Narrative Empathy, Subtle Pejorative, and Religious Agenda-Setting: A Close Reading of “Report in Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary”

Abstract

This article offers a rhetorical close reading of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. While the report presents itself as an institutional reckoning with a legacy of slavery, racism, and white supremacy, this analysis argues that its rhetoric simultaneously minimizes the significance of those injustices. Three recurring rhetorical moves structure this dynamic. First, the report centers the experiences and dilemmas of the seminary’s white leadership, producing narrative empathy for institutional actors while decentering the experiences of those harmed by the institution’s history. Second, it employs subtly pejorative characterizations of external critics and other historical actors, reinforcing an evangelical “embattled identity.” Third, the report rhetorically constructs the concept of the “gospel” in a manner that separates core Christian doctrine from concerns of racial justice. Drawing on agenda-setting theory, this study introduces the concept of religious agenda-setting to describe how religious leaders rhetorically prioritize certain moral concerns while marginalizing others. Together, these strategies allow for the report to confess historical wrongdoing while simultaneously preserving institutional legitimacy and authority.

1. Introduction

In the winter of 2022, I spoke on the phone with “Jack”, a close friend and an associate pastor at an evangelical church in a western state. The church Jack serves had been in the midst of a pastoral transition since shortly before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the duties of the senior pastor had fallen on Jack’s shoulders during this transition period. While ordinarily, the biggest challenges of taking on that role might be a vastly increased preaching and pastoral care load, the pandemic added the burden of guiding the leaders of the church through the discernment processes of quarantine, when and how to go remote, when and how to reopen, and what metrics of public health risk to take into account in working through making these decisions.

As Jack said regarding these experiences, and as was the case in many churches across the United States,

The only sure thing was that whatever decision we made, at least one side was going to be angry. Either we were being way too cautious and upsetting the people who didn’t think we should participate in the lockdown at all, or we were flouting safety protocols and upsetting people who claimed we weren’t taking the pandemic seriously. But, usually, whatever decision we made, both sides were pissed.

I voiced my empathy for Jack’s frustration, and he continued. “And the whole time, I had to constantly redirect both sides: ‘Maybe, rather than fighting about how to quarantine, we should be focused on, oh, I don’t know, the gospel!’”

That comment, its implications, and the certainty with which my dear friend expressed it, gave me pause and filled me with an uncomfortable ambivalence. On the one hand, I knew exactly what Jack was expressing. Certainly, I thought, during the pandemic, there were churchgoers (both COVID deniers and advocates for full lockdown, and everywhere on the mammoth spectrum in between) who construed church policies on lockdown, quarantine, social distancing, and going remote as the exclusive and definitive proxy for faithfulness, seemingly forgetting that the Christian faith consisted of anything else (Gjelten 2020).

Nonetheless, I had deep misgivings about how Jack had clearly implied a hard wall of separation between the COVID-19 response and the gospel. The two were unrelated; in fact, one was a distraction from the other. Jack had rhetorically constructed a concept of “gospel” that was specifically and definitively unrelated to and non-implicated in COVID-19.

I have recalled this conversation often in the course of researching this current project. In many ways, one could view the primary act of leadership of a religious institution as the rhetorical construction and reconstruction of both the institution and the theology that undergirds it, adjusting as necessary to new circumstances, needs, and goals while maintaining that co-alignment of the institution and the undergirding theology. Undoubtedly, this dynamic of articulation and re-articulation can be seen at work in a 2018 project published by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) entitled “Report in Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary” (RSR).

2. Materials and Methods

This essay employs a critical rhetorical analysis grounded in close iterative reading to examine how the RSR constructs institutional identity and theological meaning. Through iterative analysis of the text, I identify recurring patterns of emphasis, characterization, and definitional framing, which I conceptualize as three interrelated rhetorical moves. I use the term “rhetorical move” to refer to recurring patterns of emphasis, framing, or characterization through which the text advances particular interpretive or evaluative positions. These moves were identified through iterative readings of the text, attending to repeated strategies in how actors, events, and theological concepts are described and related. The key identified rhetorical moves in the RSR are (1) decentering the experiences of the marginalized within their community, (2) frequent use of subtly pejorative references (further defined in Section 3.2) to other historical actors, institutions, and historical critics, and (3) constructing a concept of “gospel” that, while explicitly claiming “diversity” as a significant component (Mohler 2018), nonetheless distinguishes itself from broader conceptions of racial justice. This third rhetorical move, I suggest, can be understood as an example of a common rhetorical strategy within religious communication akin to agenda-setting theory (McCombs and Shaw 1972) which I will refer to as religious agenda-setting.

Within the first section of this project, I will discuss the proposed theory of religious agenda-setting. Secondly, I will locate this project broadly within the current field of religious communication. This will include begin with discussion of the relationship between the RSR and the rhetorical genre of apologia. Finally, I will provide background on the RSR to illuminate the rhetorical moves in which it engages. From there, I will extrapolate my close reading of the RSR, providing evidence for the findings identified, followed finally by a discussion of the findings and ideas for further research.

Religious Agenda-Setting. McCombs and Shaw developed theory of agenda-setting in 1968 as a way of describing how certain mass media—the news media most prominently—function to affect what the public considers “important”. It is conceptually simple but the effects are tremendous. A nightly news telecast only has so many minutes to cover topics, and only one story can be first. A newspaper can only print so many pages, and there is only one front page. The stories that make the cut, the ways they are prioritized, and what stories end up on the cutting room floor play a major role, McCombs and Shaw argue, in shaping public opinion of what matters and what does not. How, why, and to what extent this takes place has been matter of ongoing academic discussion (e.g., Rogers and Dearing 1988; Wanta and Alkazemi 2017).

In this article, I propose that something similar takes place frequently within religious discourse—not as a function of the medium in which it takes place, but as a rhetorical feature. Through this lens, “agenda-setting” is less about the potential of media than about where the power lies to determine a public’s priorities and determination of what is and is not of importance. In the case of religious agenda-setting, I refer to the ability of religious institutions or figures to identify topics of spiritual concern through rhetorical construction of central concepts. For Jack, by constructing “gospel” in such a way as to erase any connection or relationship to public health and well-being, for example, he could rhetorically assert different spiritual priorities for his congregation. As I will demonstrate, one of the RSR’s key rhetorical features functions in a similar way.

