Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Review Of Andrew Hadfield, John Donne: In The Shadow Of Religion, Brooke Conti

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Elizabeth Clarke And Robert W. Daniel, Eds., People And Piety: Protestant Devotional Identities In Early Modern England, Brooke Conti

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Embracing Immigrants Is A Religious Imperative, Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

I’m an English professor, and in leftist intellectual circles it’s often considered somewhat unsophisticated and definitely uncool to argue in favor of traditional religious beliefs. However, as the clerk of a tiny Quaker Meeting in a farming community in rural Pennsylvania, I feel led to do so in the context of the debate about immigration. I would submit that Scripture is explicit in its requirement that we accept and embrace the immigrants in our midst, and note that Leviticus (19:34) makes no mention of legal status. (excerpt)

The Bible And Creationism, Susan L. Trollinger, William Vance Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) marked a significant challenge to traditional understandings of the Bible and Christian theology. Darwin’s theory of organic evolution stood in sharp contrast with the Genesis account of creation, with its six days, separate creations of life forms, and special creation of human beings. More than this, Darwin’s ideas raised enormous theological questions about God’s role in creation (e.g., is there a role for God in organic evolution?) and about the nature of human beings (e.g., what does it mean to talk about original sin without a historic Adam and Eve?)

Of course, what really …

Response: Are American Christians Persecuted?, Susan L. Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

With an eye toward reuniting the church and the academy, this book focuses on the role that scholarship can play in making good preachers into really great preachers. This is the bridge between scholarly and popular writing that informs the sermon and makes it more powerful and meaningful for the people who regularly listen to sermons. Preachers are challenged to raise the level of their commitment to scholarship as well as overcome any pre-existing prejudices with scholarship. The preacher as scholar is the perfect way for the pulpit to respond to the challenges of a secular, post-modern world that often …

The Apple Among The Trees: To Abraham (Pbodmer 30) And The Apple At The Sacrifice Of Isaac, Kevin J. Kalish

English Faculty Publications

The poem from the Bodmer Papyrus (PBodmer 30) To Abraham contains a number of perplexing phrases and images—one in particular is the ambiguous word μῆλον, which appears in no other known text on the Sacrifice of Isaac. In this poem Abraham, in place of his son Isaac, chooses the μῆλον. I contribute to our understanding of how the poem works by demonstrating what μῆλον signifies in this context. I argue that the poem deliberately uses the ambiguous word μῆλον precisely because it can mean both sheep and apple. Moreover, when the apple is understood in the context of patristic interpretations …

Righting America At The Creation Museum, Susan L. Trollinger, William Vance Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

On May 28, 2007, the Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. Aimed at scientifically demonstrating that the universe was created less than ten thousand years ago by a Judeo-Christian god, the museum is hugely popular, attracting millions of visitors over the past eight years. Surrounded by themed topiary gardens and a petting zoo with camel rides, the site conjures up images of a religious Disneyland. Inside, visitors are met by dinosaurs at every turn and by a replica of the Garden of Eden that features the Tree of Life, the serpent, and Adam and Eve.

In Righting America at the …

Jesus Lives, But Should He Live In My Front Yard?, Christin N. Taylor

English Faculty Publications

As I drove home from church, I eyed the bright foam sign my 6-year-old daughter held. “Jesus is Alive” it read in kid scrawl. “We’re supposed to put them in our yards!” Noelle beamed, eyeing her creation proudly through pink-rimmed glasses.

