The ad has already inspired a number of parodies as well as criticism for what many perceive as a homophobic message. But little attention has been paid to its rhetorical moves—how the ad attempts to persuade its audience and make its argument. That’s where Religious Rhetorics comes in.

Some moves are more obvious than others. The war metaphor for instance. Perry depicts a war over religion in America between liberals and presumably conservatives, with liberals seeking to destroy the country’s historic faith. This sets the stage for Perry who, if elected president, will save the day from Obama, liberal of liberals, and defend America’s religious heritage.

But one rhetorical move is less obvious. It’s a move that has an archaic Greek name: ploche. Ploche is simply perfect verbal repetition and it occurs in this sentence:

But you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

Ploche occurs here with the word “openly.” Ploche is a rhetorical means of bringing two separate phenomena together, linking them together and conceptually obscuring their differences.

Here Perry takes the adverb “openly” to modify the actions of gays in the military and children in public schools in order to argue that they are equal. Equality is a fundamental principle of America, therefore equal things ought to receive equal treatment. However, according to Perry, these two things are receiving unequal treatment. Gays can serve in the military, but kids can’t practice their religion, specifically Christianity, in public schools. America’s principle of equality has been violated.

But as stated before, ploche is a rhetorical means of conceptually obscuring the differences of unique phenomena. What if Perry’s ad said this instead?

There’s something wrong in this country when openly gay men and women can serve in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

Note the difference. Now the first instance of “openly” modifies an adjective, “gay,” and the second instance modifies two verbs, “celebrate” and “pray.” In his ad, Perry obscures the differences between the two situations he compares. In the case of gays in the military, the issue was not whether lesbian, gay, and bisexual people could serve, as they were already serving, but whether they could serve in full disclosure of their sexual identities. In the case of children celebrating Christmas and praying in public schools, the issue is whether students are practicing certain religious acts in government-sponsored spaces that violate others’ first amendment rights, not whether students’ full disclosure of their religious identities risks their expulsion. Perry’s ad obscures these very real differences.

Please note that I’m not making any ultimate claims about the truth of Perry’s argument. I leave it to the reader to decide whether these are two comparable situations. But there’s no question that Perry makes a savvy political argument. An argument that’s not necessarily built on more knee-jerking homophobia.

In this post, I’d like to suggest that an analogous shift predicated on technological innovation may be underway. (Whether it’s on the same scale or will have the same historical significance remains to be seen.)

I’d like to draw your attention to Shop My Church. On the face of it, Shop My Church, which went live on July 22^nd, is like any other online church directory. On the website, you will find a growing list of churches (at the publishing of this post there are nine) with basic information like physical address, contact number, denomination, and service times.

What makes Shop My Church different from other online church directories is that the site is social. According to Jason Stambaugh of Westminster, MD, creator of the site and founder of Wevival, one of the partner companies, along with Trinity Education Group, that produces the site, Shop My Church is the world’s first online social church directory.

What makes Shop My Church “social?” In the first place, Shop My Church’s directory is built by individual people not by Shop My Church. Any user, as long as they have a Facebook account, may list a church on the site. Second, the site focuses on “stories,” users’ individual accounts of their experiences of a church. Users who attend listed churches are encourage to add “stories” or testimonials about how their churches are “making a difference” in their lives and in “the lives of those in [their] community.” Third, Shop My Church’s directory is integrated with Facebook Connect so that users can only list churches and post testimonials with their Facebook account. According to Mr. Stambaugh, this integration is in place, in part, to achieve authenticity and accountability. Finally, Shop My Church seeks to help Christians find churches not based on mission statements, doctrinal beliefs, services times, or worship styles, but on the very people who make up a church.

Herein lies the potential shift in how believers organize themselves into faith communities and view their relationships to their churches. While the Church has never been a collection of people with homogenous beliefs or people wholly loyal to or supportive of the current authority, doctrine and authority have often been two of the major organizing principles in the Church’s history (besides factors like location or compulsion). In Protestantism in particular, believers can organize around very specific points of doctrine, authority structures, and even specific leaders’ personalities.

Shop My Church offers, and consciously so, a new organizing principle: personal affinities. While individual churches or church movements may have attempted this before (non-denominational churches, the emerging church, the house church movement), and while personal ties are certainly an important aspect of anyone’s church experience, Shop My Church suggests that this is a viable organizing principle for all denominations because it invites churches of all stripes to participate on its site.

