Introduction

In this introduction, I set out to define the “rhetorical God gap” in America and explain why our knowledge thereof is still limited. After providing a quick, broad-brush review of the literature, I briefly introduce the corpus linguistic methods and corpora used in the present research and explain why the approach taken can help refine our understanding of the rhetorical God gap. In the remainder of this introduction, I define the specific aims of the book, outline its structure and provide a short summary for each chapter.