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The Unsettled Church: The Search For Identity And Relevance In The Ecclesiologies Of Nicholas Healy, Ephraim Radner, And Darrell Guder, Emanuel D. Naydenov

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation examines the efforts of three contemporary theologians whose work is a part of the search for a new methodology for doing ecclesiology located on the continuum between the Church's identity and relevance. They are the Catholic theologian Nicholas Healy, Anglican theologian Ephraim Radner, and Presbyterian theologian Darrell Guder. They come to the subject matter from different ecclesiological backgrounds, and, as such, their work can be taken as representative in as much as it stands for their unique efforts to theologize within their own traditions and contexts. By critiquing and analyzing their proposals I will bring them into dialog …

Globalization And African Catholicism: Towards A New Era Of Evangelization, Joseph Ogbonnaya

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

This paper argues that evangelization takes place within the context of globalization, the phenomenon that integrates the economic, cultural, social, political and religious dimensions of human existence towards improved standard of living for humanity. While acknowledging the potential dangers of globalization, especially the expanding income disparity, marginalization, secularization, consumerism, the tendency towards monoculturalism and imperialism, the author advocates daily personal encounter with the person of Jesus as the springboard of Christian spirituality. This paper concentrates on the impact of globalization on African Catholicism’s appropriation of Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium for a new evangelization and recommends important changes in …

Catholic Labor Education And The Association Of Catholic Trade Unionists. Instructing Workers To Christianize The Workplace, Paul Lubienecki Ph.D.

Journal of Catholic Education

This article analyzes the effect of the American Catholic Church, through its program of specialized labor education, on the growth and development of organized labor in the twentieth century. With the proclamation of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, he requested that the Church complete the work began by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 with his landmark social encyclical Rerum Novarum.

However, the American interpretation and utilization of the social encyclicals varied from their intended European meaning. The cumulative effect of these two encyclicals was support for the workers’ rights to organize and create Christian labor associations. From …

Egypt Excavation Conservation Training, Kerry Muhlestein, Lincoln Blumell, David Whitchurch, Paul Stavast, Giovanni Tata, R Paul Evans, Kristin South

Journal of Undergraduate Research

With the monies from the MEG granted to me and the BYU Egypt Excavation Project, we were able to accomplish wonderful things. As per our proposal, we have used the monies granted through this MEG to do conservation work in Egypt and Provo and to train students in conservation and museum skills.

Community-Edifying 'World-Construction' In Paul And 1 Clement As A Resource For Theological Deliberations About Human Origins, Benjamin J. Lappenga

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Recognizing that the rhetorical context for the cosmological reflections of both Paul and one of his earliest interpreters is the promotion of community-building, this paper proposes that the “world-construction” of these early believers offers a model for the contemporary church’s discourse concerning human origins. The paper, then, is an exercise in theological interpretation of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, read alongside one of the earliest interactions with these texts in the letter known as 1 Clement.

Monastic Missional Pilgrim Communities In Liquid Modern Spain, Garrick C. Roegner

Doctor of Ministry

This dissertation answers the question of how to start spiritual movements amongst young adults and university students in Spain. It begins by examining the current cultural context of present day Spain, exploring why Christianity is in decline. In the Introduction it argues for understanding Spain as being characteristic of Bauman’s liquid modernity. Here the dissertation adopts Bauman’s typologies of liquid modern society being populated by tourists and vagabonds, constantly on the move, but without destination. Chapter One discusses the need for community as the base structure for mission and the importance of missional theology (missio Dei) before suggesting missional communities …

Mind The Gap: The Relevance Of Contextualization For The Training Course Fresh X-Der Kurs By Kirche2, Sandra Bils

Doctor of Ministry

In Germany, the Evangelisch-Lutherische Landeskirche Hannovers and the Roman Catholic diocese of Hildesheim are partnering in the ecumenical network. Searching for an appropriate endeavor, which supports the emergence and Kirche2 sustainment for new forms of being church, they were encouraged by the fresh expressions movement in the UK and their training model, mission-shaped ministry. The use of this foreign material in Germany needs adaptation. Hence, this dissertation enfolds the relevance of contextualization and seeks to reflect the adaptation process, following the main research question: How can the Fresh-X course by Kirche2 adapt the foreign material for the context in Germany …

Liminal Spaces: A Narrative Spirituality Of The Bible, Thomas J. Rundel

Doctor of Ministry

Liminal space is a place in-between what was and what will be. It is crucial for ongoing Christian formation. However, the Evangelical Church currently has no space for supporting those in liminality. Evangelical theology and practice actively discourage those in liminal space. As a result, Christian maturity is frustrated. Future leaders and contemplatives are endangered. This dissertation explores how the Evangelical Church could acknowledge, support, and educate those in liminal spaces.