The RSR as Apologia. The RSR, of course, stands in a long tradition of discourses meant to address real or perceived wrong-doing and engage in the difficult work of image repair for both individuals and institutions. Ware and Linkugel (1973), building on the theories of Abelson (1959), have provided a simple and enduring model for categorizing and examining the strategies and rhetorical postures attempted in apologetic discourses or apologia. Compiled in different combinations, the strategies of denial, bolstering, differentiation, and transcendence can be used to construct distinct postures of apologia. Benoit (1995) subsequently built upon Ware and Linkugel with his work on image restoration theory, extending and re-categorizing these strategies into a new taxonomy of approaches: denial, evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, corrective action, and mortification.

Given the particular roles of the image of morality and public trust play for religious institutions and figures, the role of apologia in religious discourse has been of particular scholarly interest. Apologia within religious discourse might almost be considered a sub-genre of apologia unto itself (e.g., Miller 2002; Ryan 1982; Hobbs and Chandler 2007; Armstrong et al. 2005, among many others). Many of these studies nod toward—and Hobbs & Chandler name most explicitly—a particular strategy of apologia notable among Christian discourses: appealing to the audience’s Christian imperative of forgiveness.

It is important to identify the ways that RSR both conform to and move beyond the genre and understood categorizations of apologia. While addressing threats to SBTS’ image are, undoubtedly, part of the authors’ concern in the RSR, I propose that their rhetorical purpose moves well beyond that of image restoration and into the theological agendas of their audience.

The RSR as Religious Rhetoric. In an important 2004 address-turned-essay, Schultze discussed the “God problem” within communication studies–that is, the recognition that there is no simple way within the study of communication to account for the action or speech of God interacting with humanity. There is no final solution to this problem; or, at any rate, none has been conclusively found between 2004 and today. Schultze describes how it is often the response of the communication field to this problem, essentially, to sweep it under the rug, focus on purely human rhetoric as such, and move on. This problem is further complicated by Kaylor (2011), however, who argues persuasively that human rhetorical construction of interaction with the Divine (and the Divine’s interaction with humanity) cannot be simply ignored as a rhetorical move. Regardless of the truth, falsehood, unfalsifiability, and/or incomprehensibility of these interactions, the act of invoking the Divine into communication is a rhetorically significant and strategic move made with purpose and calculation. As such, it warrants examination and analysis by communication scholars.

Although this project does not deal directly with human interaction with the Divine, it does indirectly play a crucial role. The Southern Baptist Convention, the mother institution of SBTS, lays out its official doctrines in “The Baptist Faith and Message” (Southern Baptist Convention 2000). SBTS also lists “The Baptist Faith and Message” an official statement of its doctrine. Regarding divine revelation, “The Baptist Faith and Message” states,

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried.

(pp. 1–2)

It follows from this doctrine that it is the expectation of the Southern Baptist Convention/SBTS that when one of its representatives makes a statement of its theology, it is in direct alignment with the words of the Bible (which, in this doctrinal statement, is understood as a completely unified message without error). Southern Baptist theology, in other words, is considered true to the extent that it is in direct accordance with the Bible. While this is not always explicitly stated, this relationship to divine revelation is always present in the background of Southern Baptist theological discourse. Therefore, within Southern Baptist theological discourse, divine interaction is constantly invoked, whether explicitly or implicitly. In the spirit of Kaylor (2011), however, the invocation of divine interaction does not negate the duty of communication scholarship to analyze the discourse at play.

The Southern Baptist Convention has shown a strident commitment to conservative political activism, especially in the aftermath of the late twentieth century’s “Conservative Resurgence” (covered at length in Ammerman 1990; Farnsley 1994; Smith 1997; with more contemporary treatments in Shoopman 2011; Balmer et al. 2021). Therefore, the RSR’s conversation about its history with race and slavery intersects with its present advocacy of positions related to race in the United States, such as its resolution expressing hostility to “appropriation of” critical race theory (2019), and is therefore irreducibly political-adjacent (if not fully political). There is, of course, a broad and robust tradition of the study of religious rhetoric in politics, particularly regarding the political and religious right (e.g., Turek 2014; Domke and Coe 2010; Coe and Chapp 2017; Knight 2021) though not exclusively (e.g., Medhurst 2017; Clements 2013; Prelli and Winters 2009). Crucially important as it is to see the directly politically charged implications of rhetoric such as the RSR, this article sets out to explore a slightly different emphasis. That is, how does the RSR as religious rhetoric function—especially in its invocation of “the gospel” to form its audience’s notions of what is and is not important to think about (i.e., how does it set the religious “agenda” for the audience.)

Further, this study seeks to answer Johnson’s (2023) call to “grapple with how one uses rhetoric and how rhetorical approaches to religion can contribute to a deeper and more meaningful understanding of both religion and race” (p. 2). Specifically, this study interrogates how even a discourse purportedly designed to confess to and repent over the presence of personal and systemic racism in an institution can serve, in effect, to perpetuate the centering of whiteness within that institution. It is an example of what Johnson describes when lamenting “a study of white evangelicalism with regard to race would demonstrate that not only have they been critical to the ways we understand race today, but more importantly, it is their religion (theology) that gives them license to support racist rhetoric and policies” (p. 8). In addition to Johnson’s work, there is an ever growing field of research and discussion of religious rhetoric through the lens of critical race theory (e.g., Bracey 2022; Hill et al. 2022; Hill 2016; Dyeson 2013; Winston 2024). This article stands on the shoulders of these critical rhetorical studies as an examination of how an artifact of religious rhetoric can contribute to perpetuation of racial inequities.

Moreover, this article stands on the shoulders of numerous recent studies on how religious rhetoric—particularly in American evangelicalism—constructs, sanctifies, and privileges whiteness (e.g., Nye 2019; Gomez 2018; Draper 2018; Beydoun 2019; Emerson and Bracey II 2024; Harris and Steiner 2018). This article seeks to extend this work, not only by demonstrating examples of how this is done within RSR, but by describing a theory in religious agenda-setting of how this is perpetuated through constructing foundational spiritual concepts in ways that disconnect them from racial equity and justice.

With this background of the field of religious communication and rhetoric in mind, the study now examines the background of RSR itself.

