Ph.D. graduate wins award for study on ‘Christianese’

Recent Liberty University Ph.D. in Communication graduate David Enns (’20, ’25) has earned the Student Article of the Year award from the Religious Communication Association for a paper on the idiosyncrasies of Christian jargon, which he developed alongside his broader doctoral research on the topic.

Growing up in the church, Enns said he was consistently intrigued by the prevalence of what he calls “Christianese,” the often-repeated words and phrases that have naturally become a part of the broader Christian culture, such as “hedge of protection,” “heart posture,” and “the 10/40 window.” His dissertation ultimately cataloged a wide range of Christianese headwords spanning direct biblical quotations, theological shorthand, and culturally crafted sayings.

In developing his dissertation, Enns analyzed the full Gather25 event — a massive 25-hour global Christian gathering held last February across seven international sites and an online livestream. He recorded the event’s recurring uses of jargon and compared them with recordings of other large-scale Christian events, like the crusades of Rev. Billy Graham and the gatherings during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s.

“With all that studying, I was able to identify a certain shared language that the presenters consistently used, the certain phrases that were emphasized over and over, and I wrote about the implied themes that emerged from that language,” he said. “It made for an exciting study and paper analyzing Christian communication styles.”

Enns received the award for his paper, “The Lexicon of Global Evangelicalism: A Discourse Analysis of Gather25,” at the RCA’s annual conference in New Orleans in November, where he also presented on his topic.

His Ph.D. studies have led to other endeavors. After discovering 566 headwords in his dissertation research. Enns recently signed a book contract with Taylor & Francis to produce “A Lexicon of Christianese,” which he said may become the first scholarly reference work on evangelical Christian slang. In March, he will record a TED Talk on what he calls “crisis clichés” — the lifeless default phrases used broadly in society, such as “thoughts and prayers,” “it is what it is,” and even the word “good.” He said he wants to challenge audiences to relearn how to speak as though they are “truly alive.”

Enns said submitting the paper opened his eyes to the career-building experiences of professional conferences.

“All of that came from my professor (Department of Strategic and Personal Communication chair Dr. Marie Mallory) encouraging me to try it and submit my work when I had no idea that that network existed,” he said. “Those events have changed my (perspective) and slingshot me in many ways. It’s been incredible and really inspiring, and I’d encourage other students to do it too.”

Enns is a worship pastor at GateWay Bible Church in Santa Cruz, Calif., and music has always been his passion. People may also know him as Dave the Horn Guy, appearing on “America’s Got Talent,” “The Tonight Show,” major sporting event halftime shows, and at corporate events.

But Enns also desired to explore his interests in other areas, so he said he enrolled with Liberty University Online Programs because of its reputation as a leader in online education. He first earned a master’s in Christian ministry from Liberty in 2020.

“I got to thinking long term, about other work and retirement and so on,” he said. “I’ve always been academically interested. I got a couple degrees in music after high school, which is how I got into music. As I thought about it, I realized I had a personal desire to see if I could do it, if I could take (education) to the next level.”

Enns said he appreciated how personable his professors were in the virtual format. He also valued the experience of a school-sponsored trip to Israel in 2019 with over 100 other Liberty students.

He said his time in Liberty’s Ph.D. program has influenced how he carries out his ministry in California, as he seeks to unpack and thoughtfully interpret the specialized Christian language continually being created by today’s worship songwriters.