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Plenty Good Room: Using Negro Spirituals To Bridge The Racial Divide, Darnell Allen St. Romain

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

In 2020, the United States experienced a global pandemic and the murder of Mr. George Floyd. With the murder of Floyd, many churches were confronted with the racial divide in the United States. This thesis is a response of one community, the Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Plano, Texas. Using the folk song of Black Americans, namely the Negro Spirituals, as the foundation of an ethical-theological framework, this thesis poses one way for addressing the anti-Black structure prevalent in the Catholic Church in the United States of America. This work progresses from despair to hope, addressing the link between …

Honoring The Spirit: A Model For Observing, Witnessing, And Celebrating Spirituality And Religion In Dance/Movement Therapy, Rebekah Brown

Dance/Movement Therapy Theses

Research has shown that people of color are less likely to seek out therapy for mental health care. Instead, they, specifically members of spiritual Black communities, have relied on turning to leaders in religious communities or spiritual practices. There is a stigma around mental health care amongst Black communities. These stigmas are deeply rooted in the racial disparities in the mental health field and the historical oppression of our spiritual practices or rituals throughout the African diaspora. My intention is to help bridge the gap between religious/spiritual Black communities and mental health care by offering a model for observing, witnessing, …

Can Anyone Withhold The Water...?, Brandon Keith Lacey Sr

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Abstract

Thesis

Contextualization and indigenization have always been necessary and expected components of establishing Christian communities of faith and practice. Failed or obsolete attempts at contextualization and indigenization in evangelism and missions continue to harm the development of the African American Church. This results in the development of spiritually marginalized communities alienated from the very relationship with God that such communities need. Preventing such spiritual marginalization in communities requires a training curriculum that combines a working theology on appropriate contextualization and indigenization with a framework for practical implementation. The outcome would decrease the tendency to replicate non-contextual religious practice and …

Life Beyond Bars: Nine Prisoners And Their Families, And Faith-Based Efforts To Recognize And Avoid-Cross-Generational Criminal Habits., Alfreda Reese

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The aim of this study is to examine prisoners’ firsthand experiences and their underlying family issues to bring awareness and delete current cross-generational criminal habits. Through analyzing a series of individual experiences and exploring underlying family issues, the study intends to bring awareness and exposure to the implications of the criminal justice system on prisoners and their families. This study will analyze personal stories of prisoners and their families to identify, interact, and intervene in best practices to avoid criminal habits. The research gathered aims to empower prisoners and their families in suggested ways to delete repeated criminal patterns and …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

"Stay Strong": Internalized Stigma, Religiosity And Black Mental Health In Colorado, Breigh Jones-Coplin

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

While the societal stigma on mental illness deters people from seeking mental health services, there is limited research on how Black personality and cultural practices may impact stigma and Black mental health (NAMI, 2020). In an attempt to identify protective and risk factors for internalized stigma and Black mental health, the present study examined 416 Black adults in Colorado and identified significant relationships between African Self-Consciousness, internalized stigma of mental illness, religiosity, and mental health functioning. Results showed that having a strong African-centered identity and religious grounding are associated with less internalized stigma and difficulty in functioning and mental health …

“From The House Come Everything”: Macler Shepard And Jeffvanderlou, Inc’S Effort To Rebuild A North St. Louis City Neighborhood, 1966-1978, Mark Loehrer

Theses

This thesis charts the course of the JeffVanderLou (JVL) organization between the pivotal years of 1966 to 1976, using the life of a man named Macler Shepard as the primary lens of exploration. Born in Marvell Arkansas, Macler Shepard followed in the footsteps of tens of thousands of other Southern migrants to cities like St. Louis, hoping to find a new life in the industrial North. However, no sooner had he settled in, he was displaced by the construction of Pruitt-Igoe, one of St. Louis’ first large-scale urban renewal programs. In response, Shepard became involved in neighborhood organizing, focusing on …

Understanding How Religious Practices Influence Self-Care In Black Churchgoers Diagnosed With Hypertension, Taquina C. Davis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Religion plays an essential role in managing health; however, there is limited research on religious practices among Black churchgoers diagnosed with hypertension. This research aims to understand how religious practices influence self-care in Black churchgoers diagnosed with hypertension. The sample consisted of 21 Black men and women, ages 29 to 70 years, with a clinical diagnosis of hypertension. Participants were recruited from two local, predominately Black churches in South Carolina and administered semistructured interviews to participants. A grounded theory design was used, and the data analysis consisted of constant comparison. Two core concepts were identified. One core concept identified was …

“Dialogical Offense:” A Postcolonial Womanist Deconstruction Of The Colonial Experience Of African American Women Through U.S. Institutional Apparatus Known As Criminal Justice Policy, April Michelle Woodson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Black female experience in the United States is a colonized existence. This project’s analysis is specific to the North American U.S. geographic space and is not a diasporic project. Black women suffered from the greatest increase in the percentage of inmates incarcerated for drug offenses in the 1980’s and 1990’s which is the period of criminal justice policy formation and implementation on which this project is focused.

