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"Maybe Jesus Was Suicidal Too": A Qualitative Inquiry Into Religion And Spirituality In Suicide Attempts, Elizabeth Ryan Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among the current trends in suicidology that hold promise for suicide prevention are a focus on new areas for empirical exploration and the employment of creative methodologies to ascertain these phenomena. One such area is religion, along with its more enigmatic counterpart, spirituality. Suicidological research has long demonstrated that people who are religiously involved tend to be more protected from suicide than those who are not, yet it has been less attentive to the conditions under which religion or spirituality fails to inhibit suicidality. In the decades since Durkheim's renowned 1897 study, the majority of the related research has taken …

"Revolution In Religious Language": The Relevance Of Julia Kristeva's Theory Of 'Signifiance' For Theology, Timothy O. Inman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation applies Julia Kristeva's theory of revolution in the practice of signifiance to religious discourse. In particular, it argues that the salient features of signifiance are present and active in religious speech as well as poetic language, the subject of Kristeva's doctoral thesis Revolution in Poetic Language. Signifiance describes the process in which meaning is produced in linguistic utterance, and its intentional practice is subversive not only in terms of language but culture in general.

Aztec Human Sacrifice As Entertainment? The Physio-Psycho-Social Rewards Of Aztec Sacrificial Celebrations, Linda Jane Hansen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human sacrifice in the sixteenth-century Aztec Empire, as recorded by Spanish chroniclers, was conducted on a large scale and was usually the climactic ritual act culminating elaborate multi-day festivals. Scholars have advanced a wide range of theories explaining the underlying motivations and purposes of these abundant and regulated ritual massacres. Recent scholarship on human sacrifice in ancient Mexico has observed far more complexity, nuance, and fluidity in the nature of these rituals than earlier mono-causal explanations. Several recent examinations have concentrated their analysis on the use of sacred space, architecture, movement, and embodiment in these festivals. As an extension of …

Honor, Shame, And Redemption: Explicating The American Evangelical Right's Moral Worldview Regarding Same-Sex Marriage And Abortion, Jeffrey B. Satterwhite

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of the New Religious Right in American politics, same-sex marriage and abortion emerged as the seminal political issues in a burgeoning culture wars narrative. While previous literature in the sociology of religion and political science fields has examined conservative evangelical political mobilization around these issues, this literature has not adequately considered the primacy of theology in determining these critical political commitments of the evangelical right. This dissertation utilizes aspects of James Wellman's concept of moral worldview, Ann Swidler's ideas on the cultural toolkit, and Christian Smith's subcultural identity theory to explore the formation of conservative …

The Negotiation Of Racial, Ethnic, And Religious Identification In American Heathenry, Thad Nathan Horrell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an investigation of religious, ethnic, and racial identification in the social "field" of Heathenry. Heathenry is a reconstructionist religious movement attempting to reconnect with or revive the pre-Christian traditions of the Germanic tribes of northern Europe. Often articulated as an "ethnic religion," Heathenry has also been frequently tied to white supremacist violence and hate crimes. Applying Anthony Wallace's model of revitalization movements, I attempt to make sense of what it is contemporary Heathens are trying to accomplish in today's society: What is it Heathens are trying to revitalize?

As a field of contestation over common-sense meanings …

Bible As Interface, Michael Paul Hemenway

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The book is undergoing a major technological transition as print wanes in its dominance and the internet and mobile devices transform our reading and writing technologies. With the entangled histories of bible and book, our emerging technological age and its transformation of the materiality of bible forces us to engage bible as something irreducible to a book. The connections between the major technological transition from roll to codex in antiquity and the contemporary move toward the internet and mobile technologies as reading platforms encourage us to consider bible as an interface that affords high surface area, collaboration, and anarchy. Building …