Reflecting on both religious and rhetorical articles of faith offers insight into my view of the world. While I am ultimately unable to answer whether or not my secular work is guided by my United Methodist faith, it is clear that my professional work in rhetorical theory and criticism is consistent with my religious theology. The intersection of my religious and rhetorical beliefs do lead to questions of power, knowledge, social activism, and message orientation that serve as sources of rhetorical invention for my work.

This essay makes the argument for the centrality of communication in studying and developing community. Following a discussion of general theoretical arguments affirming and advancing the case for communication's connection to community building, the essay moves to an examination of a specific type of community, communicative event: "civic communion." Civic communions are communicative and performative community events that function to draw people into a shared identity, shared visions of community, and codes of conduct. Civic communions are episodes of community interaction that function as rhetorical and performative civic sacraments bonding citizenry around the social and political structures of a specific locale. These powerful community moments offer community development practitioners a pragmatic and scholarly vehicle to assist and study the construction and maintenance of community.

This research examined the influence of negative political advertising frames on the thoughts and feelings people generate in response to campaign advertising. Preparing and conducting this investigation involved the use of a multiple-method strategy. Content analysis identified two advertising frames (i.e., candidate theme and ad hoc issue advertisements) and two experiments separately induced political cynicism and politician accountability. Three hundred and sixty people participated in the experimental studies, in which they read and responded, using a thought-listing technique, to candidate theme or ad hoc issue negative advertisements. Results demonstrated that participants were more likely to generate cynical comments and hold politicians accountable for the country's ills when reading candidate theme advertisements than ad hoc issue advertisements. The results indicate that this contributes to a political climate of cynicism and may function to erode the electorate's overall trust in government.

Using a sample of 99 political advertisements from 1990 statewide and federal elections, a content analysis was employed to test whether negative political advertisements exhibited a normative style. Results indicated that negative political advertisements were remarkably similar in substance and style, indicating a normative advertising form. The authors suggest that negative advertisements are used more to “blunt” an opponent's chance of winning the election than to promote the sponsoring candidate's own images or characteristics with their constituency.

As citizens in McPherson County, Kansas, engaged in strategic planning to position themselves economically for the future, they also worked to build community. Data were collected during seven months of strategic planning. Two visions of community emerged during the strategic planning sessions. One group of citizens articulated community as the entire county while another group constructed community as individual towns and population groups within the county. Ultimately, the county-wide view of community dominated the strategic planning discussions. Conclusions are offered to explain this outcome and implications are provided for community development.

This essay represents a cultural study of two counties in rural Kansas. Data were collected ethnographically from participant observation during strategic planning meetings and follow‐up field research over the course of three years. This essay argues that through the symbolic construction of place, the boundaries of this rural culture emerge. The physical locale, the local way of life, the socio/political order, and the rhetorical character of this culture are revealed by the interplay of the symbolic and material landscape. The strengths and weaknesses of this culture are examined. Conclusions regarding the connection of place to culture are discussed.

As social conditions change, a community's symbolism must likewise shift to account for that change within the central image of the culture. Mythic speech is one form of rhetoric which works to sustain a cultural persona in times of social evolution. National myths are regenerated during social change so that they sustain the ethos of a nation, yet evolve to encompass the changing social conditions. This essay explores the rhetorical process of mythic regeneration. The final years of the nineteenth century provide the moment of cultural upheaval, while Russell Conwell's “Acres of Diamonds” provides the mythic exemplar for rhetorical analysis.

An emerging area of communication study is the process by which women seeking elective office construct their political identity. This essay engages that literature examining the historic 1986 Nebraska gubernatorial race as a case study. Two interrelated findings emerged from the study including: (1) gender perceptions were a factor even in this “genderless” election, and (2) each candidate's political identity was constructed through the interaction of gender characteristics and candidate issue positions.