Digital Commons Network^™

Ethno-Cultural And Religious Identity Of Syrian Orthodox Christians, Sargon Donabed, Shamiran Mako

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

Many Middle Eastern Christian groups identify or have been identified with pre­Islamic peoples in the Middle East: the Copts with Ancient Egypt, the Nestorians with Assyria, the Maronites with Phoenicians and some RumOrthodoxand other Christians with pre­Islamic Arab tribes. The concern of this study is the Syrian Orthodox Christians or Jacobite(s)(named after the 6th century Monophysite Christian bishop Yacoub Burd‘ono or Jacob Baradaeus of Urfa/Osrohene/Edessa), specifically those whose ancestry stems from the Tur Abdin region of Turkey, Diyarbekir, Mardin, Urfa, and Harput/Elazig. The introduction of the Ottoman milletsystem had divided the Middle East into ethno­religious communities, the Eastern Christian minorities …

Sympathy For The Devil: A Character Analysis Of Gibreel Farishta In Salman Rushdie’S The Satanic Verses, Catherine Mary Lafuente

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses created a major controversy when published in 1988, much like the controversy that Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The Last Temptation of Christ caused in 1951. Kazantzakis's work upset many Christians due to the controversial characterization of Jesus, who in the novel engages in sexual activities and other behaviors that many Christians find offensive. The Satanic Verses caused a similar uproar in the Umma, or Muslim community, resulting in book burnings, death threats, and even a murder. Most of the controversy focused on some the problematic characterizations of the Prophet Muhammad and his wives, such as using …

The Babel Paradox, Michel Machado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the book of Acts is still not well understood. Various interpretations have been offered in order to make sense of the narrative and its author's intention. What is the point of Luke's second book in portraying the evangelization of the Roman Empire as a rabid confrontation between Jewish followers of Jesus and other Jewish people? This matter calls for an examination of the relationship between the mother religion and the Jesus movement as it expands into a universal religion. Luke portrays the Jesus movement as the focus of divine favor, in contradistinction to the Jewish nation which …

A Church Without Walls: Finding Community In Central Christian Church's Online Campus, Kayla Jo Gilmore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Churches today are expanding beyond the physical walls of a church building. They are now online and interactive. This study explores the differences and similarities of communities of online churches and their physical church locations. It incorporates Stanley Fish's interpretive community theory by looking at Thomas Lindlof's common elements of a community and characteristics of an interpretive community. Using an ethnographic approach, survey and interviews were conducted to collect the data. Conclusions include determining that Central's online and physical church communities are in fact interpretive communities and that the online church is not replacing the physical church, but supplementing it.

Book Review. Liberty: Rethinking An Imperiled Ideal By Glenn Tinder, Daniel O. Conkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

St. Augustine's Learning For The Glory Of God: Adapting "Faith-Learning Integration" Terminology For The Modern World, Marie Valance, Jaliene Hollabaugh, Thu Truong

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

The scholastic debate about use and interpretation of the phrase “faith-learning integration” has spanned over fifty years. Glanzer (2008) proposed that this phrase be discarded and that scholars adopt the terminology “the creation and redemption of scholarship.” This concept is not new to Christian dialogue: it can be found in the writings of St. Augustine. However, there needs to be further clarification of Glanzer’s language in order to make it accessible to people of all faiths, backgrounds, and education levels. This paper will attempt to support both Glanzer’s proposal and a new direction for the discussion and encourage educators to …

Eternal Marriage And Family In The Old Testament, Michael A. Goodman

Faculty Publications

More than the sacred literature of any other people, the Torah is the story of family, of marriages, and not prettied-up versions, either, but the stuff of real marriages—love, romance, anger, deceit, honor, faithfulness, distrust, infidelity, companionship, intimacy. . . . Perhaps that explains why marriage becomes the ultimate paradigm for the relationship between God and the Jewish People.¹

At first thought, the Old Testament may not come to mind as a rich source from which to study marriage and its centrality to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, the words marry and marriage appear only six times …

Encircling Astronomy And The Egyptians: An Approach To Abraham 3, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Abraham 3 is one of the most enigmatic sections of the Pearl of Great Price. Teacher and student together sense there is something more to the text than the meaning they are drawing out of it. Each thorough exploration gently nudges another layer of understanding from the text, but we always feel we have unraveled only the smallest portion of what it has to offer. Though I do not pretend to have a great key to unlock this revelation, I believe there are some apperceptive principles that cast light on Abraham's night vision.

