Christianity Commons^™

Twelve Wallace Myths, Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Alfred Russel Wallace’s (1823-1913) bicentennial year is a good time to take stock. In this presentation I discuss twelve Wallace-related issues that I feel have been poorly taken up. These range from the biological to the biographical, including subjects such as social criticism, human evolution, autobiographical memory, natural selection, national affinities, spiritualism, and wokeism.

Ua37/43 Faculty Staff Personal Papers John Minton, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Personal papers of John Minton.

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 96, No. 13, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Burned Out – COVID-19
• Payne, Michael. 15 Years with the Bagel Brothers – Sandra Hurley
• Hargrove, Matthew. Hilltoppers Get in the Win Column, Home Finale Up Next - Football
• Kieser, Nick. All Eyes on the Spring – Basketball, Softball, Soccer, Baseball
• Leboutier, Addison. Little Flock of Jesus Christ Fellowship Comes Home – Clarence Tapp
• Cox, Alex. Editorial Cartoon re: Kamala Harris
• What a Kamala Harris Vice Presidency Means for Young People of Color
• Lattimer, Jacob. Student Government Association Sustainability Committee Looks to Make an Impact …

Keeping Faith: A Qualitative Study On Religiosity Among Young Catholics In Ireland, Michael A. Clements

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Ireland is a country that is well-known for its Catholic heritage. Despite its global perception as a Catholic country, the Emerald Isle has experienced rapid secularization within the last 30 years, during which rates of Church attendance and Catholic self-identification have fallen dramatically. Likewise, the legalization of abortion, gay marriage, and divorce, concepts contrary to Catholic teaching, further reflect the island's departure from Catholic Orthodoxy. Should the Catholic religion have a future in Ireland, it will lie in the hands of its devout youth: a demographic with relatively little representation in the literature.

Using a hybrid interview and survey format, …

Baxter, William, 1820-1880 (Sc 3471), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3471. Letter, 1 September 1848, of William Baxter to Reverend John Allen Gano, Centerville (Bourbon County), Kentucky. From Biloxi Bay, Mississippi, he writes of a throat condition affecting his voice, his intention to visit Kentucky, his teaching and reading, and his shell collecting on nearby islands. He also notes the lack of preaching in the area, recently improved by the return of “Brother Martin” from a “great misfortune.”

Mattingly, Alix, B. 1990 (Fa 1287), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1287. Student collection titled “We Walk By Faith” in which Alix Mattingly undertakes a genealogical exploration of her family’s personal connection to St. Ann Catholic Church and School in Morganfield, Kentucky. Mattingly’s paper examines how religion, segregation, and education intersect in ways that have a lasting effect on understandings of heritage and identity. The collection also contains photographs, a partial transcript, and a copy of the audio interview recording.

Ua12/2/31 Campus Ministries, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about a variety of campus ministry organizations.

Leadership Lessons From Christ And Clergy, Noah Edmonson

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The purpose of this study is to develop effective pastoral leadership competencies based on the transformational and servant leadership theories and the life of Jesus. Christ’s life and ministry in the four Gospels was evaluated using Dr. Bernard Bass’s transformational leadership theory and Larry C. Spears’ servant leadership theory. Five competencies were identified by the interviewer to be further investigated for their effectiveness in the application of pastoral leadership. An interview process was conducted with the local Southern Baptist pastors to discuss the effectiveness of the competencies in their ministries. The results of this research indicated the affirmation of the …

C.D.G. Club - Bowling Green, Kentucky (Sc 3214), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3214. Minutes of the C.D.G. (Children Desiring God) Club, Bowling Green, Kentucky, composed of women members of the First Baptist Church. Includes meeting minutes, members lists, and financial data.

"Turn In Your Bible To...": Examining Rhetorical Agency In Sermonic Discourse, Marshall Thomas Covert

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Rhetorical agency is an ideologically contentious facet within communication and rhetorical research. While its importance in scholarship can be traced back to early works by Kenneth Burke and Pierre Bourdieu, debate continues regarding the source of agency, how it is enacted in rhetorical application and communication, and who/what can claim responsibility for the communication practices one may utilize in enacting their respective levels of agency. Thus, the ways in which the rhetoric of popular, influential individuals/antecedents affects the rhetorical agency and invention practices of those without significant levels of influence must be examined. American Christianity, in particular the culture created …

The Southern Baptist Convention “Crisis” In Context: Southern Baptist Conservatism And The Rise Of The Religious Right, Austin R. Biggs

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, a minority conservative faction took over the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). This project seeks to answer the questions of how a fringe minority within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination could undertake such a feat and why they chose to do so. The framework through which this work analyzes these questions is one of competing worldviews that emerged within the SBC in response to decades of societal shifts and denominational transformations in the post-World War II era. To place the events of the Southern Baptist “crisis” within this framework, this study seeks to …

