Digital Commons Network^™

Can The Christian Churches Adjust Themselves To The Coming Age?, Earl Clement Davis

Sermons, 1905-1919

This manuscript has no explicit date. However the paper on which the manuscript is written is identical to paper used for manuscripts that can be dated to this period.

A concise statement of religion and science, the historical trajectory towards knowledge and democracy, and how the various Christian religions, including Unitarianism, fit within these.

The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription. The bottom of each item page also features the primary document as an embedded pdf for browsing.

Transcription by Davis Baird. Item description based off writing and context provided by Davis Baird.

What Think Ye Of Man?, Earl Clement Davis

Sermons, 1905-1919

A concise statement of the divinity of man -- that Christ was a man and divine, as all men are divine and that it is through experience that each person learns the value of life.

Date refers to Date Given and The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription.

The bottom of each item page also features the primary document as an embedded pdf for browsing.

Transcription by Davis Baird.Item description based off writing and context provided by Davis Baird.

Communion [Sermon Notes], Earl Clement Davis

Sermons, 1933-1953

For the years 1938 through 1947, Davis collected his sermon notes in more-or-less annual hand-bound booklets. Most of these booklets were well-ordered and inclusive of only sermons from one particular year. The exception was the booklet of sermon notes for 1941, which was out of chronological order, and included sermon notes from multiple other years, 1934 through 1945. In all, only 30 of the 41 sermon notes were from 1941. The notes transcribed here were found in that collection. Clearly marked “-2-” for the second page, this is all that was found. The first page is missing.

The primary downloadable …

Booklet Of Sermon Notes For 1942-1943, Earl Clement Davis

Sermons, 1933-1953

For the years 1938 through 1947 Davis collected his sermon notes in more-or-less annual hand-bound booklets. This Booklet contained sermons for two years, 1942 and 1943, 101 different sermon notes in total.

The transcription of these notes have been separated into two shorter—although still long—documents, the first with the notes for sermons given during 1942 and the second for notes given during 1943. The primary document available for download is the full scan of the booklet itself. Supplemental downloads include the two transcription files, and the two sermon list documents for 1942 and 1943, respectively.

Transcription by Davis Baird. Item …

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 …

Inactive Exercise & Unequal Protection: Espinoza & Carson Under The Equal Protection Clause, Griffith B. Bludworth

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Religion And Public Discourse: Principles And Guidelines For Religious Participants, 1998, Martin E. Marty, Larry Greenfield, David E. Guinn

Historical Documents - Combined

Park Ridge Center, Chicago, IL: A "Special Topics in Health and Faith" issue on religion and public discourse. Articles include:

• Religion and Public Discourse (Martin E. Marty) p. 3
• To Speak and Be Heard: Principles of Religious Civil Discourse (Martin E. Marty, Larry Greenfield, and David E. Guinn) p. 7
• Guidelines for Structuring Public Policy Discourse Involving Diverse People of Faith p.18
• Putting the Principles to Work (David E. Guinn) p. 21

Easter Sermon: A Carpenter In The Face Of Danger, Earl Clement Davis

Sermons, 1905-1919

This is from the bound collection—“bundle #5”—that includes sermons from January 2, 1910 to January 15, 1911.

A brief retelling of the last supper and Jesus' personal struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is a moment Davis revisits repeatedly throughout his life, stating it as a "sublime moment in the life of a man, sublime moment in the history of humanity." Davis is concerned that the conventional ceremony, "the Lord's Supper," does not do justice to the power of that moment in history.

Date refers to Date Given and The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by …

An Unknown Sacrifice, Earl Clement Davis

Education

A seemingly unfinished bit of story about a son leaving home.

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 undated and not obviously connected to any specific class.

The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription. The bottom of each item page also features the primary document as an embedded pdf for browsing.

Transcription by Davis Baird. Item description based off writing and context provided by Davis Baird.

The Center, 1987, V2 N1, January, Advocate Aurora Health

Historical Documents - Combined

The Park Ridge Center, Park Ridge, IL: Issue of the publication from the Park Ridge Center - An Institute for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics, associated with Lutheran General Hospital. This issue features articles on Chinese traditional medicine, medical ethics, Florence Nightingale, and psychiatry.

Grounds For Faith In Religious Liberty, Earl Clement Davis

Manuscripts, Undated

A page of notes on this topic. It contains this quote from poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge "He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or the Church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself

The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription. The bottom of each item page also features the primary document as an embedded pdf for browsing.

