Rhetorics of Race and Religion on the Christian Right

Barack Obama and the War on Terror

Samuel P. Perry

As the first African American president, Barack Obama faced unique challenges and obstacles when addressing issues of race. While rhetorical attacks on the basis of race directed at Obama were not unexpected, many of the most consistent racially-motivated criticisms of Obama were associated with his religious identity. The Jeremiah Wright controversy gave way to the birther and ‘secret Muslim’ conspiracy theories, while anxieties about Obama’s identity proved particularly potent as modes of political attack in the context of the war on terror. This book examines the ways in which those attacks often originated in the rhetoric of the Christian Right and the ways in which these theories circulated amongst the Christian Right. Perry argues that the intersections of race and religion in American politics produced rhetoric that often caricatured Obama as un-American, anti-Christian, and an enemy of the state. By exploring the arguments used to cultivate these characterizations and tracing the roots of conspiracies that worked to delegitimize Obama’s religious identity through racial claims and stereotypes, a clearer picture emerges of what is at stake when people can no longer separate religious convictions from political arguments.

Lexington Books

Pages: 166 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9¼

978-1-4985-8673-3 • Hardback • November 2019 • $100.00 • (£77.00)

978-1-4985-8674-0 • eBook • November 2019 • $95.00 • (£73.00)

Series: Rhetoric, Race, and Religion

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies

Rhetorics of Race and Religion on the Christian Right

Barack Obama and the War on Terror

Hardback

eBook

Summary

As the first African American president, Barack Obama faced unique challenges and obstacles when addressing issues of race. While rhetorical attacks on the basis of race directed at Obama were not unexpected, many of the most consistent racially-motivated criticisms of Obama were associated with his religious identity. The Jeremiah Wright controversy gave way to the birther and ‘secret Muslim’ conspiracy theories, while anxieties about Obama’s identity proved particularly potent as modes of political attack in the context of the war on terror. This book examines the ways in which those attacks often originated in the rhetoric of the Christian Right and the ways in which these theories circulated amongst the Christian Right. Perry argues that the intersections of race and religion in American politics produced rhetoric that often caricatured Obama as un-American, anti-Christian, and an enemy of the state. By exploring the arguments used to cultivate these characterizations and tracing the roots of conspiracies that worked to delegitimize Obama’s religious identity through racial claims and stereotypes, a clearer picture emerges of what is at stake when people can no longer separate religious convictions from political arguments.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 166 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9¼

978-1-4985-8673-3 • Hardback • November 2019 • $100.00 • (£77.00)

978-1-4985-8674-0 • eBook • November 2019 • $95.00 • (£73.00)

Series: Rhetoric, Race, and Religion

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies

Author

Samuel P. Perry is associate professor at Baylor University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The GOP and the Christian Right

Chapter 1: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, Certitude and Aporias: We’re Ready to Believe You

Chapter 2: Imprecating Whiteness and Losing Black Religious Freedom: The Damned Road from Jeremiah Wright to Rick Warren in the Obama Campaign

Chapter 3: Amalekites and Birthrights: The Birther Conspiracy, Dominion Theology, and Othering Barack Obama

Chapter 4: The Holy Wars and the Crusade against Obama: Muslim Conspiracy Theories and the War on Terror

Conclusion: The 4 Horsemen and a turn to the Eschatological

Reviews

Fascinating and essential reading for anyone wanting to better understand the intersections of race, religion, and conservative politics in the contemporary United States. Samuel P. Perry’s careful analysis reconciles seemingly disparate conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama’s faith and birthplace by demonstrating them to be logical extensions of the dominion theology that predominates the Christian Right.
— Ryan McGeough, University of Northern Iowa

Through the discourse of the Christian Right, Samuel P. Perry illustrates the convergence of race, politics, and religion in American life. This text is essential reading for anyone interested in these constructs, individually or in combination.
— Michael S. Waltman, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This is an important and timely argument that critically deconstructs the ideological strategies of the far right wing of Christianity in the United States. Perry ultimately demonstrates how epideictic rhetoric dominates the discourses of the Christian Right, in effect displacing the possibilities for deliberation, conciliation, and political pluralism. His conclusions are chilling: The schisms in the contemporary political scene are, in part, symptomatic of the gravitational pull of far right Christian ideology on the GOP.
— A. Susan Owen, University of Puget Sound