That Shop My Church de-emphasizes denominational boundaries, even though church listings must indicate a denominational affiliation, is reflected in the language and affordances of the site. For example, listings must indicate a church’s “leader,” rather than a label that might be more denominationally specific like priest, pastor, minister, elder, etc. Mr. Stambaugh says this (rhetorical) move was a conscious effort to cater to all Christian denominations. This move represents a larger attempt to structure the site around the lowest common denominators of Christian religion.

More profoundly, Shop My Church, as a social media tool, shifts power away from the officially sanctioned leaders of the church to the laity to not only promote their churches but also to represent them. Lay people have always had an important role in spreading the word about their churches, but in the past they’ve had limited access to methods of mass public broadcasting. But today, anyone can have a Facebook, Twitter, or WordPress account, giving them the potential to reach a large number of people. Savvy church leaders are looking to these new media tools to help grow their churches, but they can’t do it alone. It’s doubtful, however, that congregants will allow themselves to be the mouthpieces of their leaders, and leaders should take notice. The ordinary churchgoer now has the power to promote their church to an audience of potentially millions—for better or for worse.

Will social media further decentralize authority in the Church? Will it reshape how believers organize themselves into communities?

I’ll leave the answers to those questions to the history books.

(Disclosure: I’ve known Mr. Stambaugh personally since 2004 and my own faith community is listed on his site.)

Image and link to Google cache snapshot courtesy of Slog's Eli Sanders

Driscoll’s words, unsurprisingly, drew rapid and sharp criticism from the Christian blogosphere. Seemingly in response to the swift reaction he received to his post, within a few days Driscoll removed the status, which had garnered hundreds of comments.

This incident suggests that the nature of accountability in non-denominational evangelical Christianity, and perhaps the church at large, is evolving as the internet, especially social media, becomes more and more a part of church life, ritual, and public relations.

Churches have always been in the business of broadcasting. But in the social media age, that sense of broadcasting has been amplified, especially for someone like Driscoll who is trying to reach a younger population that generally interacts through the web.

Apparently, Driscoll’s hyper-masculine image and posturing is attractive—thousands attend his multi-campus church—so it’s unsurprising that he sometimes broadcasts that image online (he has over a hundred thousand followers on twitter).

In terms of outside institutional accountability, Driscoll has none. Mars Hill Church is not tethered to any particular denomination. This (rhetorical) situation gives Driscoll quite a bit of latitude to do and say what he wants. He is institutionally unconstrained (which is not to say that we would like the constraints placed on him if his church were a part of a denomination).

One could argue that his congregation acts as a constraint on what he says and does, but this seems improbable. Mars Hill itself is built on the Driscoll brand and has grown phenomenally, arguably in large part because of Driscoll himself, hyper-masculinity and all. Driscoll appears to be at the top of the power pyramid at Mars Hill as evidenced by the job descriptions on the church’s website. (To be fair, the other two “Executive Elders” may exert some influence on Driscoll, as Driscoll claims he considered their opinions of his controversial Facebook status.) Further, we can reasonably assume that his congregation generally consists of self-selected individuals who are attracted to Driscoll’s ethos and/or the kind of culture that has grown up around that ethos. Therefore, we can reasonably assume that a large portion of his congregation either supports his words and actions, is generally unfazed by them, or finds them relatively unimportant given what else he and his church have to offer. Also, given the hierarchical nature of the church and its emphasis on authority, we can reasonably assume that the congregation has little power over his words or actions.

The internet, however, yields a different kind of audience. Unlike Sunday mornings, which consist of a self-selected and relatively silenced audience, the internet consists of a vocal, interested, and even partisan audience, some of whom desire to shut Driscoll down (unlikely). It’s difficult to know Driscoll’s own thoughts on the incident—if he was simply being provocative, seeking attention, even if it was negative, or if he really thought he could get away with what he wrote. But whatever his thoughts, it seems that he could not ignore this internet audience. While it’s hard to estimate how many people tweeted, blogged, and reposted Driscoll’s words, enough pressure seems to have built up that Driscoll apparently felt the need to in essence retract his statement (though he certainly has not retracted his views or positions as no apology was issued). Driscoll’s free reign was circumscribed by his internet audience.