This project is uniquely situated in the overlap between womanist ethics and postcolonial feminist imagination and extends scholarship in both discourses by showing that there is an interwoven line between the colonial-to-contemporary …

“Voodoo” In The Black Atlantic: Haiti And New Orleans Compared, 1791-1915, Susan L. Kwosek

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is a comparative study of religious development, resilience, and sustainability in Haiti and New Orleans between 1804 and 1915. In each location, a new religion developed from the spiritual practices of enslaved Africans: Haitian Vodou and New Orleanian Voodoo. This study asks key questions about religious development, resilience, and overall sustainability in the Black Atlantic. How did Haitian Vodou mature into a national religion and resist challenges to its legitimacy from Haitian elites and Euro-Americans throughout the Atlantic World? How were whites in the U.S. able to usurp the identity of New Orleanian ceremonial Voodoo and transform it …

Exorcising Power, John Jarzemsky

Theses and Dissertations

This paper theorizes that authors, in an act I have termed “literary exorcism,” project and expunge parts of their identities that are in conflict with the overriding political agenda of their texts, into the figure of the villain. Drawing upon theories of power put forth by Judith Butler, I argue that this sort of projection arises in reaction to dominant ideas and institutions, but that authors find ways to manipulate this process over time. By examining a broad cross-section of English-language literature over several centuries, this phenomenon and its evolution can be observed, as well as the means by which …

Spirituality Among African American Christian Women Who Have Contemplated, Marilyn Wiley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that African American women had the lowest recorded number of suicide completions among all ethnic and gender groups in the United States. In addition, the number of suicides among African American women continued to soar without a clear reason or understanding of their lowest completion rates. Further research in the area of spirituality among African American women may be critical in understanding why African American women's rates of completed suicides are statistically lower than other ethnic groups and how to prevent future rate increases. A phenomenological framework was used to examine the …

Southern Transfiguration: Competing Cultural Narratives Of (Ec)Centric Religion In The Works Of Faulkner, O’Connor, And Hurston, Craig D. Slaven

Theses and Dissertations--English

This project explores the ways in which key literary texts reproduce, undermine, or otherwise engage with cultural narratives of the so-called Bible Belt. Noting that the evangelicalism that dominated the South by the turn of the twentieth century was, for much of the antebellum period, a relatively marginal and sometimes subversive movement in a comparatively irreligious region, I argue that widely disseminated images and narratives instilled a false sense of nostalgia for an incomplete version of the South’s religious heritage. My introductory chapter demonstrates how the South’s commemorated “Old Time” religion was not especially old, and how this modernist construct …

African American Environmental Ethics: Black Intellectual Perspectives 1850-1965, Vanessa Fabien

Doctoral Dissertations

The historical scholarship in environmental history centers around the narratives of elite white men. Therefore, scholars such as William Cronon, Dorceta Taylor, Noël Sturgeon, and Carolyn Merchant are calling for research that uncovers the political and moral stances of people of color on nature, land ownership, and environmental pollution. This dissertation addresses this call by engaging William H. Sewell Jr.’s cross-disciplinary approach between history and the social sciences to introduce a nuanced historical analysis that interrogates the channels via which African Americans’ environmental ethic sculpted the development of North American environmental history and activism. This dissertation contends that African Americans …

An Exploration Of Worship Practices At An African American Church Of Christ, Lamont Ali Francies

Doctoral Dissertations

The identity of the African American Churches of Christ is deeply rooted in the American struggle for racial equality. Without a formal governing body, the Churches of Christ have survived throughout the majority of the 20th century without making an official stance on racial relations. Many leaders in the religious movement have claimed racial immunity but have not addressed the evident division among ethnic lines. This study explored the extent of cultural influence that Caucasian Churches of Christ have on African American congregations.

This study observed these influences and how they shape religious culture and tradition in Black churches. The …

Postcolonial Religion And Motherhood In The Novels By Louise Erdrich And Alice Walker, Kateryna Chornokur

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a comparative analysis of the works of the Native American author Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, Tracks) and the African American writer Alice Walker (The Color Purple). Originating from different cultural traditions, Native American and African American women writers address common themes in their novels because of their common colonial background. One of the main themes in their writings is that of religion. Despite becoming victims of Christianity used as a means of cultural colonization, both African American and Native American communities reinterpret it in terms of their traditional religious beliefs and create a new, unique hybridized form …