Summary: Religious communication is commonly thought of as liturgy and worship, together with those regular activities of preaching and evangelising. All these forms of what might be called ‘sacred communication’ are accepted as bringing belief and moral life into being for adherents and so contribute strongly to the formation of member identity. This research, however, contends that ‘everyday’ messages, such as announcements, lists and newsletters, blend the sacred with the profane in such a way that they are a covert but potent force of identity formation. The coded messages prevalent in the quotidian material distributed by the church subtly assist in directing the lives of church members, along particular lines and for particular purposes. The covert nature of this identity construction reflects the assertion that the ‘major power of identification derives from situations in which it goes unnoticed’ (Burke, 1972, p. 28). To analyse the formal communication distributed by the church, this research amalgamated Cheney’s (1989) identification strategies with the critical discourse analysis approach offered by Fairclough (1992). This paper reflects upon research that was not only concerned with the communication processes involved in identity construction of the church members, but also the layers of motivation contained in the activity.