I imagined our wide, open yard in Pennsylvania, the green grass stretching without fences from one neighbor to the next. Our best friends in the neighborhood, secular humanists, would easily see it. I cringed. What would they think? [excerpt]

The Heavenly Logic Of Proxy Baptism, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

By mid-eighteenth century, two religious titans of the Anglo-Saxon world, erstwhile allies, were at loggerheads over the question of just how many people were destined for an eternity in hell. George Whitefield attacked John Wesley in 1740 for asserting “God’s grace is free to all.” Wesley had agonized over “How uncomfortable a thought is this, that thousands and millions of men, without any preceding offence or fault of theirs were unchangeably doomed to everlasting burnings!” Some, like Francis Okely, simply abandoned the restrictive hell: “Neither doeth it damn any Man, that he hath not the Word of God, if it …

How Mormons Became American, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

A century ago, it was once a simple matter to assume a norm for American culture and situate the Mormon well outside it. Polygamy was likened to slavery in the nineteenth century (as the first Republican Party platform did in 1856). Brigham Young was compared to an Asian despot. Mormon women were victims in need of mythic frontier heroes like Captain Plum and Buffalo Bill to save them. Even Joseph Smith’s martyrdom could be seen as the penalty for his violation of the right to a free press. Mormonism made available to the playwrights of the Great American Saga the …

From Reading To Revering The Good Book, Or How The Word Became Fossil At The Creation Museum, Susan L. Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

Given the complexity of this sacred text and the intensity with which Protestants have sought to glean its truths from it, it is not surprising that Luther’s “dangerous idea” yielded countless splits, schisms, and sects. Whereas once there was the Church, Protestants dedication to reading the Scripture for themselves has brought an endless variety of theologies, practices, and fellowships with no end in sight. While every one of these groups claims (whether explicitly or implicitly) that they alone have the true word of God, none has been able to arrest the flow of interpretations. With everyone free to read the …

Book Review: Understanding The Book Of Mormon, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

With over 150 million copies in circulation, the Book of Mormon has yet to find its niche in historical, religious or literary studies. Largely ignored by scholars and berated by Evangelicals, the text may find a more successful path to a larger audience, hopes historian Grant Hardy, if historical and religious questions are bracketed in deference to the work’s surprisingly complex and interesting literary dimensions

Mormon Worship, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints*, (LDS), worship God, the eternal Father, and Jesus Christ.

LDS doctrine designates temples as the most sacred sites of worship, the believers' homes as the second most privileged spaces for devotional acts, and the chapels, or meetinghouses, as the third most important. A temple (more than 100 worldwide in 2000) is a holy place, a "house of the Lord."

Young, Brigham, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Upon Joseph Smith's murder in 1844, Young, as president of the Quoram of the Twelve Apostles, was recognized as the new leader by most members of the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Smith, Joseph, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

An influential 19th-c. US religious figure, Joseph Smith was a 14-year-old boy living in New York, when, by his own account, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him.

Mormon, Book Of, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

In 1830 Joseph Smith* published a book he claimed to have translated "by the gift and power of God" from ancient gold plates buried in a hillside in upstate New York. The book records the details of three ancient peoples who had inhabited the North American continent.

Latter-Day Saints, Church Of Jesus Christ Of, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerged in the 19th c. out of a Restoration* rather than a Reformation* ideology. Joseph Smith* organized the Latter-day Saints in Fayette, New York, in 1830, shortly after he produced the Book of Mormon* which, he claimed, he received from the angel Moroni and translated from an ancient record.

"Common Sense" Meets The Book Of Mormon, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Thomas O'Dea's opinion of the Book of Mormon's importance in Mormonism is evident in his choice to make it the first chapter following his introduction. He spends little more than a page summarizing the Book of Mormon before he immediately turns to the question that seems inevitably to impose itself at the forefront of so many Book of Mormon discussions: how do we explain its origin? Such a preoccupation does not self-evidently present itself; one would not expect to find, and in fact does not find, that accounts of the Qur'an, for instance, typically exhibit the felt burden of "explaining" …

Heritage Versus History: Amish Tourism In Two Ohio Towns, Susan L. Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

Judging from the relative number of tourists who visit these two sorts of towns, tourists appear to prefer views of the Amish that are provided by more rather than less touristy venues. In this essay, I compare the views of Amish offered by two towns in Ohio's Amish Country. One town, Walnut Creek, is very popular among tourists; the other town, Mount Hope, is significantly less popular. Ultimately, I argue that Mount Hope is less popular than Walnut Creek largely because its representation of the Amish constitutes the tourist in ways that are less reassuring for middle Americans. But before …