RSR: A Background. Social movements throughout the 2010s and beyond have created pressure on both individuals and institutions to reckon previously unexamined realities of white supremacy and systemic oppression of people of color. One form that these reckonings have taken within some institution has been greater institutional attention to and recognition of dark histories of participation in and institutional benefit from white supremacy, slavery, and systemic oppression. Several universities–particularly those with long histories dating back to times prior to the American Civil War and subsequent abolition–have taken in part such in such reckonings, such as Princeton University (Tomlinson 2023) and Georgetown University (Svrluga 2023). Often, these reckonings were accompanied by concrete efforts to further the cause of racial reconciliation on their respective campus’, such as Princeton’s decision to remove particular monuments and Georgetown’s offering of financial reparations.

One of the distinguishing features of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) within this conversation is its historically and presently close affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). SBTS is considered the “first and oldest institution of the Southern Baptist Convention” and its “mother seminary” (Mohler 2018). SBTS president Albert Mohler’s introductory letter to the RSR makes the significance of this link inescapably clear. Mohler connects the RSR to a resolution condemning the Southern Baptist Convention’s history of participation and toleration of racism and ties to slavery passed by the SBC in 1995 (Southern Baptist Convention 1995). Twice in two paragraphs, Mohler acclaims this resolution as “historic” to ensure that readers cannot fail to recognize the greatness of the moment. And Mohler ties the resolution to RSR, stating:

That was more than twenty years ago. I was honored to be part of the small working group of both white and African American Southern Baptists who drafted that historic statement. Then, as now, I was president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. At that time, I think it is safe to say that most Southern Baptists, having made this painful acknowledgment and lamenting this history, hoped to dwell no longer on the painful aspects of our legacy. That is not possible, nor is it right. It is past time that The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary—the first and oldest institution of the Southern Baptist Convention—must face a reckoning of our own.

(Mohler 2018)

As Mohler points out in the introductory letter, a significant portion of the scrutiny received by SBTS was due to historical knowledge that four of SBTS’ founders, James P. Boyce, John Broadus, Basil Manly Jr., and William Williams, are known to have kept African slaves and supported the Confederate States of America (Mohler 2018). Sometimes, this support defined their personal ministries in quite prominent ways. Manly, for example, served as chaplain for the Confederacy and prayed at Jefferson Davis’ inauguration to the Confederate presidency (Fuller 2000). Exacerbating this tension is the fact there are buildings on the campus of SBTS that remain (still, as of 2025) named after each of these four individuals. SBTS’ subsidiary undergraduate institution, in fact, is named Boyce College after James P. Boyce. These ongoing tributes to these men mirror honorifics at other institutions, where a part of the racial reckoning has involved the renaming of buildings or schools previously named after individuals known to have a history of participation in white supremacy.

A team with the purpose of completing the project which eventually became the RSR was commissioned by Dr. Mohler in 2017. The team consisted of six individuals, all of whom were, at the time, employed at SBTS or Boyce College, SBTS’ subsidiary undergraduate institution. Three members of the team were white and three were African American. The full document is divided into two parts: the short introduction letter by Mohler and the longer, full 66-page report on the racial history of SBTS co-authored by the six members of the team. The report itself is divided into two sections: it begins by laying out thirteen summary findings of the team, which is followed by a more detailed historical narrative of the history of SBTS with attention to the development of its views on slavery, race, racial supremacy, and segregation from its founding in 1859 and ending, curiously, in 1968, with the rest of the history of the seminary covered by a brief (two paragraph) conclusion summarizing the subsequent years between 1968 and 2018. Only two events are discussed in this conclusion–the 1995 resolution adopted by the SBC, and Dr. Mohler’s 2015 convocation address calling the seminary community to “faithfulness by embracing and celebrating the diversity of ethnicities…show(ing) how this is a fundamental element of God’s purpose in the gospel” (pp. 70–71), which is treated as SBTS’ “Mission Accomplished” moment illustrating how far SBTS has come regarding race. The reports thirteen summary points read as follows:

• The seminary’s founding faculty all held slaves.
• The seminary’s early faculty and trustees defended the righteousness of slaveholding.
• Upon Abraham Lincoln’s election, the seminary faculty sought to preserve slavery.
• The seminary supported the Confederacy’s cause to preserve slavery
• After emancipation, the seminary faculty opposed racial equality.
• In the Reconstruction era, the faculty supported the restoration of white rule in the South.
• Joseph E. Brown, the seminary’s most important donor and chairman of its Board of Trustees from 1880 to 1894, earned much of his fortune by the exploitation of mostly black convict-lease laborers.
• The seminary faculty urged just and humane treatment for blacks.
• Before the 1940s, the seminary faculty generally approved the Lost Cause mythology.
• Until the 1940s, the seminary faculty supported black education and the segregation of schools and society.
• In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the seminary faculty appealed to science to support their belief in white superiority.
• The seminary admitted blacks to its degree programs in 1940 and integrated its classrooms in 1951.
• The seminary faculty supported civil rights for blacks but had mixed appraisals of the Civil Rights Movement (Wills et al. 2018, pp. 5–8).

It should be duly noted that these findings (with the significant exception of #8, as will be discussed) are, themselves, indicators of significant institutional reflexivity. It is not the goal of this project to deny that significant necessary reflexivity has taken place. Furthermore, it can carry personal and professional risk in an environment such as a Southern evangelical seminary to engage to this degree with the reality of an institution’s historic relationship with white supremacy. These are difficult admissions to make about an institution with which one is affiliated (and even loves).

Nevertheless, as this study will demonstrate, even within the text of these reflective admissions, there is rhetoric that effectively minimizes the significance of these wrongs while centering whiteness through mechanisms that include what I will describe as religious agenda-setting.

As an engagement with the history of a major institution of the largest Christian denomination in the United States, the RSR has engaged the interest of some previous scholarship—particularly religious historians. Fuller (2021), for example, used the publication of the RSR as a springboard for a deeper historical examination of the four founding faculty of SBTS. He provides a great deal of additional historical context to fill in the gaps of the biographies of the SBTS’ four founding faculty. His is, however, uncritical in his acceptance of RSR’s narrative of the fundamentally humane posture of these men toward those they enslaved. And he is equally uncritical of the framing of modern day questions of the implications of their actions that reduce the importance into whether the four were guilty of “heresy”. Fuller is struck by the contradictions and “irony” (as he consistently refers to it) of men so devoted to Christian orthodoxy being so immersed in the horrors of human slavery.

