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Roan, Alex, Paige Ravenscraft

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Alex Roan is a 42 year old trans masc individual who uses he/him pronouns. He was originally from Stoughton, Massachusetts where he grew up with his family before moving to Central Maine for college and living in the Portland area through adulthood. Alex shares his experience with growing up in a Catholic family and finding himself as a trans person in college. He details what it was like to come out to his family, who was in denial at first but later in life became his biggest supporters.

Alex Roan is the founder of MaineTransNet. This interview captures the story …

Michaud, Jim, Angelli Bishop

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Jim Michaud, (he/him), was born in 1964. Jim is a local Mainer, born and raised in Lewiston, Maine. He was born into a middle-class family with his siblings, was raised Catholic, and even attended Catholic school in his earlier years. Since the late eighties, Jim has identified as a gay man. He is a USM alumnus and attended the USM Gay Men's Alliance, which was his first ever encounter participating in an LGBTQ-organized environment. Being proactive in his political activism, Jim annually attends the Pride Parades in Boston, New York, and Maine. He stresses the importance of creating open space …

History’S Pathologists: Oswald Spengler, Jacques Barzun, John Lukacs And The Dying Of The West, Michael A. Flannery

UAB Libraries Professional Work

No abstract provided.

Geist, Dale, Abby Milewski

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Ever since his coming out in a Facebook post, Dale Geist has championed queer representation in one of the most conservative music genres. Country. He is the founder of the online blog called Country Queer, where his goal is to shine a light on LGBTQ+ country and Americana music artists. He talks about influential artists such as Bob Dylan, The Indigo Girls, Elton John, Brandie Carlile, and David Bowie. In this 50-minute interview, Geist covers many stories from his life, including discovering his sexuality, the importance of media representation, David Bowie’s positive influence on the bisexual community, and the cultural …

American Religion: A Study Of Religious Change From The 1920s Through 1970s, Alexander R. Marks-Katz

Masters Theses

Religion in America persisted along traditional Christian lines until the 1870s. It was then that theological liberalism gained significant headway. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era were still infused with revivals and preachers but there was a growing contingent that challenged the fundamentals of Christian belief. Sometimes this contingent supported revivals but promoted social causes and brought unorthodox biblical interpretations. At other times, they challenged traditional Christianity altogether. By the Great Depression, American culture had undergone such a tremendous amount of change that, faced with adversity, the bottom of religion fell out. Fewer people attended services and contributed funds. More …

Rewriting Eden With The Book Of Mormon: Joseph Smith And The Reception Of Genesis 1-6 In Early America, Colby Townsend

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The colonists living in the new United States after the American War for Independence were faced with the problem of forming new identities once they could no longer recognize themselves, collectively or individually, as subjects of Great Britain. After the French Revolution American politicians began to weed out the more radical political elements of the newly formed United States, particularly by painting one of the revolution’s biggest defenders, Thomas Paine, as unworthy of the attention he received during the American War for Independence, and fear ran throughout the states that an anarchic revolution like the French Revolution could bring the …

The Meaning Of The Civil War In Northern Religious Periodicals, 1865-1877, Jeffrey Mark Charles Joslin

Masters Theses

The American Civil War had a profound effect on the minds of religious northerners during the Reconstruction Era that followed the war. Through church periodicals, members of the Methodist, African Methodist Episcopal, and Seventh-day Adventist churches demonstrated and expounded the various meanings they understood the war to contain. This thesis examines each denomination‘s flagship newspaper in order to categorize, describe, and contextualize the major themes of meaning attributed to the war within each church. The major themes that emerge closely reflect each church‘s sense of identity and purpose, such as viewing the war as punishment from God, purification in creating …

God And Mr. Lincoln, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

On the day in April 1837 that Abraham Lincoln rode into Springfield, Illinois, to set himself up professionally as a lawyer, the American republic was awash in religion. Lincoln, however, was neither swimming nor even bobbing in its current. “This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business after all, at least it is so to me,” the uprooted state legislator and commercially bankrupt Lincoln wrote to Mary Owens on May 7th. “I am quite as lonesome here as [I] ever was anywhere in my life,” and in particular, “I’ve never been to church yet, nor probably shall …

Pezet, Antoinette, Emily Durgin

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Antoinette Pezet was born in New York April 23, 1937 as William Anthony Pezet. She recognized she was bisexual in her early teens. Her family was accepting of her sexuality very early on. Before enlisted in the military in her early twenties, she married her first wife, Helga. Due to mental health issues, Helga and Antoinette divorced. Antoinette then married her second wife, Emily, and went on to have two children.

