Digital Commons Network^™

Beyond The Dichotomy: Six Religious Views Of Homosexuality, Dawne Moon

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Using published theological and scholarly evidence, this article disrupts the stereotypical “born gay”/“sinful choice” dichotomy widely assumed to characterize religious views of homosexuality in the United States. It argues that we need to keep moral questions separate from questions about the fixity or fluidity of sexual orientation. Rather than two, American Christian and Jewish views of homosexuality can been seen on a range from the “God Hates Fags” view through “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin,” “We Don’t Talk About That,” “They Can’t Help It,” “God’s Good Gift,” and a queer-theological view of the “Godly Calling.”

The Intersection Of Religion And Spirituality In Clinical Practice : Bridging The Gap Between Outpatient Therapy And Pastoral Counseling : A Project Based Upon An Investigation At Hartford Hospital, Institute Of Living Mental Health Center, Hartford, Connecticut, Susan A. Dimauro

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

The purpose of this study was to explore how the themes of religion and spirituality emerge in the clinical setting and how we can assess whether our current approach truly serves the needs of the clients. Recent literature has demonstrated an increasing exploration of these themes in research, while outcome analyses are slowly emerging. This suggests a tremendous opportunity to use scholarly work to bolster all working professionals in mental health who engage patients in discussions around potential religious or spiritual dimensions in their lives. Through the use of a focus group and two subsequent individual interviews, I wanted to …

Protective Factors For African American Suicide : A Theoretical Intersection Of Social Integration And Religious Coping, Shaunna T. Evans

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This theoretical investigation discusses how religion and spirituality protects African Americans from committing suicide. Because of the seemingly low rates within the community, suicide has not been afforded the attention it deserves in research. In addition, existing literature attributes this protection to religious and spiritual behaviors but often resorts to global indices (e.g., church attendance and prayer) as determinants. What is lacking in current research is an explanation of how African Americans use their faith to discourage suicidal behavior. Due to a steady increase in Black male suicides, it is imperative that those in academia and clinicians alike begin to …

Defending The Public Good And Traditional Society: Non-Scriptural Religious Objections To Same-Sex Marriage, Donald H. J. Hermann

Valparaiso University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Financial Power Of The Powerless: Socio-Economic Status And Interest Rates Under Partial Rule Of Law, Timur Karan, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

In advanced economies interest rates generally vary inversely with the borrower’s socio-economic status, because status tends to depend inversely on default risk. Both of these relationships depend critically on the impartiality of the law. Specifically, they require a lender to be able to sue a recalcitrant borrower in a sufficiently impartial court. Where the law is markedly biased in favor of elites, privileged socio-economic classes will pay a premium for capital. This is because they pose a greater risk to lenders who have limited means of punishing them. Developing the underlying theory, this paper also tests it through a data …

Linguistic Behavior And Religious Activity, Wendy Baker, David Bowie

Faculty Publications

Studies have found that Mormons and non-Mormons in Utah exhibit significant linguistic differences. We break this down further by investigating whether there are also differences between Mormons who actively participate in the religion and those who do not, and find significant differences with a medium or larger effect size between the groups for multiple variables. We conclude that when investigating the linguistic correlates of religious affiliation in a community, it is vital to elicit not just respondents’ religious affiliations, but also their level of participation within that religion.

A Decade's Legacy: Dashed Hopes For Gender Equality And The Status Of Afghan Women In Light Of The Ensuing Drawdown., Meredith B. English

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

This Comment addresses the legal structures which need to be supported in order to ensure substantial gender equality after allied forces withdraw from Afghanistan. After 2013, justice for abused women in Afghanistan stalled. Research suggests women’s rights and peace in Afghanistan are directly related. The presence of the Taliban and their restrictive rules has many Afghan women fearing for their lives and for the loss of decades of progress in the women’s rights movement. Leaders in Afghanistan must acquire a more liberal interpretation of Sharia law, while staying within the boundaries of the religious and ethnic traditions of the culture. …

Safety Over Semantics: The Case For Statutory Protection For Domestic Violence Asylum Applicants., Spencer Kyle

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Women and children make up the vast majority of the world’s refugee population. However, in the United States, the majority of successful applicants are men. Asylum seekers who assert claims of domestic violence are largely unsuccessful. The current immigration laws do not take gender into account when determining societal factors for obtaining asylum. People often misinterpret most foreign domestic violence allegations as differences of religion or cultural practices. Many believe domestic violence against women is solely a private issue and not the product of a political or social system designed to make women inferior to men. This dichotomy allows people …

What Makes A Man: Gender And Sexual Boundaries On Evangelical Christian Sexuality Websites, Kelsy Burke

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This article examines how some evangelical Christian men create alternative meanings associated with gender-deviant sex in order to justify it within an evangelical framework. The author shows how Christian sexuality website users construct gender omniscience—a spouse and God’s all-knowing certainty about one’s ‘‘true’’ gender identity—to reconcile men’s interests in non-normative sex with their status as Christian patriarchs. By constructing gender as relational and spiritual, they simultaneously normalize their behaviors while condemning others who participate in similar acts but fail to meet the requirements of gender omniscience. Challenging common assumptions about evangelical sexuality, this article offers insights into the intersection of …

