Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Plenty Good Room: Using Negro Spirituals To Bridge The Racial Divide, Darnell Allen St. Romain

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

In 2020, the United States experienced a global pandemic and the murder of Mr. George Floyd. With the murder of Floyd, many churches were confronted with the racial divide in the United States. This thesis is a response of one community, the Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Plano, Texas. Using the folk song of Black Americans, namely the Negro Spirituals, as the foundation of an ethical-theological framework, this thesis poses one way for addressing the anti-Black structure prevalent in the Catholic Church in the United States of America. This work progresses from despair to hope, addressing the link between …

Frozen Ii And Girls’ Spiritual Formation: How The Music Of An Animated Musical Resonates With Girls And Women, Cristen Mitchell

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

Frozen II (2019) is a popular Disney animated movie for children and depicts striking spiritual elements while weaving in feminist practices such as justice and equity, and feminist theology through representations of female spirits and connection to the earth. Through this movie, its themes, and the historical exclusion of women in the church, this thesis seeks to show that representation of women in the divine is an important, and necessary part of the spiritual and psychological development of girls and women. The methods of this thesis include exploring the following synchronicities:

1. Parallels between feminist issues in the church and Walt …

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Journey With A Purpose, Walter Prescher

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The modern church is in bondage from years of trauma rooted in the Post-Christendom decline. As the church has responded to the trauma it is enduring, it has responded by becoming stagnant as it seeks to maintain any relevance it still has. What the modern church is going through has strong parallels with the Hebrew people who were in bondage in Egypt and were delivered through the wilderness into the promised land of Canaan. Following this example, this dissertation walks church leadership through an understanding of the traumatized church and presents a what a modern-day Exodus journey could look like …

Monetary Muddles: Money And Language, Ethics And Theology, Tyler Womack

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers a theological critique of political economy by turning to Wittgenstein in order to re-think what “criticism” is and can be. It diagnoses the current state of critical discourse about money as incapable of properly dealing with the confusions or illusions such criticism identifies as intrinsic to our ways with money and economic production and exchange. The dissertation argues that while political economic critiques and heterodox theories of money rightly challenge the economic orthodoxy’s individualism and its illusions of an apolitical money and an autonomous market economy, these “social” critiques are caught in a Geltungslogik that dichotomizes “value” …

Can Anyone Withhold The Water...?, Brandon Keith Lacey Sr

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Abstract

Thesis

Contextualization and indigenization have always been necessary and expected components of establishing Christian communities of faith and practice. Failed or obsolete attempts at contextualization and indigenization in evangelism and missions continue to harm the development of the African American Church. This results in the development of spiritually marginalized communities alienated from the very relationship with God that such communities need. Preventing such spiritual marginalization in communities requires a training curriculum that combines a working theology on appropriate contextualization and indigenization with a framework for practical implementation. The outcome would decrease the tendency to replicate non-contextual religious practice and …

Noted With Honor: Intersections Between Theology, Music Therapy, Psychotherapy, And Original Music Compositions For Hospice Patients, Stanton Nelson

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

This thesis investigates the intersections between theology, music therapy, and psychotherapy when creating a music composition that honors a hospice patient’s walk of faith. A pioneer organization inspiring this thesis is Swan Songs in Austin, Texas, where musical moments are created for the patient and family. However, its model is primarily based on collating previously composed pieces for recitals without a personalized honoring of the patient’s witness of faith. Noted with Honor is an emerging non-profit organization that creates an original work that reflects upon the testimony of the patient and forms a new narrative towards the end of one’s …

Finding Wonder, Love, And Praise: Weaving The Threads Of Wesleyan And Methodist Theology And History Into A Twenty-First Century Worship Tapestry, Dirk Damonte

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

The United Methodist Church has seen a decline in membership for many decades. Accompanying this numeric decline has been a decline in the vitality of worship in many churches. This denomination traces its roots to a renewal movement in the Church of England, led by John and Charles Wesley, which spread across the Atlantic and took hold in the American colonies, where it soon became a separate church. This new church was characterized by lively and Spirit-filled worship and exponential growth. This thesis explores and analyzes the theology of the Wesley brothers and the Wesleyan movement, the history of that …

The Modern Wesley Class Meeting - Bringing Accountability, Practical Faith, And Personal Connection Into Established Local Congregations, Roger Graham Clayton Jr

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

This paper is an attempt to resurrect the Wesleyan class meeting in to the modern day congregation in order to build stronger and more vibrant communities. By examining the historical footprint of the class meeting in Wesley's Britain and the beginning of the American experiment, the core attributes of the class meeting are extracted to be accountability, vulnerability, and practical faith.