It was not until Antoinette was divorced from Emily that she started dressing as a woman. In her early fifties she had a conversation with Jean Vermette that first …

Religious Dissent And The Aikin-Barbauld Circle 1740-1860: Book Review, Nigel Aston

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

There has been a remarkable rise of interest during the last decade in Anna Letitia Barbauld's (nee Aikin) significance in the formation of Romantic literature, and Religious Dissent and the Aikin-Barbauld Circle 1740-1860 places her appropriately within the thriving nexus of her intellectually creative Dissenting family. This volume of nine essays has its origins in a conference at Dr. Williams's library, currently the engine room of many initiatives into British dissenting history. The Aikins were a talented, hardworking, group of men and women down several generations, sparking off each other, inspired by their non -trinitarian Christian faith, and making complex …

John Adams And Unitarian Theology, Wesley Edward Farmer

Online Theses and Dissertations

This thesis looks at the religious beliefs of John Adams and argues that the proper definition of Adams's belief system should only be "Unitarianism." It goes through the basic history of Unitarianism and the religious context of the Founding Fathers, and it analyzes relevant historiography on Adams's theological system, arguing against terms such as "Christian Deist" and "Theistic Rationalist." Then, the thesis suggests possible applications for Adams's religion, particularly when considering his emphasis on the ethical Jesus in relation to his desire for a moral society brought about by religion. Adams's theology can be applied to political actions he took …

Roosevelt, Boy Scouts, And The Formation Of Muscular Christian Character, Gordon J. Christen

Religious Studies Honors Projects

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many prominent Christians and political leaders saw a degenerative influence in industrializing America. For them, urban culture had eroded gender roles, personal strength, and moral fiber. So-called “Muscular Christians” prescribed physical exertion and wilderness experience to cure these ills. I argue that these values were embodied in idealized characters such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jesus, and the Boy Scout to give a form to cultural remedies. In the process, they became the terms upon which proper Americanism, and proper Christianity, were constructed.

Non-Lutheran Denominations Among The Danish Immigrant Churches, Robert A (Bob) Olsen

The Bridge

The combined 2012 Issue (Volume 35) of "The Bridge" was a translation of Max Henius' "Den Danskfodte Amerikaner" (The Danish-Born American), published in 1912. It is a fascinating addition for the English speaking "Danes" dealing with many aspects of the lives of the approximately 300,000 Danish-born that emigrated to the United States in the years prior to that time. It discusses many aspects of Danish-American life at the time, ranging from schools, societies, the Danish press, old people's homes, organizations and churches. Unfortunately when it comes to schools, churches, and newspapers there is barely a mention of anything outside of …

The Sociology Of Harriet Martineau In Eastern Life, Present And Past: The Foundations Of The Islamic Sociology Of Religion, Deborah A. Ruigh

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This paper is a critical analysis of Harriet Martineau’s philosophical stance and epistemological modes, her systematic sociological methodology, her use of this methodology, and her sociology of religion. How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), and other relevant works will be used to examine Martineau’s evolving epistemological modes as well as her sociology of religion. How to Observe, Martineau’s treatise on systematic sociological methodology and cultural relativism, will serve as an exemplar for analysis of Martineau’s methodological practice as evidenced in Eastern Life. The research problem herein is three-fold: (1) to examine …

From Individual Salvation To Social Salvation: Why Evangelist B. Fay Mills Changed His Revival Message, Constance P. Murray

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Rev. B. Fay Mills was a popular, late nineteenth century Protestant evangelist whose fame approached that of the eminent Gospel preacher, Dwight L. Moody. Preaching to audiences in large urban settings, Mills’ revivals captured headlines and significant column space as he preached sermons of individual salvation from sin from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy. Yet, just as he was reaching the very top of the field of itinerant evangelists, he changed his message to reflect his growing interest in and association with the Social Gospel movement. This thesis investigates the reasons for his shift in theological viewpoint and public proclamations. …

Perguson, Dee Carl, Jr., 1921-2010 (Mss 8), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 8. Correspondence and diaries of Deel Carl Perguson, Jr., Horse Branch (Ohio County), Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington. Of interest are his letters written while serving in World War II in the United States, North Africa, and Italy, and his later memoirs of this period. Also of interest are diaries of his years as a student at Western Kentucky State Teachers College, 1939-1943. The collection also includes his recollections of growing up in Horse Branch in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Dissonant Bible Quotation: Political And Narrative Dissension In Gaskell's Mary Barton, Jon Singleton Ph.D.

English Faculty Research and Publications

Religious language exerted multivalent force in Victorian society, as this case study of Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton, Chartist political protest, and the weaponization of the Bible in contemporary social struggle makes clear. Scholars have established that different classes read the Bible differently; but I demonstrate how Gaskell makes the Bible read in several different ways for the same reader. Gaskell makes Bible quotations dissonant through her use of character and narration, in order to challenge the boundaries of readers’ political sympathies. This study shows how any religious utterance escapes the control and political interests of any class—and how its conflicting …

Edwards On The Will: A Century Of American Theological Debate, Allen C. Guelzo

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Jonathan Edwards towered over his contemporaries--a man over six feet tall and a figure of theological stature--but the reasons for his power have been a matter of dispute. Edwards on the Will offers a persuasive explanation. In 1753, after seven years of personal trials, which included dismissal from his Northampton church, Edwards submitted a treatise, Freedom of the Will, to Boston publishers. Its impact on Puritan society was profound. He had refused to be trapped either by a new Arminian scheme that seemed to make God impotent or by a Hobbesian natural determinism that made morality an illusion. He …