Letters To Mei Lanfang, Alexandra Dare Norman

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

As a male actor of female Dan characters, Mei Lanfang (1894-1961) is known throughout the world as the most representative performer of Chinese opera – particularly for his performance of Concubine Yu in the Peking opera Farewell My Concubine. A feminist analysis of his work in this opera reveals a series of assumptions about the definition of “Woman” in both theatre and life. This project is solo performance piece formatted in a series of open letters to Mei Lanfang, interspersed with personal stories investigating what it truly means to be a Woman – as an actor, a Christian, a feminist, …

Gano, John Allen, 1805-1887 (Sc 3096), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding Aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3096. Letters from church leaders in the central Kentucky region to John Allen Gano, a Christian Church minister in Bourbon County, Kentucky. The letters reference the charisma of Gano’s sermons and solicit his visitation to various church meetings and services.

Mcreynolds, Benjamin, 1769-1845 (Mss 603), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scans of selected items (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Collection 603. Manuscript books of sermons, religious, medical and other writings created by Benjamin McReynolds, a Butler County, Kentucky Methodist minister. Includes family history and records of schools operated by McReynolds.

Ua3/9/7 Message, Wku President's Office - Ransdell, Wku Philosophy & Religion

WKU Archives Records

Email from WKU president Gary Ransdell to faculty & staff regarding anti-Muslim sentiments. Includes messages from Eric Bain-Selbo and Lhousseine Guerwane.

A Way Forward: An Alternative Way For Understanding What The Bible Is And How It Is Understood, Joshua Scott

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Christianity in America is in decline. Millennials are leaving the evangelical churches of their youth in droves, but they aren’t leaving the idea of God or spirituality. Statistics show that the theology of the fundamentalist/conservative evangelical church is contributing to this exodus of Millennials, particularly when it comes to issues of environment, sexuality, and violence. This thesis explores the roots of fundamentalist theology—particularly their understanding of what the Bible is, and how it is to be understood—and how this theology is practically worked out in their approach to the three issues mentioned above. Finally, I offer an alternative framework for …

Violence For A Peaceful End: Rhetorical Violence, Fundamentalist Eschatology, And The Interpretive Tradition Of Revelation, Tommi Karin Waters

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

With the rise of extremist fundamentalist groups, such as ISIS, it is important to note similar happenings in other traditions. This thesis traces the interpretive tradition of the Book of Revelation, from its composition in 90 C.E. through the dispensationalist usage of it by John Nelson Darby in the 19th century, and how its modern use by American Christian fundamentalist groups leads to rhetorical violence, including feelings of marginalization and societal targeting, and creation of insider/outsider dynamics with those outside the tradition. While rhetorical violence—language and behaviors that harm others and that occur so regularly that they often become routinized …

Ua3/2/1 President's Office-Garrett Correspondence/Subject File, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

General correspondence and subject files regarding Western Kentucky University.

Being Hindu In The American South: Hindu Nationalist Discourse In A Diaspora Community, Daniel J. Shouse

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

According to a recent Pew poll approximately 97% of all Hindus live in the countries of India and Nepal. However, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Hindus living in other parts of the world. Across the United States, Hindu temples are joining the religious landscape of the country. They are often greeted as signifiers of a “model minority” by the mainstream because of Asian American economic success. However, as religious and racial minorities, Indian immigrants and Indian Americans just as frequently face ignorance and discrimination. This rejection by mainstream society, combined with a desire to reconnect with …

Religion And Higher Education: Concerns And Solutions, Vanessa David, Ethan Sykes

Parameters of Law in Student Affairs and Higher Education (CNS 670)

No abstract provided.

Jesus, I Trust In You: St. Thomas Aquinas' Jubilee, John A. Sohl

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The concept of “Life Reporting” is a completely new idea, at least in terms of how I have experienced it. In today’s world of blogs and social networking, it is essential for broadcast journalists to embrace their own lives in the same world of professional and ethical reporting. As I describe my experience of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Jubilee, I have no choice but to provide the context and build-up of this intense passion toward my overarching point. Working through all the communities of which I have been a part, from attending St. Luke Catholic Church all the way to the …

"Lord Keep Us Safe This Night": Religious Imagery In Depression-Era Rural Quilts, Kelsey N. Mattingly

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This thesis investigates specific quilts from rural areas during the Depression era in relation to their religious imagery. Databases from the Kentucky Historical Society, International Quilt Study Center and Museum and the Quilt Index provide records of assessment. This analysis focuses on religious imagery in quilts, but I will look at the religious communities that collectively created them with a specific attention to the roles that church groups and the practice of group quilting played in their productions. I will present the resulting analysis drawn from my written work to uncover why certain quilts exhibited religious imagery where others did …

Star Spangled Saints: Ritual Practices That Legitimate War And Violence In The American Church, Terry Dewayne Shoemaker

