History of Religion Commons^™

Religion Wrecked Her Mind: Religious Insanity In The Nineteenth Century, Courtney Lacy

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I analyze how the line between good and bad religions, as constructed through secularism, influenced whether or not practitioners of religion were sent to insane asylums or, at least, considered by their peers or family to be at risk of insanity or on the brink of it. Exploring these questions revealed the link between religion and insanity but also showed how some religious practices (especially ecstatic behavior) placed believers at even greater risk because of the threat to the secular and progressive narrative encouraged by the people around them.

By placing the asylum narrative in conversation with …

'Seeds Of Happiness': An Oral History Of Members Of Soka Gakkai International-New Orleans, Lorvelis Amelia Madueño

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a Japanese new religious movement present in 192 countries. Despite the substantial amount of academic work that has been produced on SGI’s overseas expansion, many scholars continue to overlook the local context when analyzing the organization’s global presence. This paper is based on oral history interviews and examines the experiences of five members of the SGI-USA New Orleans Buddhist Center, located in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. This thesis argues that many SGI practitioners choose to join and remain in the organization because it fills specific spiritual and emotional voids in their lives, creates …

The Autobiography Of Daniel Parker, Frontier Universalist, Daniel Parker, David Torbett

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

A vastly informative and rare early-American pioneer autobiography rescued from obscurity.

In this remarkable memoir, Daniel Parker (1781–1861) recorded both the details of everyday life and the extraordinary historical events he witnessed west of the Appalachian Mountains between 1790 and 1840. Once a humble traveling salesman for a line of newly invented clothes washing machines, he became an outspoken advocate for abolition and education. With his wife and son, he founded Clermont Academy, a racially integrated, coeducational secondary school—the first of its kind in Ohio.

However, Parker’s real vocation was as a self-ordained, itinerant preacher of his own brand of …

December 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Mega-Chanukah Party; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices

"Some Kind Of Socialist:" Lee Hays, The Social Gospel, And The Path To The Cultural Front, Elizabeth Withey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1939, with sixty-five dollars and twenty pages of Commonwealth Labor songs, Lee Hays, youngest son of a Methodist minister, hitchhiked thirteen hundred miles from Mena, Arkansas, to New York City where he found stardom in the Folk Revival movement, first, as a founder of the Almanac Singers then the Weavers. Hays’ biographer Doris Willens and others, viewing Hays’ unabashed socialism, ribald humor, penchant for beer, brandy, and cigarettes as induced by the childhood trauma of his father’s death, argue Hays rejected his father’s beliefs: replacing religion with radical politics. This thesis, in contrast, argues Hays’ upbringing immersed in contradictions …

“That Hart May Sing In Corde:” Defense Of Church Music In The Psalm Paraphrases Of Matthew Parker, Sonja G. Wermager

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Translation of sacred texts is always a dangerous act. In the sixteenth century, translators of the Bible into vernacular languages faced persecution and even execution for their perceived heresy. Nevertheless, when Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker (1504-1575) published his poetic paraphrases of the biblical psalms, for which Thomas Tallis wrote the corresponding psalm tunes, Parker joined a growing number of scholars and clerics risking the translation of scripture under the aegis of the Protestant Reformation. In his paraphrases Parker carefully negotiated between strict translation and poetic interpretation of the text, particularly in regards to musical themes. I argue that in …

Determining The Impact Of The Anabaptists Using Bullinger’S Propaganda Strategies In Von Dem Unverschampten Fräfel, Jovanna Shirky

West Virginia University Historical Review

Many scholars of the Reformation contend that the Anabaptist movement did not significantly impact the society of its day. However, my analysis of Heinrich Bullinger’s anti-Anabaptist work Von dem unverschampten fräfel, ergerlichem verwyrren unnd unwarhafftem leeren der selbsgesandten Widertöuffern indicates that the Anabaptists did pose a significant threat to the socioreligious structures that both the mainstream Reformation and Catholicism endorsed. By analyzing Bullinger’s propaganda strategies within the work, I find that the beliefs and practices of the Anabaptists challenged the most basic structures of society, thus alarming Bullinger and others who opposed the movement. Bullinger’s language within the work and …

Al-Aqsa Mosque From The Period Of The Abbasid Caliphate To The Crusaders’ Invasion: Architectural Descriptive Study, Abdelhamid Gamal El-Farani