Greene (2019), however—another historian—does not find this combination to be ironic whatsoever. Rather, she describes how it was both natural and inevitable that the visions of Christian orthodoxy espoused by these men should pair with slavery and white supremacy. She then goes on to demonstrate that the embrace of these founding faculty’s legacy at SBTS in the decades since Mohler’s appointment to leadership go well beyond the naming of buildings:

Yet Albert Mohler Jr. has intentionally reclaimed James P. Boyce’s legacy and restored “Boyce’s seminary.” Mohler’s ascendancy in 1993 represented one of the signal achievements of the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, a movement that stressed biblical inerrancy as its defining feature. Like nineteenth-century biblical literalism, this form of twentieth-century inerrancy assumed a divinely ordained social hierarchy, this time focused more on gender difference than on racial difference.

(p. 57)

Additionally, Greene contends that the writers of RSR’s decision to end their examination of SBTS history with white supremacy with the Civil Rights Movement masks the ways it has continued to operate and makes moot the RSR’s avowed rationale of confession: “The false distance the seminary’s report creates between Jim Crow racism and Mohler’s reign at the institution holds accountable only those leaders who can no longer be held accountable” (p. 61). As will be discussed further, at times Greene seems to collapse SBTS and SBC into a single institutional entity, questioning why SBTS does not take accountability in the RSR for broader SBC failures on race. And perhaps this is justifiable, given SBTS’ readiness to claim SBC’s perceived progress in racial matters as its own. Still, they remain, in fact, distinct (if related) institutions with distinct histories of successes and failures.

As an examination of history, this critical work by religious historians makes a crucial contribution to full understanding of the story being told by the RSR. As a piece of constitutive rhetoric meant to give definition to what SBTS has historically been and is, RSR also warrants examination of the rhetorical strategies it employs to sit alongside these historical critiques.

3. Results

3.1. Prelude: Self-Reflexivity

My own location as a scholar analyzing the work produced by SBTS is not irrelevant to my observations and warrants disclosure. Particularly, I came to this work as a 41-year-old white male, raised evangelical as a part of various churches that would describe themselves as evangelical–including three stints of various lengths at churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. I attended an evangelical Bible college for my undergraduate degree, as well as an evangelical seminary for my initial graduate degree. The first season of my professional life was in pastoral roles in evangelical churches, after which I began a period overseeing chaplaincy in a prison, initially under the endorsement of an evangelical church. While I no longer identify with American evangelicalism as my own religious tradition, in many ways, it has shaped the way I experience and understand the world. I bring both knowledge and baggage to the topic of evangelicalism in general and the SBC in particular that only a (former) insider can, and I carry both with me in this analysis.

3.2. Rhetorical Move #1: Decentering Black Pain

I have misgivings as a writer to describe the writing team of the RSR as engaged in decentering the experiences and pain of those historically marginalized by SBTS, because I recognize the clear intention of the team to expose the truth about periods of racism in SBTS’ history. There is much to be appreciated for their efforts. While the rhetorical moves I will discuss recur throughout the RSR, they compromise relatively small portions of the report itself, and one might critique this analysis as “cherry-picking” small sections from a much larger whole. Nevertheless, I would argue that these moves are significant and warrant discussion.

The first of these rhetorical moves, in summary, is the standpoint of the narrative of the RSR itself, telling the history of the SBTS entirely from the perspective of the white leadership of the seminary. Despite the project’s stated goals of confessionally shining a light on SBTS’ dark history with slavery and white supremacy (and the level of success it achieves in this endeavor), the RSR effectively creates narrative empathy for the seminary’s white leadership. I identify ‘decentering’ as occurring when marginalized perspectives are acknowledged but subordinated rhetorically—for instance, through limited elaboration, placement in secondary narrative positions, or framing that redirects attention toward institutional or theological concerns. To put it in terms of Benoit’s (1995) scheme of image restoration, there is very little that is recognizable as mortification—that is, the simple acknowledgment of wrong done, taking of meaningful responsibility, and appealing to the audience for forgiveness.

“Narrative empathy”, as described by literary scholar Suzanne Keen (2006), “is the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition” (p. 522). In short, when a discourse privileges a particular point of view in narrating a story, it is natural for the readers to adopt empathy in accordance with that point of view. In the case of the RSR, as the narrative focuses on the seminary’s white leadership–the factors that led to their adoption of white supremacy, the concerns that motivated their perpetuation of it, the concerns that made them struggle with desegregation and support of the Civil Rights Movement, the reader will tend to develop a degree of empathy with that perspective.

There are signs that the team who authored the RSR attempted to broaden this perspective by seeking out direct first-hand testimony of those harmed by the policies of SBTS and the actions (including slave-holding) of its leadership. The authors note in their introduction, for instance, that

Although parts of this history have long been known, much of the story has never been told. We have undertaken extensive review of the published and unpublished sources that relate most directly to the history of the institution. We have searched for additional resources that could shed light on this story. Some voices are strikingly absent. The voices of many of the black agents in this story have not been preserved.

(Wills et al. 2018, p. 5)

One can appreciate the quandary of composing this report relying on only the recorded writings of the white seminary leadership for direct knowledge of the seminary’s situation, although one wonders, by the same token, why there is no reference to the multiplicity of available testimonies of the enslaved, freed people, abolitionists, Black ministers, Black persons fighting against Jim Crow restrictions, Black students fighting for inclusion at white institutions prior to 1950, and civil rights advocates who could effectively speak to the era and plight of black victims of slavery and white supremacy generally, even if they are unable to speak directly about SBTS. Testimonies of enslaved persons and freed persons are ample. Even if they limited their research on Black ministers and potential seminarians during slavery, the authors could have turned, for example, to the work of Woolridge (1945) and Cornelius (1999). For insight on the plight of Black ministers and seminarians during Jim Crow, the authors could have enlisted the work of Giggie (2006) and Bennett (2016).

Of greater concern, however, are the many lengthy passages of the RSR where the focus is providing an explanation for the perspectives of the seminary’s historic leadership, such as the following paragraph from the RSR’s delineation of Point #2, “The seminary’s early faculty and trustees defended the righteousness of slaveholding”:

Additionally, (the founding faculty of SBTS) not only defended slavery in theory, but in actual practice as well, denying that abuses, violence, assault, and rape were in any way commonplace or systemic. Instead, they thought these to be exceptions. Their perspective was undoubtedly veiled by their dependence on hired overseers who were charged with the violent enforcement of the slave system. Furthermore, in their defense of slavery, the faculty and some prominent trustees assumed black inferiority, even as they often professed concern for the welfare of slaves.