The Bible repeats three liminal themes which create a paradigm of ongoing Christian formation. The themes are desert/wilderness, pit/grave, and exile/pilgrimage. The desert/wilderness is a liminal space, the grave/pit …

Take It To The Bridge: The Arts Of Interfaith Peacebuilding, Sharenda Roam

Doctor of Ministry

This writing argues that the arts go beyond dialogue to affect and enhance interfaith peacebuilding, understanding, and cooperation. My research focuses on the three Abrahamic Faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with an in-depth analysis of music and peacebuilding amidst Jews and Arabs in Israel. Specifically, I discuss the use of music as a bridge of understanding between cultures and share examples of other types of art as well. This research also adds to the limited amount of theory, analysis, and writing in the subject area of peacebuilding and the arts. Section One introduces the terms and ideas surrounding the topics …

Potential Worldview And Behavioral Transformation Within The Ugandan Lgbt And Evangelical Context, Phil Smart

Doctor of Ministry

To fulfill the mission entrusted to believers by God and shown through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the same principle of loving others unconditionally is the Church’s mandate. Unfortunately, Ugandan traditional worldviews, compounded by outside influences, have contributed to bringing this self-proclaimed, Christian nation to a point of worldwide recognition and reprimand because of its destructive anti-gay legislation and oppression of the LGBT community.1 Focusing on the struggle between Ugandan evangelical leaders and their response to those with same-sex orientation, this dissertation seeks to investigate the use of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) as a tool for mitigating the destructive attitudes and …

More Than A Pretty Face: Using Embodied Lutheran Theology To Evaluate Community-Building In Online Social Networks, Joel Oesch

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Oesch, Joel, C. "More than a Pretty Face: Using Embodied Lutheran Theology to Evaluate Community-building in Online Social Networks." Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2015. 264pp.

The human body holds a special place in Christian theology. Jesus gives of his body in the crucifixion and experiences bodily resurrection on Easter morning. The sacrament of Holy Communion is a common partaking in the actual body and blood of Christ. But what of the human body for the Christian, and of what import does this have for the broader community? The dissertation seeks to build on these facts and make a case for …

Ijce And Scholarship On Christianity And Education, David I. Smith, Trevor Cooling

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Psalms In Our Lamentable World, Don Saliers

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Where are worshipers in Christian communities to go with their experiences and observations of violence, injustice, and other forms of suffering? Historically, a central source of realistic faith-based responses to tragedy has been the Psalter, broadly defined as a set of biblical psalms arranged by date to be individually and collectively read, sung, and prayed. Recent scholarship on psalms has focused on lament and complaint, and questions regarding the presence of trauma and violence in religious traditions have shown such psalms to be particularly relevant to contemporary culture.

This article examines three “psalms of lament,” Psalms 13, 42/43, and 88, …

Buddhism As Performing Art: Visualizing Music In The Tibetan Sacred Ritual Music Liturgies, Jeffrey W. Cupchik

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The eleventh-century Tibetan female ascetic, Machik Labdrön (1055-1153), developed a Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhist meditation method called Chöd (Tib. gCod, Eng. “to cut”) and associated ritual practices as a means of eliminating “self-grasping,” which is defined as the mistaken instinct of regarding one’s “self” and all phenomena as intrinsically, or independently, existent. Her musical-meditation method became renowned across Central Asia during her lifetime, and Chödritual practices and liturgies have been transmitted from teacher to disciple in unbroken lineages until today. The ritual is now well known globally, with Tibetan Lamas, nuns, and empowered exponents teaching widely, across a transnational …

Gerona's "Night Journeys: The Power Of Dreams In Transatlantic Quaker Culture" - Book Review, Michele Lise Tarter

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Insider Research Into 'Experiment With Light': Uncomfortable Reflexivity In A Different Field, Helen Meads

Quaker Studies

In this article based on ongoing research, I discuss the difficulty of separating my personal experience from my research into 'Experiment with Light'. I argue by reference to the work of Labaree, Pillow and Boff that the inherent complexities of researching a process which itself seeks 'Truth' requires the researcher to be reflexive to the point of discomfort. I show how the dilemmas Labaree identifies in insider research signal Pillow's uncomfortable reflexivity and move her analysis beyond the context of race and gender to the religious context, where it serves a different purpose. I conclude by reference to Boff's theory …

Interrogating The Experience Of Quaker Scholars In Hindy And Sikh Studies: Spiritual Journeying And Academic Engagement, Eleanor Nesbitt