As what once used to go on within the closed walls of a church moves to the public, indefinite memory of the internet, with an audience that has the potential to pounce at any misstep, a new kind of accountability, a new set of constraints emerge. The independent church is no longer independent, at least not if it wants to thrive in the social media era (i.e. if it wants to attract younger members). This phenomenon is not limited to the Mark Driscolls of the world who pastor churches of thousands. The world, Christian and non-Christian alike, pounced on Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who threatened to and eventually did burn the Koran. At the time, his church had no more than a few dozen members.

Welcome to accountability in the social media age.

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea.  In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law.  There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.

But, please, not here!  Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.

Please, not here!  We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought; we acknowledge that not every desire, urge, want, or chic cause is automatically a “right.”  And, what about other rights, like that of a child to be raised in a family with a mom and a dad?

Whoa — those are some pretty impressive rhetorical gymnastics.

Ok, it’s not really new — the whole government-as-evil-agent-of-godless-control image is pretty common. I’m more comfortable hearing it from Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann than from the Archbishop of New York, however. But tell me, how exactly does a gay or lesbian couple being able to legally marry in the state of New York equate to forced abortions under the one-child policy in China, or the famine and political imprisonment of North Korea?

Last time I studied logic, expanding the rights of people to marry is not oppression — and that seems to be a “true meaning” that the archbishop has overlooked.

Susan Donnelly, a member of the parish council of St. Cecilia Parish, said the scheduled Mass had not sparked controversy at St. Cecilia’s. She said the criticism has come from outside. [She said,] “I find it hard to believe that Christians don’t believe the great variety of people as God made them is a lovely thing,’’ she said. “Nobody’s trying to celebrate people living in denial of what the church is teaching; it’s more we’re trying to celebrate the people who sit next to you in the pew. There’s no agenda other than that.’’

The article goes on to tell of the conservative Catholic blogger who spearheaded the campaign against the inclusive Mass and who, by going to the archdiocese with complaints of relativism, was able to disrupt a local community’s religious expression, declaring with apparently no sense of irony that “There’s not a place for a Mass like that in the Catholic Church.”

Opposition to the Mass grew out of a post by a local blogger who writes under the pseudonym Joe Sacerdo and who has criticized the Archdiocese of Boston for what he describes as “relativism’’ and deviation from doctrine…“I think it’s the right thing to do,’’ [Sacerdo] said yesterday of the archdiocese’s decision [to cancel the Mass]. “There’s not a place for a Mass like that in the Catholic Church.’’

But anonymous self-appointed doctrinal police don’t make for nearly as sexy an image as irate gay folks during this season — after all, isn’t that why gay folks march at Pride? To threaten all values and order that heterosexuals hold dear? And surely an inclusive mass is simply meant to subvert the Catholic Church, not to provide spiritual succor and community for an often marginalized group of Catholics?

It’s disappointing that, faced with such eloquent expressions of faith as supporters of the Mass at St. Cecilia’s offer, the archdiocese would instead bow to disgruntled outsider pressure like this. It’s also disappointing that the Boston Globe would play up the ‘angry gays’ image. But overall this was a fine piece of reporting, telling an important, if sad, story.

This wouldn’t be the first time RR has tackled science. That’s because both science and religion can act as “overarching paradigms” in modern society. And because they both can stake this claim, they often clash: stem-cell research, homosexuality, evolution, the list goes on.

In his recent NPR blog post, “Science Deniers: Hand Over Your Cellphones,” astrophysicist Adam Frank criticizes a “vocal minority out there who see[s] scientific activity as [a] buffet of ideas.” From creationists to climate change deniers, these groups generally “allow scientific authority to determine the contours of their life” except when that authority goes against “pre-established beliefs.” Dr. Frank concludes by arguing that we need to make the distinction between science and policy. If we can’t then we need to be consistent: we need to “cho[o]se between science and no science at all.”

Fair enough. But Dr. Frank risks turning science into the very thing he is criticizing.

In his post, Dr. Frank reduces medical, climate, evolutionary, and signal sciences, each with their own methods, instruments, standards of evidence, and applications, into the monolith of science, with what might as well be a capital S. By doing so, he taps into the oft-hailed singular ethos of science. It’s a powerful ethos, one that can heal the sick, predict the future, and even read minds. In his post, Dr. Frank uses this ethos to draw a definite line: either you believe in science or you don’t. It’s all or nothing. Such a tactic is reminiscent of the fundamentalist sects of many religions where you accept all of the teachings of a religious figure or a sacred text, or you’re out.

