Women Bishops and Rhetorics of Shalom: A Whole Peace argues that the theological concept of shalom offers a way forward for progressive Christians who want to advocate for social justice based on their faith in an increasingly globalizing world characterized by many faiths. To do so, the book considers the rhetorical leadership of three women bishops who are all “firsts” in important ways: Marjorie Matthews, the first woman bishop in any mainline Post-Reformation church, Leontine Kelly, the first woman bishop of color in any mainline church, and Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion. This book is recommended for scholars interested in communications, religious studies, and gender studies.

As the first African American president, Barack Obama faced unique challenges and obstacles when addressing issues of race. While rhetorical attacks on the basis of race directed at Obama were not unexpected, many of the most consistent racially-motivated criticisms of Obama were associated with his religious identity. The Jeremiah Wright controversy gave way to the birther and ‘secret Muslim’ conspiracy theories, while anxieties about Obama’s identity proved particularly potent as modes of political attack in the context of the war on terror. This book examines the ways in which those attacks often originated in the rhetoric of the Christian Right and the ways in which these theories circulated amongst the Christian Right. Perry argues that the intersections of race and religion in American politics produced rhetoric that often caricatured Obama as un-American, anti-Christian, and an enemy of the state. By exploring the arguments used to cultivate these characterizations and tracing the roots of conspiracies that worked to delegitimize Obama’s religious identity through racial claims and stereotypes, a clearer picture emerges of what is at stake when people can no longer separate religious convictions from political arguments.

Womanist thought remains of critical importance given contemporary issues of social justice and advocacy. Womanist Ethical Rhetoric centers discourses of religious rhetoric and its influence on Black women’s aims for voice, empowerment, and social justice in these turbulent times. The chapters utilize womanism, in conjunction with other frames, to examine how Black women incorporate different aspects of their identities into struggles for empowerment and celebrations of who they are in holistic ways that center love and community. This approach embraces both the commonalities and differences between womanists through theoretical and applied contexts. It advances the work of womanist predecessors and pays homage to them, most notably Rev. Dr. Katie Cannon’s work on womanism and religion. Topics analyzed include Black women’s spiritual and professional identities in religious organizations, the role of Black churches in Black Lives Matter, and the inclusion of all Black women in racial academic achievement gaps. Chapters also examine Black women’s leadership and activism, including church leaders and representations in popular culture, and women’s inclusion in the beloved community. This collection centralizes the plurality of Black women’s lives, which is key to advancing their voices.

Rhetoric, Race, Religion, and the Charleston Shootings: Was Blind but Now I See is a collection focusing on the Charleston shootings written by leading scholars in the field who consider the rhetoric surrounding the shootings. This book offers an appraisal of the discourses – speeches, editorials, social media posts, visual images, prayers, songs, silence, demonstrations, and protests – that constituted, contested, and reconstituted the shootings in American civic life and cultural memory. It answers recent calls for local and regional studies and opens new fields of inquiry in the rhetoric, sociology, and history of mass killings, gun violence, and race relations—and it does so while forging new connections between and among on-going scholarly conversations about rhetoric, race, and religion. Contributors argue that Charleston was different from other mass shootings in America, and that this difference was made manifest through what was spoken and unspoken in its rhetorical aftermath. Scholars of race, religion, rhetoric, communication, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

In The Black God Trope and Rhetorical Resistance: A Tradition of Race and Religion, Armondo R. Collins theorizes Black Nationalist rhetorical strategies as an avenue to better understanding African American communication practices. The author demonstrates how Black rhetors use writing about God to create a language that reflects African Americans’ shifting subjectivity within the American experience. This book highlights how the Black God trope and Black Nationalist religious rhetoric function as an embodied rhetoric. Collins also addresses how the Black God trope functions as a gendered critique of white western patriarchy, to demonstrate how an ideological position like womanism is voiced by authors using the Black God trope as a means of public address. Scholars of rhetoric, African American literature, and religious studies will find this book of particular interest.

Reverend Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Prophetic Tradition: A Reintroduction of The Black Messiah considers how Albert Cleage Jr., in his groundbreaking book of sermons, The Black Messiah (1969), reconfigures the rules of the game as it relates to Christianity and the social political realities of Black people in Detroit and across the country. Taking a rhetorical approach, this book explores how and what The Black Messiah (1969) has contributed to the broader scope of Black Liberation Theology and Black religious rhetoric. Scholars of rhetoric, communication, religious studies, and African American history will find this book particularly useful.

Rhetoric and the Responsibility to and for Language: Speaking of Evil relocates the “problem of evil”— the question of why God would allow for the existence of evil—and surveys it as a rhetorical problem. It raises this question: if we speak evil, how shall we speak of evil? When we communicate, we are naming, and evil as the corruption of language plays a central role in that naming. Evil freezes our words, convinces us we have the sole right to their definitions, and generally stifles the dynamic gift of language. By looking at how people in different eras and situations have named evil, this book suggests how we can better take responsibility for our words and why we owe a responsibility to language as our ethical stance toward evil.