Východisko viery vo verejnom diskurze

Religious arguments are often used in public debates affecting morality. The author asks, if this starting point of faith is inevitable, and what effective communication forms of this kind should be like. The research questions she discusses, within the case study of the Slovak referendum about family, sparked a heated public debate. Working on her former analysis of topics and arguments in media discourse, she creates in-depth interviews with prominent journalists. She has identified two key argumentative foundations – the problem of naturalness and the rejection of manipulation – functioning as bases for absolutely different convictions. Their vector depends on personal religious faith, thus on accepting God´s authority. Believers find the abandonment of God´s plan extremely dangerous and non-believers do not sense any plan by God ergo any lapse from it, ergo any danger. The author demonstrates that it is impossible to skip the religious starting point in such situations. The way out of the seeming irreconcilability between faith and non-faith based convictions is in distinguishing the communication recipient: “hard” form for politically active opponents – and “soft” forms for more politically passive fellow citizens – are effective. To discover the appropriate soft communicative means (thus the means of new evangelization) seems to be the key challenge for current religious communicators.