Besides misrepresenting the diversity and specialization of modern science—I wouldn’t want a climatologist to be my neurologist, thank you very much—this reduction doesn’t persuade people to believe in science anymore than they did before.

As it stands, most people have a rudimentary understanding of science. When they are presented with questions of policy that rely heavily on science, their level of engagement largely consists of talking points they pick up from pundits. Dr. Frank wants us to distinguish between science and policy, but given the US population’s general science illiteracy, those who produce science are also in the best position to determine science policy. In a democracy, this is a less than ideal situation. As a consequence, those not on-board with proposed science policy make the only rhetorical move they feel they can make: they deny the science itself.

Rather than ostracizing people for doubting a slice of science—which scientists themselves do, though perhaps not to the same degree as “deniers”—we need to beef up our science education so that we have a more science literate population. This way people can make informed decisions about science policy.

If Dr. Frank is going to take a page out of the book of religion for science, it should be the page of evangelism not exclusion.

Want to know more?

• Reduction, also known as “composition,” is a common, long recognized rhetorical tactic. We can either augment the differences between objects in the world, thus dividing them, or we can diminish those differences, thus unifying them. The latter is an act of reduction or composition, and this is exactly what Adam Frank does in his post. For more information see Kenneth Burke’s work on terministic screens in his books of essays Language as Symbolic Action.
• Although Aristotle originally defined ethos as the construction of the speaker’s character within the speech itself, that definition has since broadened. Here I use it to designate the identity of Science, with a capital S.
• If you’d like to read more about science and public relations, start with Dorothy Nelkin’s Selling Science.

With that said, I’d like to offer a reflection on education, politics, and the ever fascinating rhetoric of American Catholicism.

In particular, I’m interested in an interview yesterday between Minnesota Public Radio’s Tom Crann and Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis John Nienstedt, the topic of which was a DVD being mailed (by the Archdiocese, funded by an anonymous donor) to over 400,000 Catholic households across the state. The DVD, which the Archbishop says is the first of its kind that they’ve sent out, is called Preserving Marriage in Minnesota, and is on the topic of (you guessed it) same-sex marriage. Specifically, the Archbishop is calling for Minnesota Catholics to vote for a constitutional amendment “to put the one man, one woman definition of marriage beyond the reach of the courts and politicians.”

Throughout the MPR interview, Archbishop Nienstedt frames his rationale for mailing the DVD in terms of “teaching.” It is not a matter of politics, but simply of education and truth, and it should thus be outside the reach of “politicians.”

In using the word “frame” here I’m not so much trying invoke a particular term of art (although plenty has been written on the concept of frames), but rather what I hope is a more common sense usage – namely, a way of presenting and categorizing information that guides how the information is interpreted.

At the start of the interview Nienstedt tells MPR’s Crann that “The bishops of the state have an obligation by ordination to be teachers.” He goes on to explain that, therefore,

“we intend to and have been teaching what we believe is the God-given reality of marriage. Marriage isn’t something that we create as human beings. It’s already a given from the work of creation by almighty God.”

Crann, however, seems wary of the “teaching” frame, asking at one point,

“Of all of the many of the issues the church champions, issues like social justice and poverty and speaking out against abortion, why this issue, and specifically why now?”

He goes on in this vein a little later, asking,

“And so I’m wondering how is this position not partisan politics, especially timed as it is, six weeks before the election?”

In other words, perhaps this mailing might in fact be influenced by more temporal concerns.

In both cases, Nienstedt replies from his “teaching” frame, saying that it’s simply

“one piece of an overall teaching that we’ve been doing here in this archdiocese” and that “as a religious leader in this state, as a pastoral leader, I have a right to raise the issues and bring that to the attention of my people.”

This is not political advocacy, he insists – this is simply education.

At the end of the interview, Crann finally gets the Archbishop to concede that there might be something political about this mailing.

