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Selected Works

2014

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

The Altar At Home: Sentimental Literature And Nineteenth-Century American Religion, Claudia Stokes Aug 2014

The Altar At Home: Sentimental Literature And Nineteenth-Century American Religion, Claudia Stokes

Claudia Stokes

Displays of devout religious faith are very much in evidence in nineteenth-century sentimental novels such as Uncle Tom's Cabin and Little Women, but the precise theological nature of this piety has been little examined. In the first dedicated study of the religious contents of sentimental literature, Claudia Stokes counters the long-standing characterization of sentimental piety as blandly nondescript and demonstrates that these works were in fact groundbreaking, assertive, and highly specific in their theological recommendations and endorsements. The Altar at Home explores the many religious contexts and contents of sentimental literature of the American nineteenth century, from the growth of …

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The Anomaly Of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries: A New Testament-Based Call For Christian Polygamy, Spencer L. Allen Apr 2014

The Anomaly Of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries: A New Testament-Based Call For Christian Polygamy, Spencer L. Allen

Spencer L Allen

Currently serving a 175-year prison sentence for transporting underage girls across state lines for sexual purposes, new religious movement leader Tony Alamo (b. 1934) of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries contends not only that Christian men should be polygamous but that they actually are commanded to be by Old Testament polygamy laws. Alamo bases this interpretation primarily upon Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5:17 that he came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. Numerous other New Testament passages regarding marriage and the law are likewise reinterpreted through a polygamous lens, and the Old Testament’s ‘‘Holy Men of God’’ (e.g., Abraham, Jacob …

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Money And Power In Religious Competition: A Critique Of The Religious Free Market, Jianlin Chen Jan 2014

Money And Power In Religious Competition: A Critique Of The Religious Free Market, Jianlin Chen

Jianlin Chen

Academics have frequently alluded to the normative value of the religious free market fostered by the twin legal guarantees of the free exercise of religion and the absence of state establishment of religion. This article challenges the idealized portrayal of a religion’s ‘flourish[ing] according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma’ and examines the dynamics of material wealth and political power in a religion’s success. This article suggests that controversial measures such as affirmative action for socio-economically disadvantaged religions and restrictions of religious involvement in politics are not necessarily incompatible with the religious free market.

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"Redeemed From The Curse Placed Upon Her": Dialogic Discourse On Eve In The Woman's Exponent, Boyd J. Petersen Dec 2013

"Redeemed From The Curse Placed Upon Her": Dialogic Discourse On Eve In The Woman's Exponent, Boyd J. Petersen

Boyd J Petersen

Some fifty years before Virginia Woolf published A Room of One's Own, many Mormon women not only had a room of their own, but they also had their own printing press, acting as proprietors, editors, and sub-editors. Within the pages of the Woman's Exponent, an independent Mormon periodical published between 1872 and 1914, Mormon women engaged in a spirited defense of two seemingly contradictory issues: women's suffrage and polygamy. Yet for these early Mormon suffragists, polygamy was a key to their liberation; and Eve, seen as the prototypical woman, was a central symbol in this debate. Despite the fact that …

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