This paper also attempts to show that these core principles of the class meeting are still present in the modern world outside of the church to great success within the military, non-denominational faith groups, and in the battle against …

Cultural Formation Of Place: Making Yourself At Home, Olivia Arratia

Art Theses and Dissertations

The environment you grow up in can become a pivotal part of your existence. The sights, smells, people, and places you experience every day can transform the way you see the world. Growing up in a Mexican-American household has brought its own set of experiences that have made me the artist I am today. I am one of many contemporary artists building on the foundations of their heritage and the Chicano movement. I am also a Mexican-American artist expanding the identity and extending the legacy in the 21st century. This paper will investigate how Mexican-American heritage has influenced my artistic …

Life Beyond Bars: Nine Prisoners And Their Families, And Faith-Based Efforts To Recognize And Avoid-Cross-Generational Criminal Habits., Alfreda Reese

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The aim of this study is to examine prisoners’ firsthand experiences and their underlying family issues to bring awareness and delete current cross-generational criminal habits. Through analyzing a series of individual experiences and exploring underlying family issues, the study intends to bring awareness and exposure to the implications of the criminal justice system on prisoners and their families. This study will analyze personal stories of prisoners and their families to identify, interact, and intervene in best practices to avoid criminal habits. The research gathered aims to empower prisoners and their families in suggested ways to delete repeated criminal patterns and …

The Impact Of Practicing The Spiritual Disciplines On Church Involvement: Exploration And Evaluation, Willard Mckiver Jr

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The purpose of this Doctorate of Ministry practicum is to explore the use and effects of the spiritual disciplines of reading the scriptures, meditation on the readings followed by praying together with other members. The project was designed to strengthen the relationships between God and members of the congregation of St. Andrew Lutheran Church of Hurst, Texas as the members spent time together each day. Small groups were selected to communicate with each other daily. Their weekly communications with the pastor and other congregational members allowed for increased involvement at the congregational level. The small groups were composed of various …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

The Theological Structure For Forming Christian Vocational Spirituality: A Practical Method For The Whole Of The Christian Life, Yong Sub Sim

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The Christian church works for reconciliation between God and his creatures through Jesus Christ. For this, the church calls people and helps them hear, understand, recognize and receive the Spirit of God through Jesus. This dissertation explains this process as walking with, working with and following Jesus.

This dissertation builds a theological structure for forming “Christian vocational spirituality” as the whole of the Christian life reconciled with the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ. This theological structure guides the process through which a human being becomes a true Christian being, and a Christian being becomes a true human being reconciled …

The Christian Right In Translation: Christian Conservative Discourse In Contemporary American Literature, Elizabeth Richardson Duke

English Theses and Dissertations

Religion in contemporary American politics and religion in contemporary American Literature: are they independent phenomena? Literary scholars have largely assumed so. Scholars have attended to nontraditional, liberal religion in postwar American literature, while overlooking how this literature represents and critiques the rise of the Christian Right. Since white evangelical and fundamentalist Christians allied with the Republican party in the late 1970s, Christian conservatives have transformed American politics. As the GOP’s most influential interest group, the Christian Right has set the terms for many of the last four decades’ most contentious and consequential debates. Historians, political scientists, and contemporary American writers …

The Digital Divide: A Consideration Of Justice And Pastoral Care In Moral Spaces In Response To Underserved Communities Experiencing Inequity In Technology- The Bible Dictates Our Christian Response, Lael Melville

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The Melville Family Foundation understands that poverty in underserved communities’ fuels economic instability fostering inequality in education. The COVID19 pandemic highlighted poverty as a breeding ground for injustice. The Pandemic drove life as we knew it online, further highlighting inequities in the technology space or the “digital divide”. Christians have a responsibility to the digital divide in a way that facilitates justice while responding with the love of God.

The aim is to explore the digital divide in the consideration of justice and pastoral care in response to underserved communities experiencing inequity in technology.