Crann: You also make a political statement at the end [of the video segment] that you feel that this issue should come before the voters of Minnesota.
Nienstedt: Well, that’s not so much a political statement as it is saying that, as other states have done, we need to bring this to the people, rather than have it decided by the judiciary or by the legislature… We need to let the people say what the reality of marriage is going to be. I don’t see that as that big of a political statement.
Crann: Let’s hear that, if we could.
Excerpt from Nienstedt in the DVD: The archdiocese believes that the time has come for voters to be presented directly with an amendment to our state constitution to preserve our historic understanding of marriage. In fact, this is the only way to put the one man, one woman definition of marriage beyond the reach of the courts and politicians.
Crann: Is that, in fact, a political statement?
Nienstedt: I don’t believe so, no. I think that’s a reasonable, common sense thing.
Crann: And you’re calling for something to be put to a vote. Isn’t that a political action?
Nienstedt: That is a political action, yes, but I think it also, in the context of the whole video, I think it makes sense.

What’s most interesting to me about this excerpt is is how explicitly it demonstrates the clash of frames between “teaching” and “politics.” According to Nienstedt, he and the bishops of Minnesota are simply exercising their pastoral role as bishops, teaching Catholics about the nature of marriage and, more specifically, the danger that same-sex marriage poses to society (which he specifically mentions earlier in the interview). Since they are being pastoral, the bishops are de facto not being political. Being political is not only bad because it would compromise their tax-exempt status; it is also bad because that which is political is not eternal – unlike “teaching,” which deals with “reality.”

That which is “political” is based on uncertainties; that which is “teaching” is based on certainties – at least, according to this worldview. Thus, that which is presented (or framed) in terms of “teaching” can be clear and certain, in contrast to the ambiguity of that which is merely “political.” So, calling for a political action like voting to define marriage as “one man, one woman” is not really political, because it’s based on something eternal – something “given from the work of creation by almighty God.”

This is the same basic assumption that motivates and justifies the oft-heard argument during election years that Catholics must simply “vote pro-life,” which always means voting for candidates who promise to overturn Roe v. Wade (regardless of whether the abortion rate is likelier to go down with another candidate). Abortion is a moral issue, not a political one, they tell us – as if the moral and political aren’t inescapably intertwined when it comes to electoral politics.

This disassociation between the moral and the political has dangerous consequences for religion in the public sphere, because by ignoring the complexity of politics, it leaves room for well-intentioned voters to be manipulated by behind-the-scenes power brokers – and, in the case of this DVD mailing, “anonymous” donors. It’s also dangerous because such supposedly timeless teachings can have very tragic, time-bound consequences – like the gay teen suicides reported on Minnesota Public Radio today in Archbishop Nienstedt’s own Twin Cities.

The Pledge of Allegiance is recited by millions of children everyday before they dive into math, science, and reading. We are asked to stand and recite it at formal occasions, like graduations, and sometimes sporting events. Organizations, like the Boy Scouts of America, have even incorporated the civic oath into their ceremonial fare.

In recent years, however, it has become a site of contention. More specifically it has become a battleground in the never-ending “culture wars.” Recently the North Carolina Secular Association, as part of a larger campaign “to end official discrimination by reverting to the original Pledge of Allegiance” along with other initiatives, put up a number of billboards in North Carolina around the Independence Day holiday with a particular phrase from the Pledge of Allegiance, except that they had modified it.

Courtesy of NCSA

As you can see, the NCSA has removed the words “under God” leaving “One Nation Indivisible.” However, objectors spray-painted the words “Under God” on one of their billboards, the one standing next to the Billy Graham Parkway, no less.

Courtesy of Yahoo! News

This controversy, as represented by this billboard-spray paint dialogue, represents a larger battle that seems particularly focused on the Pledge of Allegiance, although by no means exclusively. Why?

In ancient Greece, Aristotle, one of the first to systematize rhetorical theory in the West, devised a three-part classification system of public oratory: 1) Judicial oratory, which included discourse that occurred in the law courts, 2) Deliberative oratory, which included the discourse of politicians usually before a body citizens voting on a piece of legislation, and 3) Epideictic, which included funeral eulogies, festival speeches, public invective, and speeches given on ceremonial occasions.