Transcription by Davis Baird. Item description based off writing and context provided by Davis Baird.

Outline Of Points On English Bible, Earl Clement Davis

Manuscripts, Undated

A list of key dates from early post-Christ times until William Tyndale's execution in 1536; "From that day to this it has been less dangerous to translate the Bible."

The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription. The bottom of each item page also features the primary document as an embedded pdf for browsing.

Transcription by Davis Baird. Item description based off writing and context provided by Davis Baird.

Notes On Mutual Aid: A Factor In Evolution, By P. Kropotkin, Earl Clement Davis

Manuscripts, Undated

Fairly extensive notes on Peter Kropotkin's 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, a seminal text which argues that communistic or socialistic organization as more natural for human society.

The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription. The bottom of each item page also features the primary document as an embedded pdf for browsing.

Transcription by Davis Baird. Item description based off writing and context provided by Davis Baird.

"Earl Davis -- An Example To His Fellow Men", Obituary, N/A

Funeral, 1953 and After

An obituary published for Earl Clement Davis, but the who and where is not known for sure. Textual evidence suggests it may come from Billerica, Massachusetts, where Earl got his first post-college job as Principal of the Howe School.

Item description based off writing and context provided by Davis Baird.

When Life Begins: A Case Study Of The Unitarian Universalism Faith And Its Potential To Combat Anti-Abortion Legislation, Jennifer O'Rourke

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

A New Note In Fiction, Earl Clement Davis

Manuscripts, 1933-1953

This writing is an analysis of fiction's role in showing the human struggle with the changing forces of history, particularly the move away from authoritarianism. Authors mentioned include, Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil, John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga, Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series, and Sinclair Lewis' Main Street and Babbitt.

While this manuscript does not have a date, the fact that it mentions Hervey Allen’s novel Anthony Adverse, published in 1933, and does not mention the award-winning movie of Anthony Adverse that premiered in 1936, …

The Next Step For Our Unitarian Churches, Earl Clement Davis

Manuscripts, 1933-1953

This was a talk that Earl Davis gave at a conference. We have yet to identify the conference or its exact date, but internal evidence – referencing the past “Hoover Administration” and the Roosevelt Administration “brain trust” -- suggests this was presented in 1934 or shortly thereafter.

This writing is a good representation of Davis' core views, drawing from the history of Congregationalism into a discussion of new problems. He ends with a a poem by Jean Untermeyer.

Date refers to Date Given

The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription. The bottom of each item …

Dorothy Wordsworth, Religion, And The Rydal Journals, Emily Stephens Kasper

Theses and Dissertations

Dorothy Wordsworth’s religious practices continued to evolve throughout her life. She was baptized Anglican, but after her mother’s death she resided with her mother’s cousin, where she practiced Unitarianism. When she later moved in with her uncle, she embraced evangelical Anglicanism. Records of her religious beliefs in her twenties are scarce, as after moving to Racedown with her brother William in 1795 and throughout her years living in Alfoxden, she rarely wrote of her involvement with organized religion. Only in the 1810s while at Grasmere did Dorothy Wordsworth begin to record a gradual return to church attendance. Concerning her religious …

Exploring Interfaith Sex Education, Bailey Lewis

Honors College

Sacred Sexuality explores the intersections of religion and sexuality. I worked with Dr. Birthisel, Director of the Wilson Center, and Kate Dawson, co-facilitator of the sex education class, to survey the sex education class participants on how the experience has been for them. I surveyed the sex education class participants after the class to analyze their opinions of the sex education class, interfaith dialogue, and how their spirituality or religious perspectives inform their beliefs around sexuality. Overall, the sex education class was highly recommended and gave an interesting look into how faith and sexuality interact. While the sex education class …

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.

Interfaith Communities: Relationships In Thirdspace, Jessica Spence Moss

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Contending with, and expanding the understanding of, diverse interfaith relationships, this project presents a nuanced awareness of interfaith action and the dialectic of lived religion with interfaith engagement. Arguing that interfaith is a type of thirdspace in which engagements have affective impacts on individuals within interfaith communities, as well as orientation towards religious communities. While there are common struggles, interpretations, and socializations that hinder the participation of women and non-binary individuals in institutional interfaith spaces, observing organic interfaith relationships as occurring in thirdspace allows for the recognition of radical inclusion and dedication to diversity.

