Communication in Religious Lobbying: Making Meaning, Creating Power

Huckins, Kyle

doi:10.1207/s15328415jmr0102_3

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(2 citation statements)

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“…There are rules governing acceptable language used in the political arena to which groups must adhere (Bailey, 2002;Hertzke, 1988;Moody, 2002;Wuthnow, 1994;Yamane, 2005), and these may vary slightly depending on political events. For example, Huckins (2002) analyzed the Christian Coalition's references to scripture and God on church-state separation between 1992 and 1996. He found fewer mentions of both in 1992 and 1996 compared to off-election years.…”

Section: Limitations and Suggestions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some scholars argue that conservatives use more secularized language, while liberal groups use more religious arguments (Bailey, 2002;Bates, 1995;Hertzke, 1988;Hofrenning, 1995;Hopson & Smith, 1999;Huckins, 2002;Moen, 1989Moen, , 1992Steensland, 2002;Yamane, 2000). Hofrenning (1995, p. 140) claims that "interestingly, the conservatives were more emphatic than liberals about the need to avoid religious language: : : : " However, many of these investigations include coalitions of conservatives, such as the Christian Coalition or National Association of Evangelicals.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Thou Shall Not Take the Name of Thy God in Vain: Washington Offices' Use of Religious Language to Shape Public and Political Agendas

Kraus

2009

Journal of Media and Religion

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Advocacy groups' use of religious language can shape the public's political attitudes and can influence politicians' legislative behaviors, thereby potentially influencing both public and political agendas. However, most existing research on agendas does not examine advocacy groups' use of religious language, and the political scholarship that does consider religious language fails to examine its use across a variety of audiences. The current study fills these gaps by analyzing a myriad of written documents and the Web sites of 15 Washington offices, the advocacy arms of national religious bodies, to examine how they attempt to influence political and public agendas by using religious language to present their political positions to four different audiences. Results indicate that both institutional and theological religious themes are used by liberal and moderate, but not conservative offices to affect the political agenda, and all Washington offices primarily use theological religious themes to influence the public agenda.The media, government, general public, and advocacy groups have their own separate agendas, and they use carefully chosen language to communicate their understanding of the world while attempting to influence one another. This makes language a critical means to power. The public gets its knowledge about officials, issues, and policies from communication. Thus, language shapes how people view politics and social matters (Corcoran, 1990;Edelman, 1988;Turow, 1992) and can shape and influence political policy and public agendas. As a result, officials are elected or defeated and laws are passed or blocked based on language (Corcoran

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Section: Limitations and Suggestions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%