Given the occasions that the Pledge of Allegiance is often recited, I think we may safely place it in the category of epideictic. Of course, rhetoricians are never satisfied with simply classifying discourse; they must describe its persuasive facets. For a description of epideictic, we jump a couple of millennium forward to the work of European thinkers Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca writing in the wake of World War II. They give us a succinct definition of the genre:

The purpose of an epid[e]ictic speech is to increase the intensity of adherence to values held in common by the audience and the speaker. (52)

Epideictic assumes that the values it espouses are held in common by speaker and audience alike, by the community, and it works to promote these values by reinforcing our attachment to them—and constant recitation seems like a rather effective means towards this end. Further, they explain:

The speaker tries to establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience…. (51)

Epideictic is supposed to unite us around our shared values, perhaps by making what is usually invisible to us visible, and in particular that which informs our sense of identity.

The very concept of this kind of oratory…results in its being practiced by those who, in a society, defend the traditional and accepted values, those which are the object of education, not the new and revolutionary values which stir up controversy and polemics…. In epideictic rhetoric, the speaker turns educator. (51)

Epideictic by nature is a conservative form of rhetoric. It works to preserve the putative values of the community. Epideictic in many ways is a form of cultural education, bestowing upon the next generation the community’s values, and in this sense the epideictic rhetor is a teacher.

It’s no wonder then that Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca write,

It is because epid[e]ictic discourse is intended to promote values on which there is agreement that one has an impression of misuse when in a speech of this kind someone takes up a position on a controversial question, turns the argument toward disputed values and introduces a discordant note on an occasion that is liable to promote communion, a funeral ceremony for instance. (53)

When controversy enters into a piece of epideictic discourse, it represents a violation of one of epideictic’s fundamental purposes, which is to unite the community.

As we begin to understand epideictic rhetoric and begin to see the Pledge of Allegiance as an instance of the genre, why it has been the site of so much controversy becomes not only clearer but also more complex. As the US has become more pluralistic in recent years, and the number of citizens claiming no religion has increased, a piece of oratory that presents and rhetorically reinforces theism as a shared belief would understandably be repugnant to those who don’t in fact share that belief. What is supposed to unite the nation is understandably felt to be exclusive and therefore divisive.

On the other hand, those whose values are reflected in that particular phrase, and who see theism as an intrinsic value of the United States, a value to be preserved and taught to future generations, would find the removal of the offending phrase not only an attack on their beliefs, but more relevantly an attack on the identity of the nation through its values. Epideictic is meant to both reflect the values of the community and preserve them. A change in an established, recited discourse like the Pledge of Allegiance suggests a change in the composition of the community itself, not just its values, which for some could be unsettling, especially if they are invested in a particular identity of the United States.

That there is a “culture war” currently being waged in the US is not news. Nor is it news that the Pledge of Allegiance has been one battle site for this on-going war. However, by understanding the Pledge of Allegiance as an instance of epideictic rhetoric, we can perhaps understand why the battle over two words has been so explosive. The Pledge of Allegiance is one of the few stable, national, public discursive forms we have that reflects and reinforces our values. While there have been other efforts to remove other expressions of theism from the civic sphere, the Pledge of Allegiance is a frequent object of attack, and subsequently defense, because of its important role in the struggle over values.

“Catholic Identity and Abortion as a Political Legitimation Strategy in the 2009 Notre Dame Commencement Controversy,” as prepared for presentation on May 29, 2010 at the 14th Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference in Minneapolis, MN. (“Rhetoric: Concord and Controversy.”) Those of you who have read my pieces from last spring will find some of the content of this paper familiar, and you’ll also find that I’ve framed it differently for an explicitly academic audience. Thanks, as ever, for reading, and I welcome your feedback.

Introduction

In this paper I examine how political and institutional legitimacy can be generated rhetorically. In particular, I look at how some activists link Catholic identity with opposing abortion and how their model of Catholic identity gains legitimacy through the public statements of Catholic bishops.  Last year’s controversy over President Barack Obama speaking at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement serves as my case study.

Through this paper, I illustrate how legitimacy is a valuable concept for rhetorical studies. In addition, I show how the concept of master narrative, as manifested in the discourse of these activists, is valuable for the study of rhetorical legitimation. In what follows, I first explain my theoretical framework with an overview of legitimacy and master narrative. I then offer discourse samples from the case study to illustrate how these theories manifest rhetorically.

