Saturday, November 23, 2024
Time: 9:30am-10:45am
Place: Oak Alley – 4th Floor Sheraton
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.
Chair: Anthony Wachs, Duquesne University
Presenters:
Time: 11:00am-12:15pm
Place: Preservation Hall Studio 4/5 – 2nd Floor Marriott
The “… isms”: Conversations Continue
This collection of individual papers discusses Christian Nationalism, The Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and feminism.
Chair: Christopher House, Ithaca College
Time: 4:00pm-5:15pm
Place: Preservation Hall Studio 4/5 – 2nd Floor Marriott
RCA President’s Panel: Religious and Political Communication for Greater Regard Part Two
Religion and Politics: A Reflection on the 2024 Presidential Election
In this roundtable, panelists will discuss the role of religion in the 2024 Presidential Election.
Chair: Andre E. Johnson, University of Memphis
Panelists:
Jeff Miller, University of Memphis
Eugene Gibson, Methodist Theological School in Ohio
Celnisha Dangerfield, Transylvania University
Thomas Fuerst, Memphis Theological Seminary
Dianna Watkins Dickerson, University of Memphis
Andrea Terry, Sacramento State University
Earle Fisher, Eden Theological Seminary