A Fresh Riff On J. Denny Weaver’S A-Theology Or Prolegomenon To A Stewardship Rhetoric, Susan L. Trollinger, Jason R. Moyer

English Faculty Publications

J. Denny Weaver's "theology" is irritating. Its style is impolite, its substance improper. Weaver writes, albeit in postmodern fashion, as one who speaks the truth. Although he recognizes that his truth is particular to an Anabaptist perspective, he also notes that every other truth-claim is similarly particular. However, while refusing to adopt common responses to this condition-polite tolerance, on the one hand, or self-righteous fundamentalism, on the other-Weaver nevertheless confesses that his truth has universal aspirations.

A Genealogy Of The Confession Of Faith In Mennonite Perspective, Susan L. Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

This essay offers a genealogy, in the Foucauldian sense, of the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective. Thus, it provides an account of the origins of the document and its uses over time with attention given to the politics of both. The essay argues that the Confession was critical for the merger of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church especially as it took on the function of the "teaching position" of the church. By way of a case study, the essay explores recent uses to which the Confession has been put. The essay concludes by …

Joseph Smith: Prophecy, Process, And Plentitude, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Joseph Smith was an explorer, a discoverer, and a revealer of past worlds. He described an ancient America replete with elaborate detail and daring specificity, rooted and grounded in what he claimed were concrete, palpable artifacts. He recuperated texts of Adam, Abraham, Enoch, and Moses to resurrect and reconstitute a series of past patriarchal ages, not as mere shadows and types of things to come, but as dispensations of gospel fullness equaling, and in some cases surpassing, present plenitude. And he revealed an infinitely receding premortal past—not of the largely mythic Platonic variety and not a mere Wordsworthian, sentimental intimation—but …

The Visible Church In A Visual Culture, Susan L. Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

We live in a visual culture. To say that is to say, in the most obvious sense, that we live in a culture that is saturated by images. They are everywhere. We see them in the expected places: on our television and computer screens, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, in our scrapbooks and photo albums, in picture frames and coffee table books. Increasingly, we see them in unexpected places. They show up on the floors of grocery stores, the backs of ATM receipts, the sides of tractor trailers and school buses, and even on the otherwise bare stomachs of …

Anabaptists And Postmodernity, Susan L. Trollinger, Gerald Biesecker-Mast

English Faculty Publications

The title of this book was intended simply to bring together two concerns: Anabaptist identity on the one hand and our postmodern cultural moment on the other. Thus the purpose of the book was to inquire about the relationship between the two. The aim was to seek answers to such questions as what it means to be an Anabaptist today, the extent to which postmodernity presents problems and possibilities for Anabaptists, and how Anabaptists ought to live out their faith in the contemporary context.

The Aporetic Witness, Susan L. Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

The opportunity that this shift from modernity to postmodernity may have opened for faith to speak to reason has not gone unnoticed by theologians. Indeed a number of what we might call poshnodern theologians have advocated various ways that Christians ought to wihless in their contemporary context. However, because these theologians have tended to mistake our postmodern world for a pluralistic world, they also have tended to write theologies that promote cultural security over faithful witness.

"Murder And Mystery Mormon Style": Violence As Mediation In American Popular Culture, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Terryl Givens's discussion of popular representations of Mormonism ("'Murder and Mystery Mormon Style': Violence and Mediation in American Popular Culture ) is a case in point, emphasizing the violence inherent in the acts of sociocultural and fictional mediation that have tried to contain the heretical challenge of Mormon theocracy. Mormonism has a complex cultural identity, as a religious group clearly outside the American mainstream and yet historically and ethnically American to the core. Nineteenth-century fictional representations of Mormonism tended to demonize the religion while at the same time deploring the violence of anti-Mormon bigotry; such representations mediated social violence …

Review Of A Critical Edition Of The Legend Of Mary Magdalena From Caxton's Golden Legende Of 1483, Gregory M. Sadlek

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.