Spiritual Modalities

Spiritual Modalities, Volume 1, by William Fitzgerald, offers a bold recasting of prayer as a rhetorical art. This scholarly work investigates the specific situations, strategies, and performative modes of discourse directed toward divine audiences. By examining how prayer functions, the text explores characteristic acts and attitudes to advance an understanding of prayer as a fundamental expression of human rhetorical capacity. This analysis demonstrates how addressing the nonhuman engages basic capacities for communication and communion.

Published by Pennsylvania State University Press, this volume serves as a critical study of prayer through a secular idiom. The research draws on rhetorical theory, including the work of Kenneth Burke, alongside classical and contemporary perspectives on speech acts and performance. This multimodal approach spans various religious traditions and historical eras, covering both verbal and physical modes of address. It is a significant resource for those studying communication studies, rhetoric, religion, and theology.