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The Perpetual Progression In The Schleswig-Holstein Duchy: History, Politics, And Religion, 1460-1864, Christian Anthony Ahlers

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

German nationalism in the Schleswig and Holstein duchies that predates the German Unification Wars of the Nineteenth Century continuously transformed in response to Danish encroachment, civic disputes regarding treaty legitimacy, and war. The Germans in the duchies fought to retain their ancestral homelands and, in doing so, embraced a pan-Germanic consciousness that is the foundation for early modern nationalism. This consciousness dates back hundreds of years. This case study examines the Germans of Schleswig and Holstein and their experiences with the consistent and pressing Danish encroachment. Despite the encroachment, the Germans remained connected with their culture, traditions, religion, and their …

The Troubles On The Brink Of Recurrence: Northern Ireland In A Post-Brexit World, Emma K. Bohner

Student Publications

The Troubles were a difficult and trying time for Northern Ireland beginning in the 1960s. The subsequent decades were filled with turmoil and violence, mainly centered in Belfast amongst the Protestant and Catholic groups. In 1998, peaceful means to ending the Troubles were accomplished through the Good Friday Agreement. The accord established peace primarily through implementing a new power sharing government, ending direct rule by the British, disarming the paramilitary groups and creating a soft border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The European Union was a critical asset in negotiating terms for peace. The aid of the European Union helped …

Keeping Faith: A Qualitative Study On Religiosity Among Young Catholics In Ireland, Michael A. Clements

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Ireland is a country that is well-known for its Catholic heritage. Despite its global perception as a Catholic country, the Emerald Isle has experienced rapid secularization within the last 30 years, during which rates of Church attendance and Catholic self-identification have fallen dramatically. Likewise, the legalization of abortion, gay marriage, and divorce, concepts contrary to Catholic teaching, further reflect the island's departure from Catholic Orthodoxy. Should the Catholic religion have a future in Ireland, it will lie in the hands of its devout youth: a demographic with relatively little representation in the literature.

Using a hybrid interview and survey format, …

Bernard Maclaverty: A Novelist With A Catholic Sensibiliy., Eamon Maher

Articles

Like many others I would imagine, my first introduction to the work of the Belfast writer Bernard MacLaverty (born in 1942) was through the successful film adaptations of his first novel, Lamb, with Liam Neeson in the main role, and the highly successful ‘Troubles’ film, Cal, based on the novel of the same name. Nominated for several prestigious literary awards, a member of Aosdána, author of numerous well-regarded novels and short story collections, MacLaverty is nevertheless largely neglected in terms of the critical attention he has attracted. The shining exceptions are the essay collection, About Bernard MacLaverty: New …

Pond, Noah Sherman, 1815-1892 (Sc 3203), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full text of letters (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3203. Four letters, 1836-1837, of Noah S. Pond to his sister and brother-in-law in Washington, Connecticut. Writing from New Design, Trigg County, Kentucky, where he is working as a peddler, Pond describes many aspects of life in frontier Kentucky: changeable weather, agricultural practices and prices, lay preaching, voting, and the lives of slaves, who he believes are well treated and better off than the poor in the North. He describes selling to a Dutchman who dislikes “Yankees,” notes recent political developments, and finds Kentucky …

Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part 2, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Throughout the bitterly cold month of January 1805, John Meacham (1770-1854), Issachar Bates (1758-1837), and Benjamin Youngs (1774- 1855), struggled through mud and ice, biting winds, blinding snow, and drenching rains, on a 1,200-mile “Long Walk” to the settlements of the trans-Appalachian West. Traveling south toward Cumberland Gap, the three Shaker missionaries from New Lebanon, New York, were tracking a strange new convulsive religious phenomenon that had gripped Scots-Irish Presbyterians during the frontier religious awakening known as the Great Revival (1799-1805). Observers called the puzzling somatic fits “the Jerks.” Ardent supporters of the revivals believed the jerks were a sign …

Mcreynolds, Benjamin, 1769-1845 (Mss 603), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scans of selected items (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Collection 603. Manuscript books of sermons, religious, medical and other writings created by Benjamin McReynolds, a Butler County, Kentucky Methodist minister. Includes family history and records of schools operated by McReynolds.

Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part I, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Reports of a bizarre new religious phenomenon made their way over the mountains from Tennessee during the summer and fall of 1804. For several years, readers in the eastern states had been eagerly consuming news of the Great Revival, the powerful succession of Presbyterian sacramental festivals and Methodist camp meetings that played a formative role in the development of the southern Bible Belt and the emergence of early American evangelicalism. Letters from the frontier frequently included vivid descriptions of the so-called “falling exercise,” in which the bodies of revival converts crumpled to the ground during powerful sermon performances on the …

Confronting Kenneth Burke's Anti-Semitism, Janice W. Fernheimer

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This fourth installment in a series exploring newly discovered manuscripts relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that drove Edwards from his Northampton pastorate presents an unpublished oppositional dissertation by Experience Mayhew, a prominent eighteenth-century Indian missionary from Martha’s Vineyard. Next to Solomon Stoddard, Mayhew was Edwards’s most important theological target during the conflict. Where Edwards pressed toward precision in defining the qualifications for admission to the Lord’s Supper, Mayhew remained convinced that the standards for membership in New England’s Congregational churches should encompass a broad range of knowledge and experience. His rejoinder to Edwards’s Humble Inquiry provides a rare opportunity to …

Techno-Apocalypse: Technology, Religion, And Ideology In Bryan Singer’S H+, Edward Brennan

Books/Book chapters

This essay critically analyses the digital series H+. In the near future, adults who can afford them, have replaced tablets and cell phones with nanotechnology implants. The H+ implant acts as a medical diagnostic and can overlay the user's senses with a computer interface. The apocalypse comes in the form of a computer virus which infects the H+ network and instantly kills one third of humanity. The series represents the anxiety and religiosity that surrounds the possible social consequences of digital technology. It also explores the tensions and intersections between technology and faith. This essay makes the case, however, that …

Faith In Our Fathers: Can You Believe In Fictional Priests?, Eamon Maher

Articles

I was struck recently by an article that appeared in the online section ofthe Irish Times (November 14th. 2015). Written by a priest called Martin Boland, the piece was prompted by the publication of a novel by John Boyne, A History of Loneliness, which has as its main protagonist Fr Odran Yates, who is forced to live in an Ireland where the priest is more likely to be viewed as a paedophile or pariah than as a respected member of society. Clearly a novelist as disaffected as Boyne admits to being with the Catholic Church, would find it hard to …

Catholic Sensibility In The Early Fiction Of Edna O'Brien, Eamon Maher

Articles

No abstract provided.

Albert Camus And The Dilemma Of The Absent God, Eamon Maher

Articles

The year 2013 marked the centenary of the birth of Albert Camus. In this article Eamon Maher considers Camus' writing on religion,focusing in particular on two novels, The Outsider and The Plaque. They offer a powerful analysis of the seeming absence of God from a world a suffering, a challenge for all who profess Christian belief.

Deciphering Irish Catholic Identities: Past And Present, Eamon Maher

Articles

This collection of essays, compiled and edited by Oliver Rafferty, is a significant contribution to making sense of the tangled labyrinth that is Irish Catholic identities. The plural is important here, as there are, in fact, multiple Catholic identities, something that is often forgotten in the rush to blandly link “Irish” and “Catholic”.

''They All Seem To Have Inherited The Horrible Ugliness And Sewer Filth Of Sex'' : Catholic Guilt In Selected Works By John Mcgahern (1934-2006), Eamon Maher

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Religious Landscape Of Walter Macken's Fictional Universe, Eamon Maher

Articles

Eamon Maher lectures in the Department of Humanities, Technological University Dublin. He is director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies.

