1. Partisan Ideology and the ReligiousRhetoric of Recent U.S. Presidents.
- Author
-
Kradel, Adam
- Subjects
- *
PRESIDENTS of the United States , *RELIGIOUS thought , *POLITICAL parties , *POLITICAL culture , *IDEOLOGY , *POLITICAL science - Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to systematically explore the religious rhetoric of recent U.S. President’s (Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush). Considerable effort has been spent reporting the religious rhetoric of Ronald Regan and George W. Bush. In response to this it has been noted that practically all U.S. Presidents have used religious rhetoric at various occasions (Dionne 2003). While the topic of the religious rhetoric of presidents has sparked this debate, to date no one has performed a systematic evaluation of the religious rhetoric of presidents. This paper will provide a more complete evaluation of the phenomenon of presidential use of religious rhetoric. It examines how presidents differ in this realm. It also will display the palpable difference in the use of religious rhetoric among the presidents. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have used more religious language, as a total of all their spoken words, compared to other recent presidents. That fact is interesting, but what is more interesting is how the content of their religious rhetoric has differed from other presidents. A second goal of this paper was to see if the rhetoric differed between presidents of different parties. Questions answered by this paper are: Do Republicans use more religious language, as a percent of total language, than Democrats? And, is there an ideological/theological difference between the parties in the use of religious rhetoric? A primary accomplishment of the paper was the creation of a coding mechanism to help try to categorize religious language on a liberal/conservative spectrum. To do this, three dichotomies and were created. These dichotomies separate theological emphases into categories that could be considered liberal or conservative. The dichotomies are: (1) specific theological constructions / universal principles; (2) other-worldly focus / this-worldly focus; (3) good v. evil & universal sin / sin as the absence of good. The former sections of the dichotomies are considered conservative and the latter are considered liberal. The presidential speeches coded for this paper will be: the party nominee’s acceptance speech at the party’s nominating convention, the new president’s inauguration speech, and all of his State of the Union addresses. One advantage of using these speeches is that they are uniform. Another advantage is that if significant differences in the religious rhetoric used by presidents exist, those differences are more likely to be observed by examining speeches given on standard occasions of public ritual. By exposing the differences among the presidents and between the presidents of different parties, this paper will help scholars investigate such things as: differences in the worldviews of political elites, partisan ideology and its manifestation in political communication, and religious belief structures and the effect of such structures on political communication. My hope for this paper is that it will help lead towards an investigation into the reciprocal relationship between presidential rhetoric and American political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
- Full Text
- View/download PDF