Thou Shall Not Take the Name of Thy God in Vain: Washington Offices' Use of Religious Language to Shape Public and Political Agendas

Abstract

Advocacy groups' use of religious language can shape the public's political attitudes and can influence politicians' legislative behaviors, thereby potentially influencing both public and political agendas. However, most existing research on agendas does not examine advocacy groups' use of religious language, and the political scholarship that does consider religious language fails to examine its use across a variety of audiences. The current study fills these gaps by analyzing a myriad of written documents and the Web sites of 15 Washington offices, the advocacy arms of national religious bodies, to examine how they attempt to influence political and public agendas by using religious language to present their political positions to four different audiences. Results indicate that both institutional and theological religious themes are used by liberal and moderate, but not conservative offices to affect the political agenda, and all Washington offices primarily use theological religious themes to influence the public agenda.