religious doctrine a potential source of rhetorical invention?

5. 5. Are there concepts or images that come from your tradition that help you develop ideas as a practicing rhetorician?

6. 6. Are there rituals associated with your tradition that can be sources or inspiration for invention?

7. 7. Are there particular tropes or figures that are central to your tradition that have application more generally for rhetorical invention?

8. 8. Are there practices in your tradition that might translate into conceptual material?

These are just some questions to get you thinking. What I'm really after is how professional rhetoricians like...