Servant Leadership And African American Pastors, Clarence Bunch

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Robert Greenleaf (1977) took a follower’s, rather than a leader-centric, point of view of leadership by describing a leader as one who leads by serving. He identified a leader as one who sets other people’s needs above his or her own. He argued that motivation of leaders must begin with the conscious choice to serve others. Greenleaf’s concept provides the basis for a theoretical model of servant leadership. This dissertation examines the extent to which African American pastors exhibit servant leadership characteristics, using the Servant Leadership Questionnaire (Barbuto & Wheeler, 2006). A sample of 358 African American pastors from 11 …

The Newbury Prayer Bill Hoax: Devotion And Deception In New England's Era Of Great Awakenings, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

[...] [T]he “Tappin manuscript,” as I refer to it in the essay that follows, presents an intriguing puzzle. If Christopher Toppan did not compose the unusual prayer request, then who did? When? Why? Solving the riddle of the Tappin manuscript leads us into the troubled final years of one of New England’s most pugnacious ministers and the evangelical underworld of the Great Awakening that he had come to despise.

The Tractarians' Political Rhetoric, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This article examines the political speaking and writing of John Keble, John Henry Newman, and other leading figures of the Oxford Movement. It argues that while they were essentially conservative in the pulpit, where they spoke as official representatives of the Established Church, they were more critical and outspoken in other works, where they enjoyed more of the freedom afforded to private citizens.

Island Culture: The Role Of The Blasket Autobiographies In The Preservation Of A Traditional Way Of Life, Eamon Maher

Articles

The Blasket Islands, located off the west coast of Kerry, are remarkable for having inspired a flourishing literature, mainly autobiographical in nature, which is generally acknowledged as being of great anthropological value, as well as of significant literary merit. When one considers that the islands never had a population of more than around 160 persons (with an average of closer to half that number) during the years covered by the autobiographies, the existence of such an important chronicle of the simple and at times perilous life on these Atlantic outposts is all the more noteworthy. The language spoken on the …

Robert Boyle’S Religious Life, Attitudes, And Vocation, Edward B. Davis

Biology Educator Scholarship

Robert Boyle is an outstanding example of a Christian scientist whose faith interacted fundamentally with his science. His remarkable piety was the driving force behind his interest in science and his Christian character shaped the ways in which he conducted his scientific life. A deep love for scripture, coupled ironically with a lifelong struggle with religious doubt, led him to write several important books relating scientific and religious knowledge. Ultimately, he was attracted to the mechanical philosophy because he thought it was theologically superior to traditional Aristotelian natural philosophy: by denying the existence of a quasi-divine ‘Nature’ that functioned as …

"Free" Religion And "Captive" Schools: Protestants, Catholics, And Education, 1945-1965, Sarah Barringer Gordon

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Representations Of Catholicism In The Twentieth-Century Irish Novel, Eamon Maher

Books/Chapters

No abstract provided.

Mapping 'New' Geographies Of Religion: Politics And Poetics In Modernity, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article reviews geographical research on religion in the 1990s, and highlights work from neighbouring disciplines where relevant. Contrary to views that the field is incoherent, I suggest that much of the literature pays attention to several key themes, particularly, the politics and poetics of religious place, identity and community. I illustrate the key issues, arguments and conceptualizations in these areas, and suggest various ways forward. These 'new' geographies emphasize different sites of religious practice beyond the 'officially sacred'; different sensuous sacred geographies; different religions in different historical and place-specific contexts; different geographical scales of analysis; different constitutions of population …

A German View Of Irish Catholicism, Eamon Maher

Articles

Material reproduced by kind permission of Doctrine and Life

"By Reason Of Religious Training And Belief ... ": A History Of Conscientious Objection And Religion During The Vietnam War, Karl D. (Karl Dwight) Nelson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The United States has always provided for those who were conscientiously opposed to bearing arms in the military. Until 1940 conscientious objectors came predominately from the historic peace churches. Throughout the Vietnam War era the legal, political, and religious view of conscientious objection changed dramatically. Several Supreme Court decisions during the Vietnam conflict led to a substantial increase in the number of men classified as conscientious objectors with either a mainstream religious or secular background. In addition to the Court's re-interpretation of the conscientious objection qualifications, many mainstream religious groups actively endorsed conscientious objection, reflecting their members' growing disillusionment with …