Digital Commons Network^™

America The Yogiful: Insights Into American Yoga Culture Today, Carolina Castaneda

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Originally a spiritual technology, yoga has been practiced in India and surrounding areas for thousands of years. In the late nineteenth century the practice of yoga gained popularity as a physical, mental and spiritual commodity among the masses in America and the world. Yoga is now a globally recognized fitness routine, part of the everyday lives of men and women seeking relaxation, stretching and mental sanity. In today’s fast paced world it is easy to understand yoga is appealing to the masses, however, as a yoga practitioner myself I often wondered if Americans are gaining all the benefits of the …

Gateways To The Goddess: Devotion To Kali In Cross-Cultural Perspective, Nicole C. Petersen

Departmental Honors Projects

Kali, the dark Hindu goddess of time and fierce Mother of the universe, has a pervasive global presence. This project traces Her from historical roots in India across borders to temples in California. A theoretical synthesis of the experiential approaches of sensory anthropology and Victor Turner's three-part model of ritual processes, the project presents an innovative approach through which to study and articulate devotion to Kali in diverse cultural contexts. Through textual research, interviews and observant participation, I analyze the process whereby devotees separate themselves from the mundane and enter liminal spaces of worship, understood both spatially and temporally. I …

Evaluating The Cognitive And Affective Changes In The Worldview Of A Group Of Eastern Kentucky Community College Students Resulting From A College-Level Course In Religious Studies, Alan David Profitt

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Reflections On The Potential Of Gender Theory For North American Pentecostal History, Linda M. Ambrose, Leah Payne

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

In this article we show how gender is a useful category of analysis for students of North American pentecostal history. First, we provide a working definition ofthe term gender (a term with a plethora of meanings!). Then we cite a few examples from current scholarship that demonstrate how gender as a theoretical construct illuminates certain aspects of the North American movement. Finally, we reflect on the potential benefit of using gender to recount a variety of pentecostal histories, both North American and beyond.

Perceptions Of Seventh-Day Adventist Church Elders In Ghana And The United States On Servant Leadership And Culture: A Correlational Study, Appiah Kubi Kwarteng

Dissertations

Servant leadership has been discussed and described mostly in the North American context. Thus, there are concerns that this model of leadership may be culturally anchored in North American metaphors and thinking and may have limited universal applicability outside that context. In recent times, the Seventh-day Adventist Churchhas seen its membership swell mainly in non-Western areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa.

With the changes taking place in the church membership globally, and the challenges these changes impose on leadership, this study was pursued with a twofold purpose. One was to investigate the differences in the perceptions of elders of the Seventh-day …

The Weir Family, 1820–1920: Expanding The Traditions Of American Art, Marian Wardle, Herman Du Toit

BYU Studies

Marian Wardle, curator of American art at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art and part-time faculty member at BYU in art history, has assembled a remarkable group of writers from across the country for an anthology that focuses on the lives and artistic production of three of America's most notable artists: Robert Walter Weir (1803-1889) and his sons John Ferguson Weir (1841-1926) and Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919). The BYU Museum of Art became the beneficiary of a collection of the Weirs' artworks when one of Julian Weir's daughters, Dorothy, passed away in 1947, leaving much of her family's extensive …

Reviews — The Color Of Christ: The Son Of God And The Saga Of Race In America, By Edward J. Blum And Paul Harvey; Christology And Whiteness: What Would Jesus Do? Edited By George Yancy, Diana L. Hayes

Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium

No abstract provided.

Revisioning A Japanese Spiritual Recovery Through Manga: Kobayashi Yoshinori’S ‘Gōmanism’ As Aesthetics And Ideology, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

This essay provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic ideology of “Gomanism” in the manga of Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1953), particularly Yasukuniron (On Yasukuni, 2005) and Tennōron (On the Emperor, 2009), in order to flesh out the implications of the author’s “revisionist” approach to Japanese religion, politics and history.

Sacred Orality, Sacred Dialogue: Walter J. Ong And The Practice Of Hindu-Christian Studies, Reid B. Locklin

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

THE genesis of this essay can be traced to two specific events from my own personal history. One summer, when I had just finished coursework in my doctoral program and was looking forward to my thesis, I took a retreat at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, a Hindu ashram in the Pocono Mountains region of eastern Pennsylvania. Before one of the discourses that constituted the retreat, a lay devotee of the Arsha Vidya movement stood to offer a testimonial to the Gita Home Study Program, published by the ashram press. The study program itself is pretty simple: the text consists of sections …

Unruly Catholics From Dante To Madonna: Faith, Heresy, And Politics In Cultural Studies, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

"During the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church went through a period of liberal reform under the stewardship of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. Successive popes sharply reversed course, enforcing conservative ideological values and silencing progressive voices in the Church. Consequently, those Catholics who had embraced the spirit of Vatican II were left feeling adrift and betrayed. In Unruly Catholics from Dante to Madonna, scholars of literature, film, religion, history, and sociology delve into this conflict–and historically similar ones–through the examination of narratives by and about rebellious Catholics.

