Abstract

In “The Rhetoric of Religion” Kenneth Burke developed the concept of “logology” as a way of studying how religious language works, “not from the standpoint of their truth or falsity as statements about the supernatural, but purely for the light they throw upon the forms of language.” Burke’s dramatistic theory of rhetoric as symbolic action, based on his concepts of guilt, terministic screens, and identification through consubstantiality help us to understand how religious language is functioning in the political sphere.