Building Alliances or Rallying the Base: Civil Religious Rhetoric and the Modern Presidency

Making America Exceptional Again: Donald Trump's Traditionalist Jeremiad, Civil Religion, and the Politics of Resentment

“…But while Trump advocated policy positions popular among religious conservatives and selected Mike Pence as his running mate, his personal history and lack of familiarity with the Bible 36 limited his ability to talk about religion as authentically as other Republican (or Democratic) candidates, and may account for why this analysis failed to detect a significant relationship between one's religiosity or Christian affiliation and support for President Trump. On the other hand, given the positive relationship that religiosity and religious affiliation have with civil religious beliefs (Chapp 2012; Hickel 2019; and demonstrated in Appendix Table 2), it is possible that his traditionalist civil religious jeremiad similarly polarized the religious vote depending upon their prejudicial attitudes. In this context, it is worth noting the stark divide between liberal and conservative understandings of Christian beliefs and practices, which intertwine inextricably with partisan political leanings (although the causal direction of this relationship remains controversial; see Margolis 2018).…”

“…Within our unique module, a subset of participants ( n = 424) were asked to register their level of agreement 17 with a series of civil religious statements inspired by previous studies (Wimberley et al 1976; Christenson and Wimberly 1978; Chapp 2012; Hickel 2019) CRQ1—“The Founding Fathers instilled God-given values that have made America a great nation.” CRQ2—“America is God's chosen nation.” CRQ3—“America has a God-given responsibility to be an example of freedom and equality for all nations.” CRQ4—“Our nation will suffer if we abandon our founding principles.” …”

“…Many scholars have observed how Donald Trump's political rhetoric, with its refusal to offer even lip service to values like equality and liberty, represents a repudiation of the long tradition of ACR (Gorski 2017, Carlson 2018). However, such interpretations assume that there is a single way to employ civil religion, and downplay a rich history of contestation over such values (Hart 1977; Williams and Alexander 1994; Wuthnow 1988; Demerath and Williams 1985; Cristi 1997; Hickel 2019). We contend that Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric to “Make America Great Again” contains key elements of a traditionalist civil religious jeremiad, which “understands the past's value to lie in its concrete social practices, institutions, and traditions, and lament[s] the community's falling away from those practices” (Murphy 2009, 109), and aims to restore an American golden age by recreating past conditions.…”

“…Although much of the literature on ACR presents it as a consensual phenomenon with the potential to unify the country in times of trial (Bellah 1967; Adams 1987; Pierard and Linder 1988; Roof 2009), the meaning of these shared symbols has always been contested (Hart 1977; Demerath and Williams 1985; Wuthnow 1988; Williams and Alexander 1994; Cristi 1997; Hickel 2019). While the language of sacred American nationality and imperiled national promise offer powerful tools of legitimation that can influence electoral and policy preferences (Wimberley 1980; Wimberley and Christenson 1982; Chapp 2012), such beliefs are not inherently associated with particular ideological/partisan preferences.…”

Presidential Rhetoric in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era: Jokowi’s Aristotelian Rhetorical Leadership Models Before and After Implementation of Semi-Lock Down Policy

“…Within the last couple of decades, the presidency and presidential studies have been developed substantially. Such studies have been undertaken focusing on the presidential transitions (King & Riddlesperger Jr, 1995;Tenpas & Dickinson, 1997), leadership (Burnam, 2010), performance (Shaw, 1998;Gilbert, 2006), speeches and speechmaking (Eshbaugh-Soha, 2010;Eshbaugh-Soha & Miles, 2011), rhetoric (Hickel Jr, 2019), policy initiation and making (Ponder, 1996;Steger, 1997), accountability (Morris, 1986;Rockhman, 1986), agenda-setting capacity (Olds, 2013), power (Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake, 2004;Canes-Wrone, Howell and Lewis, 2008), approval and success (Edwards III, 1997;Lebo, 2008;Cohen, 2013), impeachment (Fried and Cole, 2004) and campaign expenditures (Nagler and Leighley, 1992). However, whilst investigations related with such issues have been conducted primarily within the specific context of the US politics, types of Aristotelian rhetorical leadership models advanced by the Indonesian president during the covid-19 pandemic era has beenunder researched.…”