Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Praising God Around The World: Christian Worship Music As An Individual And Collective Experience, Divya Putty

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The artists “Bethel” and “Hillsong” are frequently recognized by Christians living in America. But what about the names “Bridge Music India” or “Sinach”? These names would be most likely unknown in the states but celebrated in India and Nigeria. While each stems from vastly different cultural backgrounds, they all serve the purpose of creating a space for people to connect with God and each other through musical worship. Drawing on four different pieces of worship music and their use in live services, this article analyzes the effects of worship music, specifically their lyrical and musical content, on the individuals participating …

Faith Lived Out In Love For Community: A Review Of In Search Of Common Good, Justin Bailey

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Meador’s book is about the possibility of common life amid contemporary fragmentation."

Posting about the book In Search of Common Good from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/faith-lived-out-in-love-for-community-a-review-of-in-search-of-common-good/

Matriarchs And Martyrs: Women In Early Christian Apocrypha, Robert Wilf

Religious Studies Summer Fellows

"The Master Narrative of Christianity" as outlined by Karen King states that Jesus Christ passed down the one true gospel to his apostles who then spread it throughout the world among a sea of dissension. But exactly which texts contained the true gospel, and even who counted as an apostle, is far less cut and dried than the early church fathers would have you believe. In fact, many narratives involving powerful women preaching, baptizing, and facing down execution had been lost or purposely neglected from most canons. I looked at just a few of these works; The Gospel of Mary …

The Damned Neighbors Problem Rousseau’S Civil Religion Revisited, Micah Watson

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Near the conclusion of The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau starkly proclaims that no state has been founded without a religious basis, and thus if he is right, every political community must grapple with the tension between the conflicting claims of the divine and the mundane. Because Christianity cannot solve this tension, Rousseau calls for a new religion, a civil religion. Whereas most of the academic treatment of civil religion follows various paths beginning with Robert Bellah’s original 1967 article, this essay explores more deeply the contours of Rousseau’s original articulation of the problem to which civil religion is his proposed …

Endangered Danger: Christianity, Affect, And Harmless Snakes In Samoa, Ariel Abonizio G. S.

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Candoia bibroni (Pacific Boa), is a non-venomous Samoan snake that recently become an endangered species, possibly due to human killing on sight. This interdisciplinary research investigates how Pacific Boa came to be perceived as dangerous animals that need to be killed. Following snake tracks through the history of Samoa and into the present, this research suggests that the relationship between Samoans and the Pacific Boa questions the simple binaries of real/imagined, material/semiotic, subjective/objective, and material/immaterial. Particularly with the introduction of Christianity by missionaries in the early-1800s, the Pacific Boa snake came to inhabit the liminal space between these apparent …

An Alcohol Questionnaire And Referral Tool For Baptist Churches, Rita D. Moore

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Alcohol addiction is a pervasive ill within our society with detrimental bio-psycho-social outcomes. Unfortunately, the Baptist churches or more specifically those churches who are members of the Baptist General Association of Virginia (BGVA) are not immune to seeing the devastation of this disease, including the spiritual impact. Pastors may find themselves in the role of “first responder” unprepared to fully address this issue. This study explored, through a web-based questionnaire, how those churches associated with the BGVA are currently addressing alcoholism and if pastors would find a referral tool helpful to connect members with professional therapists. It is widely accepted …

TawḥĪDic Allah, The Trinity, And The Eschaton: A Comparative Analysis Of The Qualitative Nature Of The Afterlife In Islam And Christianity, Kevin M. Richard

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A theological doctrine of eternal life raises certain qualitative and existential questions. Considering the unfathomable duration, one may rightly ask, what will that experience be like and will it meet the experiential needs of human beings so that there are no intimations of boredom. Eternity, then, creates a potential existential problem for humanity. The problem is potential because eternity creates a certain need, a need which can concisely be stated in this way: quality must overcome quantity. Both Christianity and Islam teach human beings are intended to live forever so both religions must overcome this problem if eternal life within …

Getting Things Done For The Glory Of God, Todd W. Neller

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The seminar covered a fusion of David Allen’s Getting Things Done; Covey, Merrill and Merrill’s First Things First; and Matt Perman’s What’s Best Next books on time management, with a view to being a good steward of time and effort for the glory of God. More information is available at http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/resources/gtd/index.html

The Second Vatican Council (11 October 1962-8 December 1965): An Attempt At World Unification That Decided The Fate Of Catholic Birth Control, Enrique Torner

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

The Second Ecumenical Council, commonly abbreviated Vatican II, lasted from October 11, 1962 to December 8, 1965. The Council was not an ongoing event: it met in four ten-week periods that spread out over these three years. The idea for the council actually arose in the second week of January of 1959. According to David A. Yallop, it came up during a conversation between Pope John XXIII and his pro-secretary of state, Cardinal Domenico Tardini. The two of them were discussing world affairs: the implications of what Fidel Castro was doing to the Batista regime in Cuba; the state of …

Dimensionality And Factorial Invariance Of Religiosity Among Christians And The Religiously Unaffiliated: A Cross-Cultural Analysis Based On The International Social Survey Programme, Carlos Miguel Lemos, Ross Joseph Gore, Ivan Puga-Gonzalez, F. Leron Shults

VMASC Publications

We present a study of the dimensionality and factorial invariance of religiosity for 26 countries with a Christian heritage, based on the 1998 and 2008 rounds of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) Religion survey, using both exploratory and multi-group confirmatory factor analyses. The results of the exploratory factor analysis showed that three factors, common to Christian and religiously unaffiliated respondents, could be extracted from our initially selected items and suggested the testing of four different three-factor models using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. For the model with the best fit and measurement invariance properties, we labeled the three resulting factors …

Evangelical Faith And Culture In The Lives Of Vietnam’S Upland Hmong - 1987-2017, Jim Lewis

Biblical and Theological Studies Faculty Works

This paper centers on the contemporary conversion movement to Christianity among the Hmong of the Northern Mountainous Region (NMR). Taking place within the brief scope of only 30 years, religious change among the 1.2 million highland Hmong in Vietnam’s fourteen provinces has resulted in some 330,000 declaring they have exchanged many traditional beliefs for faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They have embraced substantially the same faith as the Tin Lanh Church, which first came to Vietnam in 1911, one of Vietnam’s six officially approved religions. It is reasonable to claim that a mass movement of this magnitude among a …

The Christian Bible And Tribalism (Or, How The God Of Israel Became The God Of The Gentiles And Some Implications For Today: Six Lectures) [Lecture Notes], Scott Gambrill Sinclair (Retired)

The Scott Sinclair Lecture Notes Collection

Lecture notes from Scott G. Sinclair

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 …

The Y-Factor: Christian Librarians Or Librarian Christians?, Jeffery S. Gates

Library Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.