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This study focuses on the history of the most significant religious sites in Palestine under the Abbasid rule, namely in AL Aqsa Mosque. This study introduces a precise architectural and historical description of Al- Aqsa Mosque and also the reforms and changes made during the Abbasid , Ayyubid and Fatimid eras, especially after the consecutive earthquakes which hit Al- Aqsa Mosque. Precisely speaking, due to the destruction of Al-Aqsa by the earthquakes, the efforts of the Muslim rulers were exerted to rebuild the renovate the mosque and its precincts. This consolidation of efforts has stemmed from the religious and spiritual …

The Prophet’S Method Of Using Perfume, Islam Yassin

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This study discusses the prophet’s method of using perfume. This is to show that Islam considers the perfume important in the life of mankind, so as to encourage Muslims to use fragrance. It is observed that many Muslims do not consider perfume important. This study explains the role of Islam in taking care of the Muslims’ beauty with regard to perfume. The researchers employed an analytical approach to collect data from Hadith books, explain, examine and extract meaning. The study explains the meaning of perfume, how the prophet (peace be upon him) considers it important, and when and where it …

November 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group;Community Notices

Divine Suppressors: Bigamy In The Eighteenth-Century Criminal Justice System, Luke Hs Horton

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

The criminal justice system in eighteenth-century England was an integral part of European society. The legal system had always been associated with several facets of everyday life and touched upon the lives of those in every class of European society. One of England’s oldest and most significant courthouses was the Old Bailey, which held thousands of trials and sessions over the two hundred and forty years it was active. Out of the wide variety of cases to choose from, ten sexual offences revolving around bigamy were selected to present how the criminal justice system leaked into different areas of life. …

October 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Simchat Torah (and Sukkot), From the Rabbi, President's Message, Book Group, Commmunity Notices

ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu …

From Social Justice To Landscapes: The Politics Behind The Woodblock Prints Of See Cheen Tee, Eugene Foo Shyang Eu

Student Works (2020-2029)

See Cheen Tee produced over 50 pieces of woodblock prints in the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. This research seeks to investigate the politics behind these woodblock prints by studying social and political climate of the time it was produced. Politics in this research must be understood in the context of power relations that includes both formal and informal, organizations or individuals, and is not limited to the generalized notion of the activities of governmental bodies. His work is compared and contrasted against other artworks such as woodblock prints produced during the Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement, paintings by first generation Nanyang-style …

September 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Erev Rosh Hashanah Sacred Music Concert and Service; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices

Designing Analog Learning Games: Genre Affordances, Limitations And Multi-Game Approaches, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

This chapter explores what the authors discovered about analog games and game design during the many iterative processes that have led to the Lost & Found series, and how they found certain constraints and affordances (that which an artifact assists, promotes or allows) provided by the boardgame genre. Some findings were counter-intuitive. What choices would allow for the modeling of complex systems, such as legal and economic systems? What choices would allow for gameplay within the time of a class-period? What mechanics could promote discussions of tradeoff decisions? If players are expending too much cognition on arithmetic strategizing, could that …

Law Library Blog (September 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Digital Occult Library, Alexis Brandkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is a website, titled Digital Occult Library, hosted by the CUNY Commons and built with WordPress. The site address is:

digitaloccultlibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu

It features (in this iteration) twenty-five unique pages with information on and discussion of occult and esoteric topics. It also hosts a forum that can be accessed and utilized by anyone, not just those registered on the Commons. The purpose of the site is to inform three types of interested parties on the highlighted topics: a general audience with no current knowledge of the occult, practitioners of esoteric traditions, and academics. Not only is the …

Italian Jews: A Surprising And Understudied Influence In The Enlightenment, Lura Martinez

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The experience of Italian Jews during the Enlightenment is deserving of much more attention. Not only did Italian Jews such as Moshe Ḥayyim Luzzatto, a man born in a ghetto, later embrace a form of secularism, but his works and others written by his peers made an impact on the Italian Enlightenment and seemingly contributed to the practice of toleration that appeared in sporadic installments throughout Europe. While the Jewish experience in Europe hails from a long tradition of persecution, with sporadic and incomplete periods of toleration at various points in its history, it is clear that through a promotion …

Urban Warfare: Emerging Geopolitical Conundrum, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Urban warfare is as old as human history. It is becoming increasingly important in international political and military planning due to increasing global urbanization and the presence of megacities (urban areas with populations exceeding 10 million) in many global regions and being in areas of recent and potential military conflict. 2018 World Bank data notes that approximately 56% of the world's population lives in urban areas which is up from 34% in 1960. Many of these megacities, including New York City, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Manila are adjacent to oceanic waters and vulnerable to trade and supply …