Homestyle Homilies? Use of Religious Rhetoric in Congressional E-newsletters

• In Event: Political Religious Elites and Religious Political Elites

Abstract

Political elites of both parties use religious language (“God talk”) in their public communications. Scholarship examines the use of this religious rhetoric by U.S. presidents, presidential candidates, interest groups, and, more recently, by members of Congress on Twitter (Bramlett and Burge 2021) and on their congressional websites (Gade et al. 2021). The effectiveness of these religious appeals varies by constituent characteristics as well as the characteristics of the political communicator. Congressional newsletters provide a way for members of Congress to communicate directly with their constituents. This article extends this research agenda by examining which members of Congress are more likely to use religious rhetoric in their official congressional communication with their constituents. To do so, I analyze a dataset of over 25,000 e-newsletters (i.e., DCinbox) sent from members of the 117th Congress.

Author

• Cammie Jo Bolin, SUNY, University at Albany