(Wills et al. 2018, p. 6, emphasis added)

This assertion is speculative, and neither defensible nor falsifiable. Whether these men bore the responsibility to seek a deeper understanding of the treatment of the people they enslaved or those enslaved by others under the institution they so staunchly defended is uninterrogated. It is assumed (“their perspective was undoubtedly…”) that their hearts must have been in the right place.

The most striking example of this defensive rhetoric is the entirety of Point #8, “The seminary faculty urged just and humane treatment for blacks,” summarized in the following paragraph:

The seminary faculty taught the equal humanity of blacks and whites. They commended the authenticity of the Christian faith and piety of black believers. And they opposed the violence and injustice that blacks in the South widely suffered. Broadus repudiated American slavery in 1882. William J. McGlothlin rejected previous attempts to connect the curse of Ham to blackness or justification for slavery. Broadus chastised white Christians for assuming their worship was more acceptable to God than that offered by black Christians. Several faculty and trustees lamented the prevalence of lynching in the South.

(Wills et al. 2018, p. 7)

The history of SBTS’ efforts to “urge just and humane treatment for blacks” receives a much fuller explication in pages 38–41. Fuller (2021), as noted, is quite focused on and fascinated by these “contradictions” and “paradoxes” that the RSR highlights (e.g., p. 49). Along with the writers of the RSR, he is troubled with questions of “How?” How, that is, could seminary leaders simultaneously urge this “humane treatment” while participating in the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow? What is certain, however, is that the lens through which readers experience this history is the point of view of the seminary’s historically white leadership, rather than through the perspective of those experiencing the inequalities that these paradoxes produced.

There are many other such instances throughout the RSR. Two warrant specific attention. First is the narrative of Dr. Duke McCall, president of SBTS during much of the Civil Rights movement. McCall, the RSR recalls, faced tremendous backlash from SBC-member churches in the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s invited appearance and address at SBTS. It is clear from RSR’s narrative that, in response, McCall’s response to this backlash was to equivocate. McCall downplayed the nature of the appearance when speaking with segregationists, putting out an official apology for allowing the appearance, while blanching in other situations at the suggestion that the apology should be seen as an indication that the seminary did not support civil rights for black people.

The authors, however, take a much more generous view of McCall’s equivocations:

McCall and the trustee officers apologized for inviting King: “The Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, together with President Duke K. McCall, wishes to express regret for any offense caused by the recent visit of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to the campus of the Seminary.” They also formally requested that the faculty obtain trustee approval before inviting any speaker who was “currently involved in a public controversy.” It was not much of an apology. This was deliberate. It was intended to provide the seminary’s supporters in Alabama with a means to defend the seminary. They used it to claim that the seminary regretted inviting King, had apologized for it, and would not repeat a similar offense.

(Wills et al. 2018, p. 69, quoting Honts 1961, emphasis added)

In other words, the authors’ explanation for McCall’s apology for King’s appearance is that he is playing the canny trickster, offering an insincere apology to provide the seminary cover for taking their courageous stand in inviting King. As evidence of this, they cite McCall’s expressed consternation when the Baptist press took the apology seriously. That McCall was simply playing politically to save face with whatever audience happened to be in front of him at any given moment is a policy that the authors do not, apparently, consider. As Manis (1999) points out, there were financial considerations at stake as well, as sixteen financially supporting SBC churches threatened to withhold funds to SBTS as a result of King’s visit. In any case, the pain and challenge given consideration in this section are McCall’s and the Trustees’--the white leadership of the seminary–not that of the Black population harmed and spiritually mutilated by SBTS’ refusal to stand with them in this moment. No consideration is given to what it might have meant if McCall and those like him had stood their ground on their decision to hear from King and stood with him–and the pain that failure to do this caused. Instead, what is centered is the challenge McCall faced, and the pain he dealt with by facing backlash from all sides.

One final but significant example of the decentering of black pain occurs not in the body of the RSR itself, but in Mohler’s (2018) introductory letter to the RSR. Describing the much more recent event of the SBC’s 1995 resolution rejecting the SBC’s historic relationship with racism and white supremacy, Mohler writes: “That was more than twenty years ago…At that time, I think it is safe to say that most Southern Baptists, having made this painful acknowledgment and lamenting this history, hoped to dwell no longer on the painful aspects of our legacy.” This statement is a truly telling rhetorical construction of who, in Mohler’s mind, fits in the category of “most Southern Baptists.” It marginalizes the perspective of those in the SBC who saw the resolution as a necessary starting point to be built upon by tangible action within the SBC, and privileges the perspective of the (presumably white) Southern Baptist eager for issues of race to be ignored and downplayed. Mohler speaks of events such as the 1995 resolution and the current work of the RSR with the implication of closure for the SBC and SBTS, respectively. As will be discussed further in the section to follow, Mohler goes on in the letter to express that there is no particular need to take further corrective action within the seminary community, such as changing the names of buildings named for slaveholding founders.

In summary, much of the rhetoric of the RSR serves to center the experiences, challenges, and pain of the white seminary leadership throughout its history, building narrative empathy for the white seminary leadership throughout its history. All of this occurs under the auspices of the RSR’s avowed purpose to report on “the Correspondingly, this rhetoric removes the focus from the pain, suffering, disenfranchisement, and the physical, political, and spiritual trauma perpetrated on black Americans throughout the events the report sets out to confront.

When considered through the lens of the RSR as apologia/image restoration, the narrative empathy generated for the historical white leadership SBTS serves the strategy identified by both Ware and Linkugel (1973) and Benoit (1995) as “bolstering”, which is an attempt to mitigate the harm done by reminding the audience of the good that the actor (whether institutional or individual) has done. The white leadership of SBTS are the protagonists, as it were, of the story being told. While events like the 1995 SBC resolution or the invitation of King to the seminary are not claimed as sufficient in addressing SBTS’ history, it rhetorically connects the white leadership of SBTS to the supposed “goodness” of such acts.