The researcher of this study will …

Trinity And Divine Subjectivity: A Study In The Trinitarian Theologies Of Franz Anton Staudenmaier And Isaak August Dorner, Andrew Hamilton

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In the German philosophical tradition that begins with Kant and grows into Romanticism and Idealism, philosophical understandings of personal subjectivity underwent drastic changes. I argue in this dissertation that these new understandings of personal subjectivity exercised an important influence on how the Catholic theologian Franz Anton Staudenmaier and the Lutheran theologian Isaak August Dorner conceived of the personal subjectivity of the divine, particularly on how they rendered the divine as a triune personal subject.

Deliver Us: The New Eve, Coredemption, And The Motherhood Of God, William Glass

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In what follows, I try to develop a speculative and constructive account of what Christians should say regarding whether and how Mary is a coredemptress, that is, a partner in the redemptive work of her Son. My goal is to clarify what it might mean to say Mary is a coredeemer, why anyone should say that, and what the consequences would be for Christian theology if they did. I take this doctrine to have critical importance not only for the individual loci of Christian theology (many of which are treated within) but for a meta-theological understanding of the God-world relation.

Gender As Love: A Theological Account, Fellipe Do Vale

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Despite its ubiquity in nearly all academic disciplines, gender has remained a contested concept, so much so that there is considerable ambiguity regarding what makes one a woman or a man and what relation such traits have with the human body. Debates typically polarize around the positions of gender essentialism and social constructionism, though both have been shown to have serious limitations. Additionally, theologians have typically approached these debates either by understanding gender as a category for sustained investigation but finding that the tools and virtues of theology are ill-suited for doing so, or by retaining the tools and virtues …

A Renewed Christian Sabbath, After Supersessionism And After Christendom, Abigail Woolley Cutter

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This project works toward a contemporary understanding of what the Sabbath commandment can mean for Christians, in light of both the post-supersessionist developments in Christian theology since the Holocaust and a declining (Protestant) Christian hegemony in the United States. It claims that a Christian theology of Sabbath must be developed through a serious engagement with the theology of Jewish-Christian relations. It proposes the Sabbath framework as a model for cultural engagement reminiscent of the “synthesis” type laid out in H. R. Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, but less susceptible to the alleged pitfalls of that type.

The approach to a …

Honor Gained, Lost, And Restored: The Honor And Shame Of Jesus In The Gospel Of Mark, April Simpson

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Tracing the Gospel of Mark’s full narrative trajectory, this project provides a socio-literary investigation of Jesus’s honor in the Gospel, in order to explore the relationship between honor and shame in the narrative as well as how first-century notions of honor relate to Mark’s endorsement of Jesus. For much of the narrative, the Gospel of Mark overwhelmingly features Jesus’s honor—or his status, reputation, and virtue. Beginning about halfway through the Gospel, this emphasis is paired with another: anticipation of a change of fortunes for Jesus. Then, Jesus’s fortunes do change in the spiraling shame he experiences during his arrest, trial, …

When Half The Neighborhood Is Missing: How To Overcome Systemic Poverty And Gentrification Following The Models Of Dudley Street And Mission Waco, Kevin A. Brown, Kevin A. Brown, Kevin A. Brown

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Abstract

By following the examples of Mission Waco and The Dudley Street Initiative, it is possible to renew a sense of beloved community by changing the narrative of poverty and gentrification by rebuilding the village through empowering the poor and marginalized.

Mission Waco and The Dudley Street Initiative are comprehensive sustainable communities because they combine numerous social and economic interventions under developed strategic plans. The principal question that this dissertation seeks to answer is whether these models can be implemented in local communities to help overcome gentrification and poverty. Implementation can be successful if we can identify the problem, rethink …

Acedia And The Evagrian Antidotes To Pastoral Burnout, Thomas Daniel Irving

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

At its core, pastoral burnout is a spiritual malady and only a spiritual solution will cure. By attaining a clear understanding of acedia, the spiritual condition first introduced by fourth century monk Evagrius Ponticus, pastors will gain an awareness of their condition, find relief from its symptoms, find meaning in their vocation, and joy for life-long ministry. This work will explore the manifestations of and antidotes to acedia in both the original fourth century desert monastic context and its application to modern ministry.