Ruth, Redemption, Covenant, And Christ, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

The book of Ruth is one of the most loved stories of the Old Testament. Yet sometimes it remains just that: a story from which some readers gain little in the way of doctrine or application. We identify with the story because the principal actors are neither kings nor prophets but the average people of a typical village. There are neither mighty warriors nor great conflicts, but there are intense struggles for surviving life's difficulties and genuine battles with grief. We love the story because it is so well told, because it has characters we can identify with, because it …

A Comparison Of The Communal Lament Psalms And The Treaty-Covenant Formula, Dan Belnap, Daniel L. Belnap

Faculty Publications

Within the corpus of psalms in the Hebrew Bible is a group known as the communal laments. Characterized by their use of the first person common plural pronoun, some type of calamity experienced by the community, and a petition to God, these psalms incorporate similar imagery, terminology, and structure. This study explores these psalms and suggests that they relate closely to the Hittite treaty-covenant formula found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, yet differ in that they reflect an ongoing covenantal relationship rather than the establishment of such. Thus, these psalms emphasize Israel’s expectation that God, as the senior covenantal party, …

Knowing Body, Moving Mind: Ritualizing And Learning In Two Buddhist Centres In Toronto, Patricia Q. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This book explores learning through ritualizing in introductory meditation courses offered at two Tibetan-based, western Buddhist centres in Toronto. Through interviews with several of the centres’ newcomers, experienced members and teachers, it explores students’ reasons for enrolling in meditation classes as well as their attitudes towards religion and ritual. The study's primary focus is on respondents’ experiences of learning through formal practices such as meditation postures and techniques. Ritualizing is interpreted in part through performance theory, an approach which highlights the performative elements of ritual and the physical enactment of ritualized postures and gestures. Learning through ritualized activities creates a …

Saltwater Sacraments And Backwoods Sins: Contemporary Atlantic Canadian Literature And The Rise Of Literary Catholicism, Andrew Peter Atkinson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In the 1990s, Canadian readers were offered a new literary trend: the Atlantic Canadian Catholic novel. In this dissertation, I examine works from six authors whose writing reflects the scope of this trend and I argue for a consideration of their collective impact on our social imaginary. The bulk of my argument is devoted to an examination of the Catholic religious content in the five novels and one memoir: David Adams Richards’ Bay of Love and Sorrows (1998); Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees (1996); Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven (1996); Wayne Johnston’s Baltimore’s Mansion: A Memoir (1999); Patrick Kavanagh’s Gaff …

Political Piety: Evangelicals And The American Revolution In South Carolina And Georgia, David E. Hollingsworth

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The study of southern evangelicals during the late colonial and revolutionary eras of American history has focused primarily on the social antagonisms that separated evangelicals from southern elites and has concluded that the rapid growth of post-war evangelicalism came as a result of evangelical acquiescence to southern gentry mores. Most study of southern evangelicals has concentrated on the upper South missing important developments in the Deep South which contradict historical assumptions of Separate triumph and the subsequent subversion of radical evangelicalism by evangelical leaders eager for societal acceptance. Evangelicals were not a monolithic movement. Key doctrines, primarily the need for …

Saint John Fisher College: What's The Connection? (First Friday Lecture, October 3, 2008), William Graf

Verbum

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

"In the year of our Lord 1535, at 5:00 on Tuesday morning, June 22^nd, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London awoke the sleeping John Fisher to deliver a message from King Henry VIII: the Bishop of Rochester was to be put to death that day before noon. Because the recently created Cardinal did not recognize Henry’s claim to be supreme head of the Church in England nor the validity of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, John Fisher was judged a traitor. In late May 1535, when …

Full Issue, No Author

Verbum

This is the full issue of Volume 6, Issue 1 of Verbum, published in Fall 2008 by the REST Club at St. John Fisher College. Articles from this issue are available as separate PDFs at http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/verbum/vol6/iss1/

'Purification Of Memory': The Ritual Acknowledgement Of Social Sin And The Penitential Celebration, Corran T. Pike

Theses

The Sacrament of Penance in the Australian Catholic Church is experiencing a pastoral decline. Concurrently, in the secular world, increasingly people are demanding and experiencing rituals of communal apology for social sin. Secular communal apologies (and rituals of forgiveness) appear to be speaking to people in a way that existing liturgical rituals in the church are not. There are no communal rituals for the acknowledgement of social sin currently included in the Rite of Penance. This is a lacuna in the church’s ritual complex that needs to be addressed. This dissertation will analyse several recent communal apologies for social sin …

A Comprehensive Retreat Program For High School Youth Ministry Students, Julie Therese Krug

Pastoral Institute

My pastoral project will encompass five retreats that I will work on in collaboration with a team of young adult volunteers and approximately 20 high school juniors and seniors. The "retreat season" will begin with a leadership retreat in September 2007, two Confirmation retreats (December 2007 and March 2008), a freshmen lock-in retreat (January 2008), and a junior high retreat (March 2008). The team will meet weekly for 8 weeks prior to a retreat, at times working on retreats simultaneously, to plan and prepare. The team's tasks will include leading ice breakers, small discussion groups, large group activities, praise and …

Preliminary Pages, No Author

Verbum

No abstract provided.

