Faith in the White House: Examining the Language and Performance of Spiritual Leadership in the U.S. Presidency

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bridging scholarly perspectives across disciplines and within communication subfields on spirituality, civil religion, and storytelling in political discourse, I argue the U.S. president performs as a spiritual leader in ways scholars have generally overlooked – not necessarily by invoking a traditional ideology, but by summoning a moral language of solidarity through a compelling, unitary vision and uniquely “American” values. Drawing on a multimethod design combining a qualitative content analysis of six U.S. presidents’ speeches during times of crisis (N = 19) with survey data (N = 374), this research first assesses how modern presidents have employed a language of spiritual leadership over time and then examines public perceptions of these performances, exploring the roles of identity and partisanship in these perceptions. Results show the performativity of spiritual leadership may fail, to some extent, because of growing partisanship: In a “post-sorting” America with fewer cross-cutting identities, appeals to the “sacredness” of the presidency may no longer be able to take root. This research offers a framework for examining the language and performance of spiritual leadership in a variety of political and discursive contexts.