Why Aren't More Heathens Eco-Pagan Vegetarians? The Intersection Of Gender, Politics, And Spiritual Environmentalism, Kristen An Horton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neo-Paganism, a nature-based new religious movement, provides a rich backdrop for the study of spiritual environmentalism. This ethnographic project analyzes the dynamic interconnectedness of neo-paganism and environmentalism, or "eco-paganism," and how Heathenry reframes the natural world using interpretations of Old Norse lore. A Heathen's connection to nature and how this connection is incorporated into his/her daily life supports the idea of environmentalism, yet their patriarchal and conservative political beliefs devalue environmentalism. My focus is on the feminization of the environment and vegetarianism to such a degree that Heathens view these movements as radicalized liberal tree hugging hobbies and how these …

With Xavier, However, There Will Be This Distinction: Mapping The Educational Philosophy Of Saint Katharine Drexel In The Intellectual Tradition Of Black Higher Education In New Orleans, Louisiana, Berlisha Roketa Morton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Historical studies on higher education often utilize traditional historical methods. This practice has produced a body of literature, both historical and contemporary, which has a particular focus on (a) the histories and mythologies of institutions, (b) the individuals who function within the system at the administrative or student levels, and (c) the individuals who have been excluded from the system. In this research, I connected the foundational histories of Southern University and Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana by telling institutional narratives through people instead of telling the narratives of people through institutions. Therefore, using Southern Womanism as a theoretical …

Forgiveness Of In-Group Offenders In Christian Congregations, Chelsea L. Greer, Everett L. Worthington, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Aubrey L. Gartner, David J. Jennings, Yin Lin, Caroline R. Lavelock, Todd W. Greer, Man Yee Ho

Psychology Publications

Religious communities, like other communities, are ripe for interpersonal offenses. We examined the degree to which group identification predicted forgiveness of an in-group offender. We examined the effects of a victim’s perception of his or her religious group identification as a state-specific personal variable on forgiveness by integrating Social Identity Theory into a model of Relational Spirituality (Davis, Hook, & Worthington, 2008) to help explain victim’s responses to transgressions within a religious context. Data were collected from members of Christian congregations from the mid-west region of the United States (Study 1, N = 63), and college students belonging to Christian …

Linguistic Behavior And Religious Activity, Wendy Baker-Smemoe, David Bowie

Faculty Publications

Studies have found that Mormons and non-Mormons in Utah exhibit significant linguistic differences. We break this down further by investigating whether there are also differences between Mormons who actively participate in the religion and those who do not, and find significant differences with a medium or larger effect size between the groups for multiple variables. We conclude that when investigating the linguistic correlates of religious affiliation in a community, it is vital to elicit not just respondents’ religious affiliations, but also their level of participation within that religion.

Religion, Heritage, And Power： Everyday Life In Contemporary China, Asan Xue

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Based on an ethnographic study of the religious life of ordinary people in the town of Dongpu, this research explores the relationships between: religion and state power; Chinese ritual (li, 礼/禮) tradition and Christian culture; and religion and intangible cultural heritage in contemporary China.

This research found that both the practitioners of Chinese rituals and the Christian community deploy tactics to resist and negotiate with the hegemonic official culture through spatial and religious practices in their everyday life. Chinese ritual practices dedicated to deities and ancestors are defined as idol worship in the doctrine of Christianity and denigrated …

Be Ye Fruitful And Multiply: Does Religious Activation Increase Reproductive Desire?, Erik M. Lund

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

While many norms sustain or destabilize certain religions, one domain is particularly relevant to the survival of some religions over others: norms about fertility and reproduction. Thus far, several ethnographic and correlational studies have found a positive association between religiosity and fertility rate, but there is a dearth of laboratory investigation utilizing experimental methods to isolate causation. In Study 1, I found that experimentally activating religious concepts led to an increased desire to have children (N = 462). In Study 2, the focal study, I attempted to replicate and extend the previous study by examining implicit behavior (N …

Cold Warriors In The Sunbelt: Southern Baptists And The Cold War, 1947-1989, Matthew J. Hall

Theses and Dissertations--History

Cold Warriors in the Sunbelt studies the ways in which the Cold War experience shaped the attitudes, values, and beliefs of white evangelicals in the South. It argues that for Southern Baptists in particular—the region’s most dominant religious majority—the Cold War provided a cohesive and unifying fabric that informed the world views Southern Baptists constructed, shaping how they interpreted everything from global communism, the black freedom movement, the Vietnam War, and controversies regarding the family and gender. This dissertation further contends that the Cold War experience, and the formative influence it had over several decades, laid the groundwork for the …

Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Schwarcz

Articles

Insurance companies are in the business of discrimination. Insurers attempt to segregate insureds into separate risk pools based on the differences in their risk profiles, first, so that different premiums can be charged to the different groups based on their differing risks and, second, to incentivize risk reduction by insureds. This is why we let insurers discriminate. There are limits, however, to the types of discrimination that are permissible for insurers. But what exactly are those limits and how are they justified? To answer these questions, this Article (a) articulates the leading fairness and efficiency arguments for and against limiting …

Rife With Latent Power: Exploring The Reach Of The Irs To Determine Tax-Exempt Status According To Public Policy Rationale In An Era Of Judicial Deference, Amy Moore

Amy L Moore

Using the case of Bob Jones University v. United States as a springboard, this article contends that the IRS has the legal authority to revoke the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt statuses of any institution that the IRS deems to be in violation of public policy. The first step to such an expansion might be to apply to private, religious universities that practice discrimination in areas other than race (e.g. gender and sexual orientation). This article traces the background and analysis of the Supreme Court decision in Bob Jones and how the Court left the door open for the IRS to make other …