Survey On The Virgin Mary And Mary Magdalene, Larimee Cortnik

Student Scholarship

Twenty diverse responses to a survey on the beliefs about the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. The survey was completed by Larimee Cortnik for Women in the Bible: Ethnographic Approaches to Rite and Ritual, Story, Song and Art (JDST - RLGN 268, Prof. J. Neulander) in Fall 2008.

"Show Me The Money!" A Workshop, Rachel Dressler, Virginia Blanton

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Emma Lipton, Affections Of The Mind: The Politics Of Sacramental Marriage In Late Medieval English Literature. University Of Notre Dame Press, 2007, Suzanne M. Edwards

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Crusader, November, 21, 2008, College Of The Holy Cross

Student Newspapers

The student newspaper for the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Articles include coverage of campus events and issues, sports, editorials and special features.

Mandala Vol. 27, Center For Southeast Asian Studies

Mandala

No abstract provided.

Review Of Adele Reinhartz, Jesus Of Hollywood [Review Of The Book Jesus Of Hollywood, By A. Reinhartz], Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

Since the advent of the modern film in the late nineteenth century over one hundred films on Jesus have been made. They tend to come in spurts. About a half-dozen major silent films were produced in the 1920s and 1930s, the most famous of which is Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). After over three decades in which no Jesus film appeared—thanks in part to the Production Code adopted by Hollywood and promoted by the Catholic Legion of Decency—several rmajor films on Jesus were released in the 1960s, and several more in the 1970s, including two musicals. The …

Breasts & The Beestings: Rethinking Breast-Feeding Practices, Maternity Rituals, & Maternal Attachment In Britain & Ireland, Susan Hogan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Viewing the wider collective rituals of childbirth as liminal is helpful in understanding the highly contested nature of many cultural practices. With English & Irish historical examples, this essay will argue that it has been to the advantage of women that they maintain a wide range of post-partum taboos and rituals. The themes of postpartum pollution and female power are developed in the context of wet-nursing and the withholding of colostrum. ‘Churching’, evident in the medieval period in Britain, continues to this very day, though in a simplified form. The colostrum taboo and ideas about the transmission of personality via …

A Mea Culpa For The Felix Culpa? A Greater Goods Response To The Problems Of Evil And Hell, Ian Spencer

Conference on Philosophy and Theology

In this paper I want to develop a particular kind of greater-good response to the problems of evil and hell, one which hence can serve as a backup plan should the free will defense not satisfy. Ultimately, this response will appear to belong to several traditions in theodicy. Like all greater-goods views, this one relies on explaining the existence of evil in terms of the greater goods that come out of it. Among these goods are the greater goods of Incarnation and Atonement, their respective goodness consisting in large part in the higher-order divine good of glorifying God through the …

Crusader, October 3, 2008, College Of The Holy Cross

Student Newspapers

The student newspaper for the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Articles include coverage of campus events and issues, sports, editorials and special features.

"Temple Pro Tempore": The Salt Lake City Endowment House, Lisle G. Brown

Librarian Research

The Salt Lake City Endowment House, built of adobe, was located on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. It served as a temporary temple during the construction of the Salt Lake Temple. It was completed in 1855 and razed in 1889. Using original floor plans, photographs, maps, and descriptions by persons who participated in its sacretodal activities, the author recreates its exterior and interior appearance. Floor plans and elevations of the building, prepared especially for the paper, are also included. The events leading to is destruction are chronicled. Finally, the author discusses the building’s influence on subsequent Mormon temple …

A Proposal For Creating A Master Of Divinity Specialization In Stewardship And An Ma In Stewardship And Development Program, John R. Frank

Doctor of Ministry

Critics and research indicate that inadequate leadership in stewardship education has led to inaccurate teaching, wrong attitudes, and a lack of generosity in the Christian church and parachurch ministries. This teaching has led tnany churches and parachurch organizations to etnphasize fundraising rather than the steward's spiritual journey and relationship with God. The dissertation addresses the need for a new look at stewardship, the theology of stewardship, and how stewardship is presented to the local church and parachurch.

The thesis of this project is that in order to itnprove stewardship in the Christian church, leadership must teach cotnprehensive, biblical stewardship with …

Arts And Sciences Newsletter, Volume 12, Issue 1, College Of Arts & Sciences

Arts and Sciences Newsletters

No abstract provided.