Quaker Studies

This article reports a recent investigation of the relationship between the spiritual and academic journeys of seven scholars whose fields involve the study of aspects of Sikh and/ or Hindu faith. Several frameworks for the study are suggested, including Quaker encounter with Indic religions; the changing nature of social diversity; and the insider/ outsider discussion in religious studies. Discussion of their experience highlights the participants' faith background and promptings to attend a Quaker Meeting for Worship as well as the initial impetus to their academic specialism, their guiding values and their self-identification. Multiple connections between the two 'journeys' emerge-not least …

The Problem Of Quaker Identity, Peter J. Collins

Quaker Studies

The paper constitutes a summary of my attempts, during the past 15 years, to understand contemporary Quakers and Quakerism. The issue on which I focus is the difficulty in representing Quaker identity given the heterogeneity of Quaker belief. During the last decade I have found three approaches useful in analysing this problem. In the first place, I found that Quaker identity is revealed through their talk in and around Meeting. Although each individual friend has a unique biographical trajectory, this talk tends to be both storied and thematic. Furthermore, such narrative discourse is coloured by one particularly pervasive character of …

Sibalo, Admir, B. 1996 (Fa 789), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full text paper (click Additional Files below) for Folklife Archives Project 789. This collection features a term paper about the Muslim religious traditions within the author's family. The project was completed by Western Kentucky University student Admir Sibalo for credit in an "Introduction to Folk Studies" class.

Pentecostal Feeling In Conversation With William James And Rudolf Otto: A Preliminary Exploration, Ekaputra Tupamahu

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

Pentecostals have reached people from many different nationalities, races, languages, and social status. This inevitably leads to a great diversity within the movement and Allan Anderson has rightly pointed out that, “it is very difficult to find some common unifying features or distinctiveness by which they might be defined." However, it is certainly true that Pentecostalism is greatly diverse, yet it can also be argued that one of the most important characteristics of this movement is the display of emotion or feeling in both public and personal worship. Pentecostal worship is filled with emotional expressions such as crying, laughing, and …

Return To Me: Lenten Reflections From Holy Cross (2015), Office Of Mission, College Of The Holy Cross

Office of Mission Publications

This reflection booklet was prepared by the Office of Mission at the College of the Holy Cross to serve as a prayer aid throughout the liturgical season of Lent. Within these pages are the unique voices of many people from the Holy Cross community: faculty, staff, students, alumni, administrators, members of the Board of Trustees, benefactors of the College and Jesuits. Each contributor reflects on the readings prescribed for the Mass of the day and while we hope that their own prayers help you to pray, we hope, too, that the reflections contained herein might also help you to return …

Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, And Their Terrifying God, Baird L. Tipson

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Statues of Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone grace downtown Hartford, Connecticut, but few residents are aware of the distinctive version of Puritanism that these founding ministers of Hartford's First Church carried into the Connecticut wilderness (or indeed that the city takes its name from Stone's English birthplace). Shaped by interpretations of the writings of Saint Augustine largely developed during the ministers' years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Hartford's church order diverged in significant ways from its counterpart in the churches of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Hartford Puritanism argues for a new paradigm of New England Puritanism. Hartford's founding ministers, Baird Tipson …

Why Teach Theology?, Susan Ross

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Liturgy, Anthropology, And Life Cycle, Kathy Smith

Symposium on Worship Archive

How do children worship best? How can worship help young people through the teen years? What practices of worship resonate most with adults and elderly people? This workshop will look at the human life cycle and the developmental stages that all people grow through (cognitive, sensorimotor, psychological, moral, and faith development), and will consider what this means for all ages to participate fully in worship.

2015 Program Book

Symposium on Worship Archive

No abstract provided.

Virtuous Friends: Morality And Quaker Identity, Jackie Leach Scully

Quaker Studies

Recent work in moral philosophy and psychology has made deep connections between questions of morality and identity, suggesting that orientation to a moral framework, through community practices and discourses, contributes to the individual sense of self. I argue that contemporary Liberal Quakers in Britain thus use their moral judgments among other things to reinforce their social identity as Quakers, emphasising a shared approach to ethical framework and sources of authority over the substantive content of the judgments. The favoured ethical framework of Liberal British Quakers appears to be a form of virtue ethics, and I explore the possibility that links …

Ten Years Of Birmingham: An Extended Editorial, Pink Dandelion

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Burton's "A Social History Of Quakers In Scotland, 1800-2000" And Burnet & Marwick's "The Story Of Quakerism In Scotland 1650- 1950" - Book Review, Betty Hagglund

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Hamm's "The Quakers In America" And Dobbs' "Authority And The Early Quaker" - Book Review, Martyn Bennett

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Cantor's "Quakers, Jews And Science: Religious Responses To Modernity And The Sciences In Britain" - Book Review, Ruth Watts

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.