Inside Evangelicalism

In this book, Mark Ward Sr. draws on a combination of ethnographic, autoethnographic, and sociolinguistic research to identify and analyze white evangelicals' distinctive speech code from a perspective rooted deeply in both communication studies and the evangelical community. Ward posits that the Bible, positioned as the one dominant symbol that unifies all meaning, leads to the widespread adoption of the language of literalism driving evangelical identity, patriarchy, anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, and Christian nationalism. This, he argues, divides the world into a cosmic war between secular humanism and an all-encompassing "biblical worldview." Ward's positionality as both an ethnographer of religious communication who has observed white evangelical culture for two decades and also as a self-identified evangelical for four decades makes him uniquely qualified to casting an insider's critical yet balanced eye on conservative white Christian culture. This book will complement existing scholarship within anthropology and sociology-where evangelicalism has been studied in conjunction with the rise of the Religious Right-and will contribute unique insights from the religious communication subdiscipline.