Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Taking The Bang Out Of The Gang: The Impact Of Catholic Schools On Gang Homicides In El Salvador, Ann Jillian Villanueva Adona

Master's Theses

This study explores the impact of Catholic presence on homicide rates in El Salvador, specifically focusing on the role of Catholic schools in reducing violence in gang-afflicted municipalities. Analyzing municipality-level data from various years, I used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Instrumental Variable (IV) regressions to study the association between school enrollment and homicide rates. Results show that higher enrollment in Catholic schools is linked to a reduction in homicide rates in gang-affected areas, contrasting with an increase in homicides for non-religious schools. This research sheds light on the importance of investing in Catholic education as a strategy for violence …

Accounting For The Gift: Theology And Ethics In Accounting, Daniel Sebastian

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Accounting is often assumed to be a neutral presentation of the facts of economic activities and actions. Its double-entry system means that it is always in balance and comports to the rigor of mathematical formulas, and it is taken to be a matter of empirical counting that lends it certainty as well. The dissertation argues that this description of accounting is inadequate. Accounting is better seen as a political tool and technology for producing trust that can help resolve social conflicts. As such, accounting is not value-neutral but carries within it a particular sociality that has moral implications. These moral …

God Games: An Experimental Study Of Uncertainty, Superstition, And Cooperation, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Laurence R. Iannaccone

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This paper uses a novel lab experiment to test claims about the origins and functions of religion. We modify the standard public goods game, adding a computer-based agent that adjusts earnings in ways that might depend on players' contributions. Our treatments employ three different descriptions of the adjustment process that loosely correspond to monotheistic, atheistic, and agnostic interpretations of the computer's role. The adjustments neither mask players' contributions nor magnify their impact. Yet players in all three adjustment treatments contribute much more than those who play the standard public goods game. Players' contributions and survey responses show that adjustments induce …

The Search For Spices And Souls: Catholic Missions As Colonial State In The Philippines, Dean C. Dulay

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A growing literature posits that colonial Christian missions brought schooling to the colonies, improving human capital in ways that persist to this day. But in some places they did much more. This paper argues that colonial Catholic missions in the Philippines functioned as state-builders, establishing law and order and building fiscal and infrastructural capacities in territories they controlled. The mission-as-state was the result of a bargain between the Catholic missions and the Spanish colonial government: missionaries converted the population and engaged in state-building, whereas the colonial government reaped the benefits of state expansion while staying in the capital. Exposure to …

Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

Not even three decades removed from Francis Fukuyama’s post-Cold War proclamation of the “End of History,” the Western world is now undergoing a crisis of conscience – at the very least – with respect to both capitalism as an economic system and neoliberalism as its less-recognized but ever-present ideological foundation. The financial crisis of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession, the Occupy movement(s) of 2011, the 2016 challenge of self-styled Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and growing anxiety about the fate of the planet, particularly among the young, have opened up new avenues of critique, and brought …

[Introduction To] Religion And The Medieval And Early Modern Global Marketplace, Scott Oldenburg, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Bookshelf

Religion and the Medieval and Early Modern Global Marketplace brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to examine the intersection, conflict, and confluence of religion and the market before 1700.

Each chapter analyzes the unique interplay of faith and economy in a different locale: Syria, Ethiopia, France, Iceland, India, Peru, and beyond. In ten case studies, specialists of archaeology, art history, social and economic history, religious studies, and critical theory address issues of secularization, tolerance, colonialism, and race with a fresh focus. They chart the tensions between religious and economic thought in specific locales or texts, the complex ways …

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …

Dusty Shoes: Appalachia Wisdom Fertilizing The Future Of Religious Leadership, Jill Crainshaw

Journal of Appalachian Health

Dust from their journeys through the hills and hollows of Appalachia clings to their shoes and has forever shaped their vocational journeys. This is a refrain I have distilled from the reflections of students who have participated in Wake Forest University School of Divinity’s multicultural contexts course that includes a 10-day sojourn in the mountains of North Carolina.

