The Religious Communication Association will sponsor multiple paper and panel sessions during the National Communication Association 2024 Annual Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana
Below are those paper sessions and panels.
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Culture, Media, and Music Influence Religious Communication for Greater Regard
This collection of individual papers reflects on the cultural influences of social media, music, and Christian slang in and on religion.
Friday, November 22, 2024
Communication for Greater Regard: the Complexities of Abuse, Grief, and Trauma in Religious Spaces
This collection of individual papers emphasizes trauma, grief, and suffering.
Creating Dwellings of Greater Regard: Critical Pedagogy and Religious Practice
In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed argues that the act of citation is one practice that can name and dismantle the way patriarchal whiteness haunts our educational institutions and practice, particularly through the act of refusing to cite only white men. She submits that citing feminists of color can be for us “the materials through which, from which, we create our dwellings” (16). Extending Ahmed’s metaphor, the participants in this roundtable describe examples of innovative critical teaching activities and readings, citation politics and practices, advice for graduate students, and suggestions for an Introduction to Religious Communication syllabus. Participants will take various approaches to the intersection of religious practice and critical pedagogy. For some, critical pedagogies function as forms of religious practice, grounded in religious traditions that animate a desire for ways white people, especially, can change and, thus, be helpful collaborators for co-creating dwellings of greater regard. Other members of the roundtable will come to the topic by way of critical pedagogy, analyzing what critical perspectives can bring to the study and life of religious practice and identity. In sum, the roundtable will offer practical ways religious scholars and scholars of religion can create dwellings of greater regard in the classroom and scholarship.
Decentering Preaching
This panel will examine ways that preaching discourse as practiced in religious communities today is (or should be) shifting from the established center(s) of focus. This includes both the shifting of focus to or from the event of the sermon itself or the shifting of focus from historically centered people, groups, and priorities within the sermon in certain communities to other groups/priorities.
While the event of the sermon is heavily featured in the worship rhythms of many religious communities, the relative degree of prominence (that is, “centering”) it receives varies. In some communities where the sermon once occupied the center of communal practice, its prominence diminishes in favor of other forms of worship practice. Even in religious communities where the sermon maintains a prominent role, there has been a reconsideration of whose needs and priorities should be centered in the discourse of the sermon. Each of the panelists selected for this panel brings scholarly expertise, either in particular types of religious communities or populations within those religious communities, and will discuss the nature of these shifts and their ongoing implications.
For many religiously practicing individuals, the idea of “religious communication” is most closely associated with the weekly event of the sermon. Therefore, shifts in the nature/priorities of the sermon can represent a significant shift in the very fabric of religious communication as they experience it. Understanding how the event of the sermon functions communicatively within the broader practice of religious life has never been a more important task.
Each scholar on the panel will briefly (approx. 6-8 minutes) share individually regarding the religious communities and/or the populations they research and the ways that the practice of the sermon is shifting to reflect changed priorities. The panel will then discuss questions from the Chair or from the floor regarding the shifting role/priorities of the sermon. Special attention will be paid to how the event of the sermon is shifting (or must shift, or should shift) to reflect Communication for Greater Regard.
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Living with “Greater Regard” at the Crossroads of Religious Communication and Communication Ethics
The 2024 NCA call for submissions prompts robust reflections on “greater regard” as a framework for how we study and enact communication. Clearly, the ethicality of communication is properly assumed for such a framework. With the sweep and scope of religious thought and discourse across time and place, both theology and philosophy are in the mix of ethical considerations for human communication. The notion of “greater regard” provides an opportunity to converse on the crossroads of religious communication and communication ethics.
The term “regard” can point toward various concepts that are articulated and applied for questions of ethics, including communication ethics, depending upon one’s viewpoint on the substance and practice of ethics. So, the idea of disposition could be relevant here. Or, as another example, one might emphasize attentiveness as a central theme. The use of terms of course goes to the bigger picture of the various ways in which folks approach ethicality (theoretically and practically). For example, drawing upon the Aristotelian legacy, discussions of virtue ethics continue to be relevant across academic disciplines. This is one major school of thought among other notable schools of thought on studying ethics and living ethically.
Conversations on approaches to ethics necessarily go to major questions that ground ethicality. What does it mean to be human? What is human nature? How do we think about context and circumstances for ethical deliberations? What role does culture play in how we think about and enact ethical decisions? Are there ethical principles that persist across time and place? These are the sorts of questions that are necessarily a part of and influential upon religious communication.
The legacy of religion, regardless of the moral failures of individuals, is a legacy of grappling with moral questions and providing moral answers. Religious communication significantly involves ethical guidance to both individuals and communities. Such guidance embraces suppositions that are theological and philosophical. Of course, with the rhetoric of religion, there is a strong range of considerations and disputations regarding both specific principles as such and the application of principles to contexts of ethical decision making. With an understanding that some ethical dilemmas are weighty and difficult, here we get into discussions of character and integrity and decency. Of course, people of differing religious viewpoints are going to be in conflict on the important ethical elements of human life.
Scholars and teachers of religious communication are situated well to contribute to the ethical dimensions of “greater regard” for how human beings live their lives. With variations in belief and approach, religious communication (including debate about religious matters) puts before audiences the issues that matter. For our time (globally, technologically, etc.), rhetorical reminders of “the issues that matter” are of high ethical significance.
Living with “greater regard” is a deeply ethical journey forward from where one is located at any given time. From a range of theological and philosophical perspectives, discussants will offer substantive insights on the crossroads of religious communication and communication ethics.