Essays in Unruly Catholics explore how renowned Catholic literary figures …

Life Post 9/11: Experiences Of Korean Americans Ten Years Later, Jay Lee

Dissertations and Theses

This is one of the first qualitative studies to investigate experiences of Korean-American Christians living in New York City at the time of 9/11. This study sought to gain an understanding of how a group of Second Generation Korean-American Christians living in New York City at the time of the 9/11 attacks experienced that event and the event's impact on their religious beliefs. The study also investigated the communication context at the time of the ten year anniversary of the event, September 11th, 2011. The guiding research questions were: RQ1) What were their life experiences of 9/11? RQ2) Was their …

Clash Of Civilization Or Clash Of Newspaper Ideologies? An Analysis Of The Ideological Split In British Newspaper Commentaries On The 2002 Miss World Riots In Nigeria, Farooq Kperogi

Faculty Articles

Riots that erupted in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna over a newspaper article that some Muslims interpreted as blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad on account of Nigeria’s decision to host the 2002 edition of the Miss World beauty pageant captured the attention of the media around the world. This article investigates how the British press framed the riots in their opinion columns and editorials. Through an interpretive textual analysis of the opinion pages, the study shows that while the ideological persuasions of left-leaning British press predisposed them to express opinions on the Miss World riots that resonated with what might …

The "Violence" Of The Canon: Revisiting Contemporary Notions Of Canonical Forms, Colby Dickinson

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The historical conditions surrounding the processes of forming a canon are rarely examined directly, yet it is these processes which govern over the realm of religious representations and identity constructions. In light of recent critical scholarship, it is imperative to address theologically the role that the canon plays within a religious tradition. This essay demonstrates the cultural necessity of canonical forms despite their “monotheistic tendency” to subdivide the world into binary oppositions. By utilizing a scale of violence to determine the impact of the canonical form upon culture this essay offers an account of canons and their role in forming …

God Made It Happen: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Jerry Falwell's Response To 9/11, Terry Littleton

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Using rhetorical analysis, this project examines the two texts (Listen America! and 700 Club interview after 9/11) of Religious Right preacher, Jerry Falwell to examine conceptual continuity over twenty years and uncover key ideological concepts. While the Religious Right employs many methods to influence the votes of the evangelical congregation, this paper will focus specifically on Falwell and the use of Biblical metaphors in his popular evangelical discourse. The project examines the fear-mongering used to create hate and paranoia in audience of these two texts.

Politics Of Religion In Popular Culture: Religious Rhetoric And Ironic In(Ter)Ventions, Sabatino Dibernardo

Verbum

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

"As Mark Taylor suggests in the epigram grafted above, the impossibility of grasping what religion is about may be the condition of religion’s im/possibility, which thereby engenders a contested site for those attempting to define and classify religion. When this contested site is also the site of a strategic deployment of a rhetorical discourse with axiological pretentions, then, with Barbara Herrnstein Smith, one might suspect an event of self-privileging at the expense of some devalued other (including mass media and popular culture). When such a deployment is conducted by …

Facing Forward, Looking Back: Religion And Film Studies In The Last Decade, Joseph Kickasola, John C. Lyden, S. Brent Plate, Antonio Sison, Sheila J. Nayar, Stefanie Knauss, Rachel Wagner, Jolyon Thomas

Journal of Religion & Film

On November 17, 2012, at the American Academy of Religion’s National Meeting, the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group sponsored a session entitled, “Facing Forward, Looking Back: Religion and Film Studies in the Last Decade.” The session focused on four recent books in the field of Religion and Film: John Lyden’s Film as Religion: Myths, Morals and Rituals (NYU, 2003); S. Brent Plate’s Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World (Wallflower Press, 2009); Antonio Sison’s World Cinema, Theology, and the Human: Humanity in Deep Focus (Routledge, 2012); and Sheila Nayar’s The Sacred and the Cinema: Reconfiguring the …

Elder Selection: Engaging The Monterey Church Of Christ In A Collaborative Elder Selection Process, Benjamin D. Pickett