Songs For The Journey: The Music Of Pilgrimage, Joshua Taylor

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

Pilgrimage has been a part of Christian experience since biblical times. Creating new stories, pilgrimage affords sacred travelers experiences that transcend nationalism, denominational identity, and cultural borders melding their individual constructs of meaning with communal experiences to create new insights. On these pilgrimages, music has played a significant role in the development of community. While pilgrimage is an independent act, it is also a shared existence with other pilgrims with music serving as a bridge between these two realities. With an estimated 100 million people undertaking pilgrimages at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the rediscovery of pilgrimage, and the …

Protest And Politics: A Biographical Theology Of Bayard Rustin, Friendship, Charity, And Economic Justice, Justin Barringer

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Bayard Rustin is largely an unknown name in theology and ethics, but this dissertation brings him into those conversations with a focus on an ethics of peripatetic friendship as an appropriate response to unjust wealth inequity. I explore how the life of Bayard Rustin, particularly his friendships, was a catalyst for much of the civil rights movement as well as broader justice movements that included charity and economic rights. Rustin, via his friendships, made possible many revolutionary changes in American society and beyond. After examining his life and contributions, I tie his life together with insights from the broader Christian …

Contextualized Discipleship: A Catalyst System For The Xxi Century, David Rangel

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The reality for the Christian churches in the U.S. is that congregations are declining in attendance. Local churches are being closed every year, and the people called Christians are decreasing in their discipleship practices more than in previous years. However, the reason for this disgraceful reality is not because people have stopped attending church; rather, it is because there are now fewer Christians. Unfortunately, churches in their effort to make disciples prefer to buy a curriculum that, in the end, does not reflect the needs and realities of their own context. More than ever, the Christian industry in the U.S. …

Pluralism As A Social Practice: A Pragmatist Approach To Engaging Diversity In Public Life, Mary Leah Friedline

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation lays a theoretical framework for rethinking the ways in which political and moral philosophers conceive pluralism and diversity in public life. I argue that many philosophers who write on the topic do not have a sophisticated understanding of religion, are not sufficiently attentive to historically produced power differentials, and/or do not adequately recognize the intersectional dimensions of diversity. Building on Jeffrey Stout’s notion of democracy as a social practice, and supplemented with Cornel West’s understanding of democratic faith, I use my more complex account of diversity to argue that pluralism is best approached as a social practice, instead …

“Our Heaven Begun Below”: A Contemporary Theology Of Eucharistic Sacrifice In The Wesleyan Tradition, Geoffrey C. Moore

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In 1984, The United Methodist Church adopted a new eucharistic rite which asserts that Christians “offer ourselves…as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ’s offering for us.” The language of sacrifice employed here is much stronger than that of any of the previous rites used by the Church, or any of its successors, as far back as the first English rite written by Thomas Cranmer. While the Cranmerian rite calls for a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, the new rite calls for the communicant to offer themselves as a “holy and living sacrifice,” a change which calls for …

The World Is About To Turn: Imagining A New Ecclesiology For Emerging Adults Through Missional Music Ministry, Kevin A. Turner

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

How can ministry leaders in the twenty-first century provide guidance for those who are the leading edge of the church's next generation? How might emerging adults become contributors to congregations where they are given space to offer and plan for themselves rather than passively acquiesce to traditional church structures where a strict, top-down leadership style dominates? In conversation with author Letty Russell, this paper will describe a more democratic vision of ecclesiology for music ministry and ministries of the larger church. The methodology employed in this thesis involves a case study examining the creation of a choral ensemble focusing on …

Ephesians And Ecumenism, Toby Eisenberg

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Christian ecumenism has made great strides during the twentieth century but is now widely seen as needing a new path. Avery Dulles has proposed an “exchange of gifts” notion of dialogue in which the participant churches share their understanding of the Christian life and all of the reasons they have for holding their particular doctrines and practices, drawing on whatever normative sources they believe are appropriate. The approach enables the participants to bear testimony in love in the hopes that they may better understand and appreciate each other more fully, thereby opening a path to increased doctrinal consensus and thus …

The Unmarried (M)Other: A Study Of Christianity, Capitalism, And Counternarratives Concerning Motherhood And Marriage In The United States And South Africa, Haley Feuerbacher

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

A reified and patriarchal form of Christianity that emphasizes “family values” – that is, adherence to the formula of a male-headed, heterosexual, capitalist, nuclear family, characterized by distinct, complementary, and hierarchical gender roles as essential to the well-being of individuals, one’s nation, and the ecumenical Church - over “community values” has become a happy bedfellow of the market system and neocolonialism, extending its reach worldwide through globalization. The result is that single mothers constitute the most economically oppressed demographic internationally across all race and ethnic categories. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory and a postcolonial feminist theological lens to collect, retell, and …