Religious Communication Scholarship as “Going Nowhere Correctly”

Abstract

This article clarifies and extends “going nowhere correctly” (Arnett, 2010) as a metaphor for religious communication scholarship. The temporal context of “going nowhere correctly” is clarified by analyzing Augustine’s philosophy of time in Confessions. The existential conditions are clarified by analyzing the play Waiting for Godot. I propose that in practical religious discourse, “going nowhere correctly” implies a religious discourse of speaking while dwelling, which amounts to a form of epideictic rhetorical discourse. Further, I propose that a turn to this epideictic discourse remedies some problems in contemporary religious communication.