The Technique of Religious Persuasion: Digital Media, Evangelicals, and Liturgical Design

Abstract

This dissertation examines the orchestrated use of hot and cool media in support of religious rhetoric by independent evangelical churches as part of an organizational template of persuasion and propaganda. Specifically, the dissertation focuses on how and why evangelicals use these media to amplify their rhetoric and how this rhetoric is strategically designed to align mass audiences with the linguistic terms of order of a specific value system that is said to facilitate their moral and spiritual salvation via the formation of a binding covenant. The dissertation also examines a rhetorical cycle of guilt and redemption employed by evangelicals to re-align mass individuals with these terms of order when they fail to honor or live up to them.

Accordingly, I argue that the operational template resulting from this persuasive combination of media and rhetoric indicates a consistent, pragmatic response by evangelicals to a series of unfavorable socio-technical conditions stemming from a technological society and, significantly, the influence of technique that diminishes the agency of mass individuals, causing them to withdraw their participation from civic organizations, including churches. I also argue that the organizational template and its principal components representing the evangelical response to these conditions are common across multiple evangelical organizations and transcend any major demographic differences between congregants, indicating the suitability of this template for mass persuasion in multiple contexts.

To complete this research project, I utilized a mixed-method ethnographic approach at four independent evangelical churches in the state of Texas. This methodology combined participant-observation, in-depth qualitative interviews with church pastors and staff, a visual-content analysis of photographs of church architecture and equipment, and the rhetorical analysis of a sample of sermon transcripts corresponding with dates and times of my field work. The major findings of this dissertation are that unsupported rhetoric is often ineffective at proselytizing groups of religious mass individuals and that effective religious persuasion requires the strategic orchestration of media to amplify this rhetoric and make it more appealing to mass audiences in multiple organizational contexts.