Neighborliness: A Call To Racial And Socioeconomic Equity In Charlotte, North Carolina, David Daniel Docusen

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

In Mark 12:28-34, Jesus is challenged by an expert in religious law to identify the most important commandment. He replies that loving God and neighbors is the most important of the over six hundred commandments. This research project investigates how healing can come to communities that have been racially and socioeconomically divided when a spirit of biblical neighborliness is present. The ubiquity of this call to neighborliness throughout Scripture highlights the importance of this topic, but special emphasis is given to Mark 12:28-34 and Isaiah 58:1-14 in order to focus the effort and scope of this dissertation.

Chapter One surveys …

Consumer Capitalist Christmas: How Participation In Christmas Frames Us As Religious Subjects, Shelby Burroughs

Religion: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier every year. It starts with the music that plays on the radio, then retail stores begin to drape their shelves with red and green streamers, followed by Christmas movies running on every other channel. Every December, Christmas feels almost inescapable. The holiday manages to find its way into every facet of public life in the United States. Christians and non-Christians alike find themselves exchanging gifts with friends and loved ones on the 25th of December every year. Christmas is able to be so pervasive because of how unassuming it is. You participate in …

“But I Only Wanted Them To Conform”: A Detailed Look Into The Initial Cohort Of Girls At The Indiana Reformatory Institution For Women And Girls Between 1873 And 1884, Molly Whitted, Michelle Williams

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

For the past four years, as part of a group of currently and formerly incarcerated scholars, we have researched the “inmates” and staff at the Indiana Women’s Prison during the institution’s first decade. Then known as the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls, the facility was located near downtown Indianapolis on Randolph and Michigan Street. We focused on a key constituent of the Indiana Reformatory for Women and Girls: the girls themselves, heretofore voiceless and uninvestigated.

Our primary sources include the annual reports of the reformatory and the original registries for the girls during the survey period of 1873–1884. …

Forecasting Changes In Religiosity And Existential Security With An Agent-Based Model, Ross J. Gore, Carlos Lemos, F. Leron Shults, Wesley J. Wildman

VMASC Publications

We employ existing data sets and agent-based modeling to forecast changes in religiosity and existential security among a collective of individuals over time. Existential security reflects the extent of economic, socioeconomic and human development provided by society. Our model includes agents in social networks interacting with one another based on the education level of the agents, the religious practices of the agents, and each agent's existential security within their natural and social environments. The data used to inform the values and relationships among these variables is based on rigorous statistical analysis of the International Social Survey Programme Religion Module (ISSP) …

Review Of Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why The West Got Rich And The Middle East Did Not, Lynne P. Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Jared Rubin's Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not.

Compounding The Sacred And The Profane: How Economic Theory Brings New Insight To The Growth And Decline Of American Protestantism, Bretton Chad

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, economic theory and models will be used to analyze trends of religious growth and decline within the United States. These theories and models, such as Rational Choice Theory, will be applied in order to better understand and gain new insight into shifts and changes within the religious landscape of the United States. Recent trends of growth and decline within Protestantism, the most prominent Christian tradition in America, will be the focus of the investigation. As its main focus, this thesis will ultimately demonstrate that the trends of decline in the mainline Protestant tradition opposed to the trends …

Are Religion And Environmentalism Complements Or Substitutes?: A Club-Based Approach, Feler Bose, Timothy M. Komarek

Economics Faculty Publications

In this article, we analyze the causal link between membership in environmental groups and active participation and membership in religious groups. We use a club-based model and employ OLS and spatial econometrics with controls to test for whether membership and participation in a religious group is a substitute or complement for membership in environmental groups. Instrumental variables estimation was used as a robustness check. We found that religious participation and religious membership in evangelical groups are a substitute for environmental membership. Much of the work on environmental concerns has focused on answers to survey questions, not on membership. We used …

Using Census Bureau Data For Current And Historical Gis Research, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides examples of how geographic information system (GIS) data can be used to conduct historical and contemporary research using Census Bureau data and mapping and other resources. Such data and mapping can enhance understanding of historical and contemporary subjects in a multidisciplinary variety of topics.

