International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 4, No. 14; December 2014 138 Mood and Modality in Christian Magazines: A Systemic Functional Analysis of Christian Women Mirror Bankole, Mercy Adenike Department of English College of Education, Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria & Ayoola, Moses Olusanya Department of English College of Education, Ikere-Ekiti Nigeria Abstract This study presents an exploration ofhow interpersonal relationships are created and the nature of propositions in religious articles. Some columns in six editions of a Christian magazine,“Christian women mirror ”were selected for analysis. The selected texts were broken down into clauses and analyzed for mood and modality within the frame work of Systemic Functional Grammar. The analysis reveals a mood structure that gives varying degrees of ‘propositions’ and ‘proposals’ that are capable of getting the readers persuaded. We concluded that the difference in the Lexico-grammar analysis and the Speech functions of the clauses are due to the need to get the readers persuaded about the Christian ideology. Introduction This paper is an investigation into the nature of propositions made in religious magazines from the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). Magazines and tracts are other means of preaching the gospel of Christ, in the modern day rather than the conventional church sermons. In fact, articles in magazines and tracts can simply be referred to as written sermons because they are written to get people persuaded about Christian life styles. Articles in Christian magazines, just like sermons are pervaded by some strong ideological features which are intended to influence the readers in order to get them convinced and persuaded about the subject matter of the articles. These ideologicalfeatures are inherent in the grammatical choices employed by the writers. Hence, it is worthwhile to carry out an analysis of the nature of propositions made by the writers to get the readers persuaded, from a grammatical point of view. This paper will carry out a Lexico-grammatical analysis of a column in The Christian Women Mirror Magazinewith the aim of identifying how interpersonal relationships are created between the writer and the readers as well as the nature and types of propositions made in the article and how committed is the writer to the propositions through the systems of mood and modality. Language of Religion The language of religion, which has been documented through the centuries, has its own historical development which has often been independent of the historical development of modern English. This is to explain that the language of religion has some peculiarities and characteristics, which makes it a register on its own. Crystal and Davy (1969:164) observed that there were lots of irregular verbs still in their old forms till the modern age. Examples are ‘spake’, ‘aileth’, ‘sayest’, speaketh’, etc in the use of pronouns, there are, thou, thine, thee, thyself, ye and the use of inflectional morphemes to indicate the third person singular where ‘s’ would have been appropriate in modern usage.These archaisms are what Lamidi (2004:198) refers to as Victorian (Shakepearean) English, which are considered archaic in modern English as also pointed out in Babatunde(2005), the use of archaic farms is not only aimed at provoking a string feeling of reverence for the Almighty God But also targeted at making the adherents of the religion in question realize the unchanging nature of God.