3.3. Rhetorical Move #2: Subtle Pejorative

While this second rhetorical move is less pronounced than the first, it nonetheless plays an important role in establishing the tone of the RSR. In short, although the RSR primarily exists to tell the story of SBTS’ white leadership throughout its history, whenever the subject turns to other agents and institutions (be they Northern Christians, abolitionists, Civil Rights Movement leaders, or other educational institutions), they are generally discussed in pejorative tones (if only subtly). In any case where it might be suggested that the other actor in question may have responded to a situation more appropriately, more compassionately, or more wisely, the RSR demonstrates that they are just as bad or morally inferior to SBTS. References are treated as pejorative where they characterize individuals or groups through language that diminishes their credibility, motives, or moral standing, particularly through evaluative descriptors, contrastive framing, or dismissive qualification. This includes instances where criticism is implied through tone or juxtaposition rather than explicit condemnation.

This is clearly seen quite early in Mohler’s (2018) introductory letter to the RSR. In discussing the need for SBTS to engage in reflection over its dark history, he discusses how other institutions have engaged in such reflection:

In the larger secular world, just about every major institution of American public life is being called to account for some aspect of its history. This cultural conversation, often confused and intense, is far from over. I also believe that no secular worldview can bear the weight of this reckoning. Thanks be to God, we hold to a theology grounded in Holy Scripture that is able to bear this weight. We know that evil is not merely moral wrong; it is sin, a falling short of the glory of God and the breaking of God’s commandment. We understand the wrong of American slavery and segregation to be sin, a rebellion against God’s creation of human beings equally in his image.

(p. 2)

Even while expressing a modicum of admiration for Princeton University’s handling of similar controversies regarding its history with slavery and white supremacy, that admiration is balanced with a pejorative jab: “In candor, I found the most encouraging model in the approach of Princeton University in its ‘Princeton & Slavery’ project…How can a school like Princeton University face the truth while we, holding to the truth of the gospel, would refuse to do the same?” (p. 2). But Mohler’s admiration does not extend to other schools’ corrective actions:

In light of the burdens of history, some schools hasten to remove names, announce plans, and declare moral superiority. That is not what I intend to do, nor do I believe that to be what the Southern Baptist Convention or our Board of Trustees would have us to do. We do not evaluate our Christian forebears from a position of our own moral innocence. Christians know that there is no such innocence. But we must judge, even as we will be judged, by the unchanging Word of God and the deposit of biblical truth. Consistent with our theology and the demands of truth, we will not attempt to rewrite the past, nor can we unwrite the past. Instead, we will write the truth as best we can know it. We will tell the story in full, and not hide. By God’s grace we will hold without compromise to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

(pp. 3–4)

While claiming not to assert moral superiority, Mohler talks about how it is other schools who desire to hide the past through the act of removing names of slaveholders from the honored position of building namesakes. (Additionally, hearkening back to the first rhetorical move, this statement centers on Mohler and the Trustees’ perception of what it means to “tell the story in full” over the pain experienced by black individuals on campus asked to utilize buildings named in honor of slaveholders.)

Although Mohler’s (2018) introductory letter uses this rhetorical move more pervasively than the body of the RSR itself, the subtly pejorative tone towards outsiders does exist throughout the RSR. In the beginning paragraphs of the RSR, when discussing the formation of the SBC, the RSR notes:

Although most white Baptists in the North did not hold that slavery was intrinsically immoral, they found slavery in practice sufficiently troubling that they countenanced the minority among them who had begun advocating abolition in the 1830s. The abolitionist Baptists argued that they could not hold communion with slaveholding Christians. White southern Baptists argued that they could not in good conscience cooperate with abolitionists who demanded their excommunication.

(Wills et al. 2018, p. 9)

Once again, in a document whose avowed goal is to confess and shed historical light upon the legacy of slavery, racism, and white supremacy at SBTS (and, by extension, its mother organization, the SBC), the emphasis is upon the moral equivalency between Baptists of the North and South and their mutual unwillingness to accept fellowship with one another.

One final example of this rhetorical move occurs in the RSR’s discussion of SBTS president McCall’s interaction with leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Recall, as discussed in the previous section, that in the aftermath of Dr. King’s appearance at SBTS, McCall and the SBTS trustees issued an apology for the appearance. As Manis (1999) recounts, public and financial pressure from SBC churches may have forced their hand. Recall as well how, as the RSR itself attests, McCall subsequently varied his accounting of King’s appearance depending on to whom he was speaking. The RSR follows up on this account with the following paragraph:

McCall believed that he had always sought the middle ground on the most controversial issues facing Southern Baptists: race issues, theological differences, church-state relations, and growing federal power through legislation and spending programs. He was a moderate. But the intensity of the violence and social strife of 1968 led him to conclude that the honorable middle ground was disappearing. Voices on both sides drove moderates from their middle ground by construing them as dupes or defenders of the other party. McCall felt that the supporters of radical civil rights reform convicted him of supporting “white supremacy” since he did not agree with their program. He felt that the radical segregationists convicted him of supporting “black power” since he did not agree with them. “The moderates among us are dying out because deliberate distortion of our position throws us into extremist camps, which we abhor.”

(Wills et al. 2018, pp. 69–70, quoting from McCall 1969, p. 5)

Duke McCall, the RSR explains, just wanted to occupy his “honorable” middle ground on the issue of equal social and political standing for black Americans, “radical” civil rights advocates (i.e., those advocating direct action rather than waiting for white Americans to give up hegemonic power voluntarily) kept accusing him of being allied with white supremacy.1

It is easy to recognize what sociologist Christian Smith (1998) describe as the evangelical “embattled identity” (p. 150) in these portions of the RSR. Smith’s description holds that evangelicals tend to define themselves on the basis of opposition to the secular, the “worldly”, the liberal, etc. It is, therefore, perhaps not surprising even in a work of confessional history. that Mohler and the SBTS draw lines between themselves and the nonevangelicals (or those insufficiently evangelical) in their telling of this history. The rhetorical effect of this move is to minimize the very legacy of slavery and white supremacy they purport to confess while continuing to assign narrative empathy to SBTS and its white agents.