Legitimacy and Master Narratives

Although legitimacy has received attention in political philosophy and literary theory, scholarship in rhetoric is only beginning to articulate the role of language in constructing legitimacy (see, for example, Andreea Ritivoi’s recent work).  In its literal sense, legitimacy refers to the law; something is legitimate by virtue of being in accord with a society’s ruling code. In practice, though, the meaning extends beyond the law and explains what makes laws and leaders acceptable to the public they rule. As German political theorist Hannah Arendt argues, legitimacy can be lost if authorities violate the trust of the populace, because all true power is the product of popular consent. In other words, legitimacy ultimately comes from the people.

While legitimacy can be used simply to describe the sources of stability within a society, it can also be a critique of domination within that same society. For example, German sociologist Max Weber, the modern founder of legitimation theory, argues that economic violence (i.e., laissez faire capitalism) is legitimized through the so-called Protestant work ethic, while French literary theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard argues that the 19th grand narratives of science legitimized cultural imperialism.

One fruitful way to connect the concept of legitimacy to language and rhetoric is in fact through Lyotard’s concept of grand or master narratives. Master narrative has been used within the disciplines of women’s studies (Lawless 2003), journalism (Cline 2006), and ethics (Lindemann Nelson 2001), to name a few, but it has not been prominent within the field of rhetoric. However, rhetoricians have connected rhetoric to narrative theory, as Ritivoi did in her 2002 book Yesterday’s Self: Nostalgia and Immigrant Identity.

Put briefly, in contrast to rationalist assumptions that knowledge is validated purely by reason, narrative theory shows us that certain underlying narratives and metaphors are at work in even the strictest logic. Some cultural narratives are particularly powerful at organizing social identity and knowledge, and these are often known as master narratives. Master narratives are problematic when they legitimize oppressive power structures. For example, Jean-Francois Lyotard, as mentioned above, criticized 19^th century continental master narratives of science for how they legitimized cultural imperialism, because they were used to argue that pure “narrative” or non-scientific knowledge, as occurred in non-European societies, was inferior to scientific knowledge. As another example, Hilde Lindemann Nelson, in her 2001 work Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair, writes about the medical field, in which a master narrative privileges doctors as “professionals” while nurses are simply “helpers.” Thus, when nurses offer insight into a patient’s needs, they are not listened to, because they are characterized as inferior, soft, emotional, etc. The oppressive and dominating power of the master narrative means that nurses also think of themselves this way, not trusting their own insights, despite the fact that they spend more time with patients and may have more knowledge of some areas of patient care than a doctor does. This shows how, as Lindemann Nelson puts it, their “moral agency” is damaged.

To sum up, legitimation theory can provide both description and critique of power, and master narrative helps connect legitimacy to language. The rhetorical ramifications of these theories become clearer when we look at the Notre Dame case study.

Case Study: Obama at Notre Dame

The controversy over the University of Notre Dame’s commencement last year provides a clear example of how abortion is used to legitimize a narrow understanding of Catholic identity through a compelling master narrative.

The Protesters

The Boston Globe notes that, immediately after the White House’s March 20, 2009 announcement that President Barack Obama would be speaking at Notre Dame’s commencement, a protest website was launched by the conservative Catholic Cardinal Newman Society. According to this organization’s mission statement, “the mission of The Cardinal Newman Society is to help renew and strengthen Catholic identity in Catholic higher education.” As the website’s authors go on to explain,  “the Catholic identity of many Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States has become increasingly clouded and the essential elements of Catholic education have been discarded for the sake of a mistaken notion of academic freedom.”

The Cardinal Newman Society brought this philosophy to bear on the University of Notre Dame’s invitation to Mr. Obama by setting up NotreDameScandal.com. The petition housed there called it “an outrage and a scandal” for Notre Dame to have Mr. Obama as its commencement speaker, whom it accuses of “the most anti-life actions of any American president.” By honoring Mr. Obama, “Notre Dame has chosen prestige over principles, popularity over morality.” The petition concludes by “implor[ing]” the university to “halt this travesty immediately” and “call[ing] on [Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins] to uphold the sacred mission of [his] Catholic university” – that is, to rescind the invitation to have Mr. Obama speak at commencement. According to the petition’s organizers, more than 300,000 people signed it before the May 17, 2009 commencement ceremony.

With this language, the Cardinal Newman Society is making a strong assertion about the meaning of Catholic identity and how Catholics should interact with politicians with whom they have disagreements. Honoring Mr. Obama, the petition organizers tell us, compromises the “sacred mission” of being a Catholic university, because Mr. Obama has no interest in overturning Roe v. Wade – even though he has stated his commitment to abortion reduction through other means. It is, in fact, a “travesty” and a “scandal” to honor him in a Catholic setting.