Emersonian Perfectionism: A Man Is A God In Ruins, Brad James Rowe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a great American literary figure that began his career as a minister at Boston’s Second Church. He discontinued his ministry to become an essayist and lecturer and continued as such for the remainder of his life. This thesis was written with the intent of demonstrating that, in spite of leaving the ministry, Emerson continued to be religious and a religionist throughout his life and that he promulgated a unique religion based upon the principle of self-reliance. At the heart of Emerson’s religion of self-reliance is the doctrine of perfectionism, the infinite capacity of individuals. This thesis …

A Queer Miracle In Georgia: The Origins Of Gay-Affirming Religion In The South, Jodie Talley

History Theses

The intersection of homosexuality and faith values, a very controversial topic in the United States, has generated both social accommodation as well as “culture war.” In the past forty years this nation has witnessed the establishment of predominantly gay congregations, gay “welcoming” and “affirming” mainstream congregations, as well as virulently anti-gay religious organizations. This study investigates the origins and evolving history of gay and gay-affirming religious traditions in America with an emphasis on Atlanta and Georgia. Primarily an oral history, this project draws from eighty-two interviews as well as primary and secondary documents to construct this history. Several conclusions unfold: …

Liberating Visions: Religion And The Challenge Of Change In Maine,1820 To The Present, University Of Southern Maine, Susie Boch, Joseph S. Wood, Maureen Elgersman Lee, Howard M. Solomon, Abraham J. Peck

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine, 1820 to the Present. Each of the Sampson Center’s three scholars has crafted an original essay related to one of the Sampson Center collections—African-American, Judaic, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender—thereby reflecting on how religious institutions have fostered minority identity and have framed social and cultural transformation.

Table of Contents:

Religion and Transformation (Joseph S. Wood, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs)

Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine Programming (Susie Bock, Director, Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and Head, USM Special Collections)

The African American …

The Way Of Improvement Leads Home: Philips Vickers Fithian’S Rural Enlightenment, John Fea

History Educator Scholarship

Offers a look at the life of Philip Vickers Fithian, a diarist from southern New Jersey, in an effort to assess the influence of the Enlightenment in the British American colonies. Profile of Fithian; His perception on personal morality and behavior; Political and social issues tackled in his journal; Efforts to reconcile the pursuit of Enlightenment self-improvement with passion and love for home.

A Sampler From The New Historical Atlas Of Maine: Religion In Maine, Burton Hatlen, Joshua M. Smith, Peter Lodge, Michael Hermann

Maine Policy Review

This article offers an example of work-in-progress on a significant project to develop an historical atlas of Maine. Although an article depicting religious settlement in Maine may seem far removed from the policy analyses typically featured in the journal, religious participation is a fundamental aspect of civic engagement in the United States. Thus, we feature here a glimpse of Maine’s religious heritage. We also present Maine Policy Review’s first full color pullout, which is intended to give readers a visual as well as textual portrait of religious settlement in the Kennebec Valley and Portland through the first half of …

"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 …

Religion At Bowdoin College: A History, Ernst Christian Helmreich

Bowdoin Histories

Religion at Bowdoin College: A History (1981), by Ernst Christian Helmreich, considers how people at Bowdoin have perceived religion, how they have felt religion should or should not be realized at the College, and how those views changed over the years.

The Social Views Of Dwight L. Moody And Their Relation To The Workingman Of 1860-1900, Myron Raymond Chartier

Fort Hays Studies Series

This evaluation is complicated for two basic reasons. The amount of subjectivity that enters into one's assessment always plagues any attempt on the part of the historian to be objective; however, it seems that religious phenomenon is even more difficult to evaluate honestly. This writer believes that he has no "axes to grind" in regard to Moody and the workingman. The record of history has been the primary interest.

Church History Vi: Suppression Of The English Monasteries, Earl Clement Davis

Education

This is from a collection of manuscripts—mostly class papers— written while Davis was a student at Harvard Divinity School, 1902-1904. This manuscript is clearly for the Church History VI class he took during the 1902-03 academic year.

A lengthy discussion of the suppression -- virtual elimination -- of the English monasteries during the Reign of Henry VIII. It concludes that this work was not done so much in support of religious progress, but in support of Henry's interests -- to divorce Catherine and to gain wealth and revenue. Includes a long bibliography.

The primary downloadable document contains the original document …

Report Of The First Annual Meeting, Held In Union Street Church, Bangor, Maine Unitarian Church Association

Maine History Documents

Report of the first annual meeting of the Unitarian Church Association of Maine, held in Union Street Church, Bangor, September 14 & 15, 1853.

Two Sermons Delivered In Wiscasset, (Pownalborough) On The 9th Of May, 1798, Alden Bradford

Maine History Documents

Full title: Two Sermons Delivered in Wiscasset, (Pownalborough) on the 9th of May, 1798, which the President of the United States had Previously Appointed to be Religiously Observed as a Day of Humiliation and Prayer throughout the Union.