Mysterizing Religion, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A mystery of faith is a truth of religion that escapes human understanding. The mysteries of religion are not truths that human beings happen not to know, or truths that they could know with sufficient study and application, but instead truths that they cannot know in the nature of things. In the Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul writes that as a Christian apostle, his holy office is to “bring to completion for you the word of God, the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.” Note that Paul does not say that his task is to make …

Investigating Relations Regarding The Religious Ought, Ideal, And Actual Self Using A Relational Density Theory Approach, Kam Barker

MSU Graduate Theses

Religiosity may produce positive outcomes (e.g., greater life satisfaction, hope, and optimism) or negative outcomes (e.g., psychological distress), especially if the individual’s identity is in conflict (Koenig, 2001). This distress, as explained by self-discrepancy theory, is caused by inconsistency between the self-concept (attributes the individual believes they currently possess) and the self-guides, consisting of the ‘ought’ self (attributes the individual believes they ought to -or should- possess) and the 'ideal' self (attributes the individual desires to possess) (Higgins, 1987). Exploring stimulus relations related to these ‘selves’ using a relational density framework (Belisle & Dixon, 2020) may provide insight regarding relational …

"This Whole Journey Was Sacred": Latter-Day Saint Parents' Process In Coming To Accept A Transgender Child, Julia Campbell Bernards

Theses and Dissertations

This grounded theory methodology (GTM) study examines the process of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in coming to accept a transgender or gender diverse (TGD) child. Data comes from interviews with 38 Latter-day Saint parents of TGD children and 130 Facebook posts from the same population. Data was analyzed using GTM in coding and theory construction. A model of Latter-day Saint parents' process in accepting a TGD child and the factors that impact that process is presented. The results indicate that coming to accept a TGD child tends to engage Latter-day Saint parents cognitively, emotionally, …

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 …

Hawthorne’S Human Nature And Sin: Criticisms Of Puritanism And Progressivism, Oscar Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

One of America’s greatest authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in a time of rapid scientific, material, and intellectual advancement. However, unlike many of his peers who went all-in on utopian reform movements, Hawthorne took a cautious and reserved approach to progress even though he supported the idea abstractly. Using six tales written acrossHawthorne’s career, this work will examine what each has to say about Hawthorne’s belief in human nature and why he takes such a skeptical position against movements aiming to fundamentally reshape people and society. The tales from the 1830s, “The Gentle Boy,” “Young Goodman Brown,” and “The Minister’s Black …

Is Protestantism In The Midst Of A Revolution?, Earl Clement Davis

Sermons, 1919-1924

A short but succinct statement of the Christian options -- Catholic, Evangelical, and Liberal -- and the stance of the Liberal option. Davis states that "The purpose of life is not primarily to secure salvation in the world to come, but to so live and so labor that this world may become better for coming generations."

The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription. The bottom of each item page also features the primary document as an embedded pdf for browsing.

Transcription by Davis Baird. Item description based off writing and context provided by Davis Baird.

Why Cardinal O'Connell Is Wrong! [Three Bound Bundle], Earl Clement Davis

Manuscripts

A long essay responding to a talk by Cardinal O'Connell of Boston. Unfortunately, we are unable to identify which talk Earl Davis is responding to. The piece is Davis' most complete argument against authority religion and in favor of democracy and freedom in religious considerations. He discusses previous failures in "infallible" religion, including Coperincus/Galileo, Darwin, and the morality of earning interest. He states that we will never outgrow religion, but we will outgrow certain religious institutions -- including, in Davis' view, all authority religions.

The primary downloadable document contains the original document followed by the transcription. The bottom of each …

The Bible As Literature [Three Bound Bundle], Earl Clement Davis

Manuscripts

Earl Davis surveys the Old Testament and discusses several kinds of literature to be found there. Including: Primative (Song of Deborah, Judges V; Song of Moses, Exodus 15); Folk legends or myths (Moses and the burning bush, Exodus 3:1-6; Jacob's Vision at Bethel, Genesis 28); Wisdom literature, proverbs (Folk song of good husbandry, Proverbs 27:23-27); Minor Prophets (The smiting prophet, Amos 8:4-14; The prophet of disciplined love, Hosea, 14); Poetry of Exile (Psalms 42,43,61,63,137-best); Psalms of Ascent; 120-134; Great Prophecy (Israel's destiny, Isaiah 52:13, 53:12); Lyric Poetry (Song of Songs); The Book of Job -- one of the great literary …