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The objective of this research is to analyze the ways in which the conservative,
American church has been ideologically and ritualistically shaped by an imperial culture enamored with war, the military, and violence; and how those positions and practices, in effect, legitimate war and the military. While many authors have surveyed historical Christian positions regarding war and the current nationalistic tendencies of conservative Christians, little research has been conducted to assess the effects of violence, nationalism, patriotism, and military enchantment on Christian rituals, practices, and ethos. Within this research, I argue that contemporary, conservative Christians have surpassed previously held nuanced …

Went Off To The Shakers: The First Converts Of South Union, William R. Black

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In 1807 the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (Shakers)
established a society near the Gasper River in Logan County, Kentucky. The society was soon named South Union, and it lasted until 1922, the longest-lasting Shaker community west of the Appalachians. Most of the first Shaker converts in Logan County had only a few years beforehand participated in a series of evangelical Presbyterian camp meetings known collectively as the Kentucky Revival, the Revival of 1800, or the Great Revival.Though Presbyterian revivalism and Shakerism shared certain characteristics (particularl millennialism and enthusiastic forms of worship), there were many differences between …

When God Dies: Deconversion From Theism As Analogous To The Experience Of Death, William David Simpson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this thesis, I explore the psychological and experiential aspects of the shift from a supernatural theistic worldview (specifically born-again Christianity) to a
philosophically naturalistic and atheistic worldview in the context of the religious
landscape in the U.S. I posit that certain features of this transition, which is known as "deconversion,” can be thought of as potentially analogous, both psychologically and subjectively, to the experience of another's death as an objective environmental change. I provide anthropological and psychological evidence that believers often experience the God of born-again Christianity as an independently existing and active agent in the world. The similarities …

Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth And The Rise Of Popular Premillennialism In The 1970s, Cortney S. Basham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

How people think about the end of the world greatly affects how they live in the present. This thesis examines how popular American thought about “the end of the world” has been greatly affected by Hal Lindsey’s 1970 popular prophecy book The Late, Great Planet Earth. LGPE sold more copies than any other non-fiction book in the 1970s and greatly aided the mainstreaming of “end-times” ideas like the Antichrist, nuclear holocaust, the Rapture, and various other concepts connected with popular end-times thought. These ideas stem from a specific strain of late-nineteenth century Biblical interpretation known as dispensational premillennialism, which …

Taylor, Judson Slade, 1838-1889 (Sc 525), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collecction 525. Photocopy of an incomplete typescript memoir entitled “The First Fifty Years of Judson Slade Taylor,” a Baptist minister born in Ohio County, Kentucky; and a letter, 20 August 1971, from J.B. Taylor, a relative, to Nell Childress, Auburn, Kentucky, related to the memoir.

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 80, No. 46 [48], Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

• Coulter, Amber. Pope John Paul II 1920-2005
• Richardson, Kelly. State Tuition Program on Hold
• Teague, Hawkins. Ron White Shows His Blue Collar
• Harrell, Bobby. Management Issues Prompt Chuck Coates to Resign
• Harrell, Bobby. Budget Work Continues without City Manager, Chief Financial Officer
• Hupman, Samantha. Mars Show Continues Through April 28
• Campus Police Should Receive Assistance
• Ingram, Brooks. Editorial Cartoon – WKU Police
• Wilberding, Beth. Researching My Faith
• Smith, Jessica. Life Touched by Pope John Paul II
• Clark, Amber. Officials Name New Science Laboratory after Senator Mitch McConnell
• Green, Tavia. …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 78, No. 26, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

• Sasseen, Jessica. New Stops for Topper Transit
• Hardin, Adriane. Miss-ter Western? – Alpha Gamma Delta
• Hightower, Kyle. Tops to Face Different Cats, Same Stakes – Basketball
• Lively, Jay. Engineer Dissects World Trade Center Collapse – Gene Corley
• Sainlar, Lindsay. A Day to Butt Out – Great American Smokeout
• Hoang, Mai. Couple Funds Autism Program – John & Linda Kelly
• Hoang, Mai. Health Insurance Switch on Table for Vote – Regents
• Bannon, Tim. Editorial Cartoon re: John Hardin on Diversity
• Hall, Rex. George Bush Needs to Get His Priorities Straight …

Ua12/2/1 In The Spirit, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

College Heights Herald magazine edition regarding Christmas.

• Clark, Ryan. The Gift of Love – Hines Family, Children
• Lucas, Fred. Don’t Forget First Christmas Gift – Jesus Christ
• Hutchins, Chris. Holiday Emotions Can’t be Expressed with Material Gifts
• What’s the Nicest Thing You’ve Done for Someome for Christmas?
• Walsh, Erica. 10 Ways to Help – Charities
• Heath, Mark. A Century on the Hill – Big Red
• Heath, Mark. Plaything Big Red is Creator’s Personality – Ralph Carey
• Warren, Brandy. Christmas Everywhere
• Eslinger, Justin. Christmas Fun Coming Your Way – Mammoth Cave, Riverview, Nutcracker, Living Christmas Tree