Other Religion Commons^™

Americanized Catholicism? A Response To Thomas Schärtl, Dennis M. Doyle

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

I stand in fundamental agreement with what Thomas Schärtl has said in his article describing recent trends in US Catholicism. I am a lifelong Catholic and a lifelong Democrat. I felt personally distressed and discouraged by the support given to Mitt Romney and the Republicans by some leading US Catholic bishops. Most of this support may have technically passed the legal test of being nonpartisan, but undeniably it functioned in a partisan manner, as did the attacks launched on President Obama in the midst of a campaign to defend religious liberty. Schärtl’s analysis of these trends as reflecting marketing strategies …

Hauerwas On Hauerwas: Review Of 'Approaching The End: Eschatological Reflections On Church, Politics, And Life', William L. Portier

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Stanley Hauerwas has achieved singular preeminence among theologians in the United States as a public intellectual. Writing on subjects from Christian ethics to law, pacifism, bioethics, and political philosophy, he has provided bountiful fodder for academics while managing to leave footprints in the general culture-he is surely one of very few theologians ever to appear on Oprah. Any new book bearing Hauerwas' name is noteworthy, and the latest one doesn't disappoint.

The Duty We Owe Our Creator; Reformed Theology Deism And Disestablishment In Virginia, John Parker

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution contains within it two distinct clauses, the first guarantees the free exercise of religion clause, the second prevents the establishment of a national church. Stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’, this clause ensured that these United States would never have an official state church and that citizens could not be penalized for practicing their own faith. This was a major innovation. There did exist some provision for certain sects within the legal frame work, such as exemptions from the swearing …

Eternal Punishment As Paideia: The Ekphrasis Of Hell In The Apocalypse Of Peter And The Apocalypse Of Paul, Meghan Henning

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Much of the history of scholarship on “hell” has been devoted to tracing genetic relationships between older texts and more recent ones, typically based upon generic elements or the specific features of hell’s landscape. This paper suggests a new direction for classics and New Testament study, focusing instead on the rhetorical function of hell in antiquity. This paper argues that the ancient conventions of descriptive rhetoric were at work in the depictions of Hell that we find in the Jewish and early Christian apocalypses. It begins with a definition of these rhetorical devices by examining the Progymnasmata as well as …

Educating Early Christians Through The Rhetoric Of Hell: 'Weeping And Gnashing Of Teeth' As 'Paideia' In Matthew And The Early Church, Meghan Henning

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell, drawing connections to Greek and Roman systems of education, and examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Latin literature, the New Testament, early Christian apocalypses and patristic authors.

This work is a revised version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation, which was successfully defended at Emory University in 2013. It is included in the series Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II.

She writes, "Now that this work is finished, I am delighted to have the opportunity to thank those who have generously traveled with me on this …