The anti‐humanist rhetoric of the new religious right
- 1 December 1984
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Southern Speech Communication Journal
- Vol. 49 (4) , 339-360
- https://doi.org/10.1080/10417948409372611
Abstract
The new religious right has devised a rhetoric which holds humanists responsible for all political and social evil. It portrays humanism as a vast conspiracy affecting every aspect of society, from education to international relations, while it depicts humanists as the very incarnations of evil. According to its opponents, humanism is not merely an educational tradition or a philosophy, but a quasi‐religion whose purpose is to disestablish Christianity and destroy traditional morality. This essay considers how the religious right's rhetoric transvalues humanism and scapegoats humanists.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- The rhetoric of the moral majority: An analysis of romantic formQuarterly Journal of Speech, 1983
- The Hofstadter hypothesis revisited: The nature of evidence in politically “paranoid” discourseSouthern Speech Communication Journal, 1977
- A Grammar of MotivesPublished by University of California Press ,1969