Pompeii And The Vesuvian God, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

The paper argues the Vesuvian destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii in 79 AD engendered the formulation of the Anno Domini and the writing of scripture.

Household Allocation Of Time And Church Attendance, Corry Azzi, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper presents the first systematic attempt by economists to analyze the determinants of individuals' participation in religious activities. A multiperiod utility-maximizing model of household behavior is developed which includes among its implications the shape of a house-hold's life-cycle religious-participation profile and the division of religious participation between husband and wife. The theory is empirically tested using statewide church-membership data and survey data on individuals' frequency of church attendance. The paper concludes by discussing several extensions of the model which lead to additional potentially testable hypotheses.

Household Allocation Of Time And Religiosity: Replication And Extension, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Stephen Long and Russell Settle's (1977) empirical tests of the economic theory of religiosity presented by Corry Azzi and myself (1975) in this Journal tend to be less supportive of our theory than were our original results. As such, I welcome the opportunity to trot out some further replications and extensions that I have conducted and I leave it to the reader to judge the relative merits of the two new contributions.

Reading, Writing, And Religion: Institutions And Human Capital Formation, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We …

Institutions, The Rise Of Commerce And The Persistence Of Laws: Interest Restrictions In Islam And Christianity, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Why was economic development retarded in the Middle East relative to Western Europe, despite the Middle East being far ahead for centuries? A theoretical model inspired and substantiated by the history of interest restrictions suggests that this outcome emanates in part from the greater degree to which early Islamic political authorities derived legitimacy from religious authorities. This entailed a feedback mechanism in Europe in which the rise of commerce led to the relaxation of interest restrictions while also diminishing the Church's ability to legitimise political authorities. These interactions did not occur in the Islamic world despite equally amenable economic conditions.

Religious Groups & “Affluenza”: Further Exploration Of The Tv-Materialism Link, Mark D Harmon

School of Journalism and Electronic Media Publications and Other Works

The researcher explores whether previously noted links between television viewing and materialism also appear among those in religious communities. Secondary analyses were conducted using data from six previous studies: Mennonites, American Buddhists, North American Hispanic Youth in Seventh-Day Adventist Congregations, two studies of youth in various Protestant denominations, and a national youth study with an over-sample of parochial students. Across the six studies heavier TV viewing generally correlated with materialist values, especially the value of "making a lot of money" for the young. The results validate Georg Simmel’s observation that even those devoutly dedicated to salvation and the soul are …

Ua1b1/1 Rodes-Helm Lecture Series, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

These records were created by and about the Rodes-Helm Lecture Series which invited distinguished, and prominent individuals from the spheres of politics, economics, and the arts, to lecture at the university. The records include programs, and recordings of lectures.

September 11th, John Maynard Keynes, Kenneth J. Arrow, And Me: The Nexus, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins, Ph.D.

Law, Economics, And Religion, Vikas Kumar

Vikas Kumar

No abstract provided.

Judicial Martial Law - Appendix, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

No abstract provided.

Judicial Martial Law, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

No abstract provided.

The Genesis Creation Sequence: The Principles Of Social Choice Theory Impossibility-Resolution, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

The Genesis Creation Sequence is not about the creation of the physical world, per se. Rather, it is about the resolution of conflict in the philosophy of the human condition.

The Apostle Table - Part Iii - Incompetent Endogenous Response Intransitivity, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

The Apostle Table illustrates a New Testament encryption scheme revealed in the Book of Matthew. Specifically, the list of the twelve apostles in Matthew, 10:1-4, points to the Matthew, Chapters 8 and 9, disciple characterizations. The disciples metaphorically characterize the social choice theory aspect of the scripture writers' (ordered relations theory: social choice theory: welfare model) regression. The paper is written in two parts: I. The Exogenous Pressures; and, II. The Endogenous Response. Interestingly, the paper explains why the crucified Jesus could not get off the cross.

"Free" Religion And "Captive" Schools: Protestants, Catholics, And Education, 1945-1965, Sarah Barringer Gordon

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.