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He will destroy death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces; Isaiah 25:8. Tweet by Sen. Marco Rubio (R) on October 1, 2019 at 6:40am
Sending the warmest birthday wishes to President Jimmy Carter on his 95th birthday. Your faith & dedication to Georgia never fail to inspire. Tweet by Rep. Lucy McBath (D) on October 1, 2019 at 12:52pm
Public officials often craft Twitter messages including religious language to communicate with constituents. The two examples above represent numerous instances of members of the U.S. Congress (MOCs) tweeting religious terms like God and faith. Members tweet these words to empathize during tragic events, honor religious holidays, and share their own religious identities with this social media platform. Given the increased role that social media plays in American electoral politics and the long history of politicians using religious language to unite and divide voters, we want to understand how, when, and which MOCs use religious language on Twitter.
Answering these questions is important work, given the centrality of religion to American political life. Because it includes the “contours of the very identity of the nation and its individual inhabitants and constituent communities of faith, religion deserves a place alongside race, gender, sexuality, class. disability, ethnicity, and other markers of identity in the United States” (Gutterman and Murphy 2015, 9). Americans understand religious identity individually and collectively, so MOCs can strategically activate these religious identities through carefully worded tweets to individuals and communities of faith. These tweets matter for representation as politicians appeal to broader and narrower constituencies, depending on the circumstance.
As MOCs increasingly turn to Twitter to communicate with their constituents and members of the media, we want to know more about their religious communication. Specifically, how, when, and which MOCs use religious language on Twitter? We expect that MOCs from both parties will tweet with a religious tone, at least occasionally. However, the use of religious language is likely part of a broader strategy for Republican MOCs. The media often reference “battles between Secular Democrats and religious Republicans,” and this rhetoric has consequences for the perceived God gap between political parties in the United States (Claassen 2015, 1). We also expect a gender effect for MOCs using religious...