Through the lens of apologia/image restoration, this move does not map cleanly upon any of either Ware and Linkugel (1973) nor Benoit’s (1995) strategies. Its closest analog is Benoit’s version of “differentiation”—which, like bolstering, is a part of Benoit’s category of “reducing offensiveness”. The subtle pejorative tone certainly serves to differentiate SBTS’ historical white leadership from “the radicals” or liberal Princeton. “Differentiation” as a strategy of apologia, however, is about differentiating the offending acts being addressed from worse acts committed by others—which, at least directly, is not being done. The RSR is not (directly) claiming that “the radicals” who complained about the apology for King’s appearance at SBTS were acting worse than SBTS for issuing the apology, for example. Perhaps this move would best be categorized as a strategy of distraction, which is not among either Ware & Linkugel nor Benoit’s strategies.

3.4. Rhetorical Move #3: Rhetorical Construction of “Gospel”

As Mohler (2018) contemplates the sins of SBTS’ founding faculty, his reflections take shape in the following key passage:

Over time, I had to think some hard thoughts. How could Christians hold, simultaneously, such right and wrong beliefs? How could a heroic figure like Martin Luther, that great paragon of the Reformation, teach, defend, and define the glorious truths of the gospel while expressing vile medieval anti-Semitism? The questions come again and again. Eventually, the questions come home. How could our founders, James P. Boyce, John Broadus, Basil Manly Jr., and William Williams, serve as such defenders of biblical truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the confessional convictions of this Seminary, and at the same time own human beings as slaves—based on an ideology of race—and defend American slavery as an institution–based an ideology of race—and defend American slavery as an institution? Like Luther, they were creatures of their own time and social imagination, to be sure. But this does not excuse them, nor will it excuse us. The very confessional convictions they bequeathed to us reveal that there is only one standard by which Christians must make such judgments, and that is the sole authority of the Bible. They preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people, slave and free. We hold to that same gospel, pointing sinners to the promise of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Like our founders, we believe that repentance, which they confessed as an “evangelical grace,” is essential to the gospel. The very gospel truths that they taught, defined, and handed down to us are the very truths that allow us to release this report with both lament and conviction.

This, arguably, is the most powerful rhetorical maneuver of the RSR. Mohler discusses the transgressions at the heart of the RSR, drawing repeated contrast to his conception of “the gospel”. Thereby, he thoroughly and definitively distinguishes between matters of racial justice and the gospel (that is, the core message of Jesus of Nazareth’s work and the Way by which he called his followers to walk) and diminishes any notion of a relationship between the two. In Mohler’s rhetoric, in other words, it is possible for one to substantially “get the gospel right” in a meaningful way while abandoning racial justice. Likewise, for Mohler, Martin Luther could espouse frighteningly antisemitic ideals while simultaneously acting to “teach, defend, and define the glorious truths of the gospel.” There is, in other words, for Mohler, no substantial relationship between the gospel and racial justice. Any connection between them is incidental.

To be fair, as the RSR points out, Mohler has valorized the idea of “diversity” as a fundamental part of the gospel. Quoting from his 2015 convocational address, they conclude the RSR by writing

(Mohler) has called the seminary and Southern Baptists to faithfulness “by embracing and celebrating” the diversity of ethnicities. In his spring 2015 convocation address, he showed how this is a fundamental element of God’s purpose in the gospel: “We have come from a table of nations and a tower of Babel to a covenant with Abraham and a new covenant in blood to a table set in honor of a Lamb. Diversity is not an accident or a problem—it’s a sign of God’s providence and promise. If the church gets this wrong, it’s not just getting race and ethnic difference wrong. It’s getting the gospel wrong.

(Wills et al. 2018, quoting Mohler 2015)

There is a marked difference, however, between calling for racial diversity to be a mark of the ultimate universal church as a facet of the gospel and the advocacy of racial justice and equality as a matter pertinent to the gospel. The RSR similarly makes this distinction on pages 19 and 29–30 by lauding SBTS’ white leadership for their commitment and advocacy for evangelizing (i.e., bringing the gospel, rhetorically constructed to mean individualistic salvation without broader concern for racial equality/injustice) to slave and freed populations.

Articulating a hard distinction between racial justice/equality and “the gospel” necessarily minimizes the status of racial justice/equality to an ancillary issue whose importance is secondary at best. It is expected within a Christian community that the gospel–however rhetorically constructed within that particular context–will occupy central importance to that community’s spiritual life. This is true whether the gospel is constructed with a primary focus on individual eternal salvation, with a primary focus on liberation and the emergent Kingdom of Jesus Christ, or whatever else the case may be. This illustrates one of the unique, fundamental rhetorical powers that comes with leading a religious organization, whether it be a congregation, educational institution, or other religious NGO: that is, the power to continuously, rhetorically construct and reconstruct concepts such as “gospel” (or comparable concepts within other religious faiths) in order to shape the primary religious concerns of that community. I propose that this phenomenon should be considered a near-cousin to the media theory of agenda setting developed by McCombs and Shaw (1972), which describes the media’s ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda. Similarly, religious agenda setting (as I label it) describes the ability of religious leaders to prioritize topics of spiritual concern through rhetorical construction of central concepts such as “gospel”. In this case, Mohler (2018) rhetorically assure the priority of individual salvation over racial justice/equality by ensuring that “gospel” is defined to include the former but not the latter.

As apologia/image restoration, the appeal to the gospel thus constructed falls cleanly into both Ware and Linkugel (1973) and Benoit’s (1995) category of “transcendence”--a broadening of the context of the act to create a less offensive frame of reference. In this case, because SBTS, its founders, and its white historical leadership were always champions of the gospel, the audience is invited to embrace them regardless of their failings in relationship to slavery, racial equity, and justice.

However, it is equally important to note what this move accomplishes rhetorically beyond its relationship to apologia/image restoration and how it speaks to a broader rhetorical trend quite apart from apologia/image restoration discourse. It effectively functions to mitigate image damage, no doubt. “Gospel” is a concept within Christianity of far-reaching impact. To construct “gospel” in ways that erases ideas of justice and equity effectively tells a Christian audience what they should and should not matter to them, what is and is not of ultimate importance, and, therefore, to what they should and should not devote time, thought, care, and energy. In this, the RSR functions as much as theological instruction as it does apologia.

4. Discussion

I would like to conclude with three brief observations regarding these rhetorical moves.