The underlying worldview of this petition is far more explicit in a rallying cry on the same topic from anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. In a March 24, 2009 communiqué to members titled “Our Lady of Guadalupe conquered Human Sacrifice. Notre Dame now Honors it,” Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry outlines why members must be prepared for “battle” and “war” against “Catholic treachery.” Terry tells members that, “If Obama speaks at Notre Dame, it will be akin to the political and cultural rape of true Catholicity in America.” He goes on to ask, “Who is Worse: Obama or Herod? You decide.” With language like “rape,” “treachery,” and “Herod” (not to mention “human sacrifice”), Terry clearly paints President Obama – and the Notre Dame administration for inviting him – as the worst sort of evil.

This language demonstrates a powerful master narrative of good vs. evil at work in the Catholic pro-life movement more broadly. By invoking familiar, heroic cultural models, and inviting the reader or listener to perceive him or herself in the role of hero and warrior for good, the above arguments acquire great persuasive power. They appeal, Aristotle would tell us, to our pathos. Who doesn’t want to be the knight standing for the downtrodden against an unjust power? Who wants to back Herod, or human sacrifice? And isn’t it just a simple matter of either being a “real” Catholic, standing up for the Church’s teachings – or of being “flabby and fearful”, selling out to calls for dialogue and civility?  It is questions like these that are implicit in the master narrative invoked by Randall Terry.

The Bishops

Of course, it is always possible to find extremist rhetoric around hot-button issues like abortion, and extremists like Randall Terry receive media attention precisely because they’re so outrageous. What is significant about the Notre Dame controversy, however, is the fact that during the nearly two months leading up to Mr. Obama’s May commencement address, 83 Catholic bishops joined their voices to the protest, thereby offering legitimacy to this shrill model of “Catholic identity.”

For example, Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend boycotted the Notre Dame commencement ceremony. Archbishop Raymond Burke, formerly of St. Louis and now Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, called Notre Dame granting Mr. Obama an honorary degree “the source of the gravest scandal”. Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie called it a “day of shame” for Notre Dame, while Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh said the university honoring Mr. Obama resulted in “Our Lady embarrassed.” Cardinal Francis George of Chicago asserted that clearly Notre Dame “didn’t understand what it means to be Catholic,” while Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver suggested that in honoring President Obama, Notre Dame “prostitut[ed] our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness.”  The list could, of course, go on. It is worth noting, however, that Rome was silent throughout the controversy, and editor-in-chief Gian Maria Vian of the semi-official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano stated in an interview after Mr. Obama’s Notre Dame address that “Obama is not a pro-abortion president.” Thus the link between Catholic identity and particular strategies for abortion opposition may have more to do with American politics than Catholic moral theology as such. This didn’t stop these 83 bishops from entering the fray, however.

In terms of our earlier discussion of legitimacy, the U.S. bishops are clearly attempting to maintain stability and loyalty for the institutional Church with their comments about Notre Dame. However, in the process, they offer legitimacy to political partisanship by equating Republican political strategies with Catholic identity. In so doing, these bishops are actually undermining their own authority with Catholics, and they are delegitimizing their own prophetic voice in the public square.

Conclusion

The value in understanding the rhetoric at work in the Notre Dame controversy is not limited to one commencement address; this situation points to a larger cultural issue, both in the Catholic Church and in American society. Right now, the good vs. evil master narrative reifies a narrow notion of Catholic identity, while at the same time the Church’s rhetorical association with the narrative legitimates the Right’s extremism. The detriments to civil discourse and the kinds of public policies that emerge from it are obvious, and manifested again during the debates over health insurance reform this past year. I would suggest that there are also serious detriments to the Catholic Church itself in a time when it is already rocked by a crisis of trust, in light of increasingly widespread accusations of both sexual abuse of minors by priests and systematic cover-up of such abuses by bishops. Among those most hurt by this may be those who seek spiritual nourishment within the Catholic tradition but are told they are not really “Catholic.”  When to dissent from the master narrative is to be aligned with the forces of evil, it is impossible for constructive dialogue and for the progress thus enabled – whether in the Catholic Church or in American society at large.