Constitutive rhetoric of secular identities: conversions away from

Abstract

There is a renewed exigence for scholars of rhetoric to examine how groups identify themselves by what they are not. I contend this exigence is present in deconversion narratives, narratives that articulate a loss of belief. I analyze two disparate conversion narratives in order to build upon Maurice Charland's theory of Constitutive Rhetoric. Books by Dan Barker, an ordained Christian Pastor, and William Lobdell, a journalist covering the religion beat serve as my texts. Barker's narrative serves as an example of a failed constitutive rhetoric, and I argue Barker's failures reemphasize the salience of Kenneth Burke's theory of identification to constitutive rhetoric. Barker's narrative serves as an example of a successful constitutive rhetoric, despite lacking Charland's ideological effects of constitutive rhetoric. I perform this analysis in order to give attention to a particular kind of identity constitution, one that is articulated primarily as a movement away from an ideology