4.1. Observation #1: These Rhetorical Moves Are Not Unique

While the RSR serves well to exemplify these rhetorical moves, there is no particular reason for the RSR, SBTS, or the SBC to be uniquely criticized for employing them. These rhetorical moves–the decentering of the experience of the marginalized, subtly pejorative reference to opponents, and religious agenda setting, are certainly not unique to the RSR. They are, in fact, quite common in religious discourses. An example of each can be seen in my story of my well-meaning pastor friend, “Jack”, talking about his experience leading his congregation through COVID recalled at the beginning of this study:

• His telling of the experience did not take into account individuals with heightened risk factors and pre-existing conditions, whose health and safety depends on organizations like churches making wise decisions about quarantine and closure. This decentered the experience/pain of the marginalized.
• He implied that his own actions and concerns were shaped by the gospel, while implying others in his church were motivated by lesser factors. This subtly characterizes his congregants in a pejorative light.
• He constructed a concept of “gospel” that precluded any concern for the COVID-19 pandemic, including the health and safety ramifications that it raises.

One striking facet of these rhetorical moves’ presence within this conversation is that they are not limited to formal communication within religious organizations. They can and do occur in everyday religious discourses.

Nor are they limited to apologia. One sees these moves on display in religious discourse of many different types and subject matters. One might see them on display in sermons and political campaigning. In Knight’s (2021) study of evangelical discourse on immigration, for example, Knight recounts a particular sermon given by Trumpist megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, which features:

• The centering of the wellbeing and safety of American citizens over those of immigrants,
• In this case, the pejorative language is not particularly subtle, but more open, as Jeffress is recounted depicting (pp. 114–15) both immigrants and the anti-Trump media as “distractions” and “enemies”,
• Finally, an underlying emphasis of the sermon is that, essentially, God has “chosen” Donald Trump as a leader. For a Christian audience, this choseness is associated with anointing, and the idea that it is God’s will for a person to lead. Not unlike gospel, the idea of God’s will is, for an evangelical Christian audience, a phrase of transcendence with the power to shape the audience’s agenda about what is an is not important. If God has chosen Donald Trump to lead the United States against immigrant and media enemies, suddenly allegations of sexual misconduct do not sound so important anymore.

4.2. Observation #2: These Rhetorical Moves Function to Maintain Religious Power

One of the underlying premises, often unspoken, of apologia/image restoration, is that a tarnished image damages a public figure or institution’s ability to wield influence or affect change through cultural power. For most institutions, and certainly for religious institutions, public trust is a key source of an institution’s power—not to mention its resources. Benoit’s (1995) overarching strategies for image restoration seek to restore public trust and goodwill in varying ways: denial asserts there is no reason for distrust. Evading responsibility says the distrust is misplaced. Reducing offensiveness asserts that the audience should overcome the distrust because, in the long run, it is of minimal significance compared to other factors. Corrective action says the distrust is justified, and the institution will change in such a way as to newly justify trust. And mortification, finally, says that distrust is justified, takes responsibility, and throws itself upon the mercy of the audience for forgiveness.

It is notable that, essentially, the RSR’s bids for its audience’s trust—and therefore, maintaining SBTS’ cultural power—are strategies Benoit (1995) associates with reducing offensiveness. Reasons for offense and distrust are admitted to, but take the forms of bolstering and transcendence. Move #2, as discussed, is harder to classify within Benoit’s taxonomy, but is closest to differentiation with some significant divergence. All three are strategies of reducing offensiveness; that is, asserting that in a broader view, the offenses should be overlooked. In the bigger picture, they pale in comparison to other concerns.

In the case of centering SBTS’ historical white leadership, whose pain, stress, and needs are centered in a religious discourse will determine whose pain, stress, and needs are taken seriously as important. Centering the pain, stress, and needs of the marginalized threatens power. Centering the pain, stress, and needs of the powerful sets the stage for the reification of their power. Greene (2019) carries this critique farther:

The report leaves Mohler and his leadership unscathed, left to lament the sins of those who came before while denying their ongoing ramifications…It papers over a generation of hand-in-glove cooperation with efforts to roll back every single social program that served African Americans or promised to rectify, even in the smallest ways, the gross economic, social, and political effects of enslavement, segregation, and inequality on black communities. It ignores the explicit support of denominational leaders for the War on Crime and the War on Drugs and a carceral state that explicitly targeted black Americans. It renders irrelevant all the ways Southern Baptists supported and benefited from white supremacy—dog-whistled or openly declared—after 1964.

(p. 61)

What complicates Greene’s critique, however, is that the SBC and SBTS are distinct institutions (though intimately related). SBTS is not answerable for SBC’s ongoing institutional failures. Nonetheless, Greene’s critique illustrates how RSR’s decisions to center the white leadership of SBTS in its storytelling make it incapable of seeing clearly the effects of its use of power.

In the case of using a subtly pejorative manner to speak about outside actors, the RSR minimizes the ability of critics to offer what the audience will consider valid criticism. Speaking of outsiders in pejorative, contemptuous tones that reinforce battle lines neutralizes the ability of critics to speak truth to those with power.

Finally, most powerfully, religious agenda setting enables religious leaders to prioritize the concerns of the religious community in such a way as to maintain their own power, build dependence upon their leadership, and negate concerns that threaten their maintenance and accumulation of power. The RSR says, in essence, “Yes, our leadership failed historically on issues of racial justice and equality. But what is more important: racial justice or the gospel?” Concern for the gospel, through the RSR’s construction racial justice, in Benoit’s terms. Therefore, SBTS’ remains a worthy locus of trust and cultural power.

4.3. Observation #3: These Rhetorical Moves Can Drive/Justify Actions (or Inaction)

In part through employment of these three rhetorical moves, SBTS was able to construct a report that at once detailed a legacy of association with slavery, racism, and white supremacy, while simultaneously minimizing the import of that association. As a result, Mohler (2018) asserted that no further action (i.e., removing the names of offending individuals from buildings) was warranted. Similarly, Jack used these moves to justify silencing conversation about further COVID precautions.

4.4. Further Research

While it is relatively common for communication scholars to observe rhetorical moves such as the centering of particular parties’ needs or the characterization of outsiders, I recommend that communication scholars, and particularly scholars of religious communication, pay close attention to religious agenda setting, as I have described it in this study. Religious leaders and influencers have a distinct ability to set the priorities of religious communities through ongoing rhetorical construction of concepts such as “gospel”. How they choose to do so warrants attention and examination, as it has a particular power to maintain and build religious power.