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the outcomes of a project intended to foster greater collaboration at the Monterey Church of Christ in its selection of elders. The intervention involved the engagement of the Monterey Church in a process that involved multiple steps. These steps involved engagement with teachers in the context of a teacher training seminar, with Bible classes in a series of Bible lessons, and with elders, elder nominees, and their spouses in order to discern the perceived degree to which Monterey members participate in the elder selection process. The Bible lessons presented an alternative model for theological …

Hangin' With Judas: A Narrative Analysis Of Stephen Adly Guirgis's 'The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot', Constance Falconer

Masters Theses

Stephen Adly Guirgis has created an era-melting play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which explores the timeless debate between divine mercy and free will. A systematic application of Walter R. Fisher's narrative analysis, through form identification and a functional analysis, determined how Guirgis accomplishes persuasion. This qualitative study focused on Guirgis's narrative, using Walter R. Fisher's narrative paradigm as a framework to answer the research question(s): (1) If Guirgis's ideology and created world in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot are foreign and imagined, how is narrative probability and narrative fidelity achieved?; and, (2) How does Guirgis persuade his …

Satanic Indifference And Ultimate Reality, Brian J. Reis

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Satan has captured the imagination of writers in the English language for centuries. This figure and the notion of evil have gone through many changes in English literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Something changed Satan during this time, and made him into an arbiter of truth rather than a figure of rebellion. In The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain used him as the grand narrator of the universe who explains the truth of all existence, that life is an illusion. The American horror author H.P. Lovecraft carried this one step further, using Rudolf Otto's mysterium horrendum to divest Satan …

Mad Men: The Relationship Between Psychology And Religion In Chaim Potok’S The Chosen, Laura Longobardi

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

After watching an episode from the first season of Mad Men, that cleverly juxtaposed the Catholic Sacrament of Confession and a session with a psychologist, I wondered: are religion and psychology really all that different? After reading Chaim Potok’s 1967 novel The Chosen, I began to think that the perceived differences between these two disciplines were superficial. Psychology and religion both provide people with a valuable way of understanding their relationship to the world around them, in spite of the apparent differences between them. By examining Sigmund Freud and William James’ attitudes toward both religion and psychology and applying these …

Oxymormon: Feminism Ain't Got No Place On The Pulpit… Or Does It?, Jennifer Johnson-Bell

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Just as Moraga examines the effects this myth has had on her identity, I will, as a Mormon (although I dis-identify with that label except in the context of my upbringing) and a feminist, explore certain myths perpetuated within the Mormon culture and what effects they have had on my identity as well as my relationship with other Mormon women. Three myths I would like to explore revolve around the concepts of plural marriage (polygamy), priesthood, and the notion of Heavenly Mother. [excerpt]

A Christian Understanding Of Aesthetic Agency: A Theological Framework Of Resistance To Cultural Imperialism, Elise Edwards

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Aesthetic agency refers to conditions, capacities, and states that inform artistic forms of acting and exerting power on social structures. In resistance to the marginalization of women of color, aesthetic agency is exercised through creative acts of culture-making and critique of such practices to challenge domination and representation of the oppressed other. To support this work as a feminist Christian ethicist, I construct a theological framework for aesthetic agency. This paper proposes a theological understanding of transformative aesthetics and then describes the exercise of aesthetic agency for Christian communities by using a television special, Black Girls Rock! as an example.

Godly Heretics: Essays On Alternative Christianity In Literature And Popular Culture, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

"When computers freeze, they are "rebooted" and soon working properly again. Similarly, legendary thinkers throughout history have argued that Christianity should start fresh by recapturing the humanitarian spirit of Jesus' original message. These include such disparate individuals as Thomas Jefferson, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, and the religious leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Surprisingly enough, even classic television shows and films meant to be entertaining--Lost, Battlestar Galactica, It's a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day, Decalogue, and A Charlie Brown Christmas--are attempts to apply the basic principles of Christianity to modern times. …

A Theological Inquiry Regarding The Practice Of The Eucharist In Cyberspace, Janice L. Duce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at the Eucharist in cyberspace, beginning with a case study of a faith community who met with controversy after the group shared the ritual in cyberspace. Based on a qualitative study of the practice and its aftermath, the theoretical analysis includes the nature of the Internet itself and its capacity as a location for networked communities; its capacity to operate as a communication medium for a religious ritual; and the involvement of active users.

The users in this case were members of a religious community interested in preserving their Eucharist theological tradition. The first set of major …

An Effort To Demythologize Missional Pedagogy In An Attempted Decolonizing Of Biblical Studies With A View Toward A Constructive Alternative, Juan Dieter Doyle

Master of Arts Theses

No abstract provided.

Stewardship: A Biblical Metaphor For The Formation Of Christian Scholars, Julien C.H. Smith, T Laine Scales

Christ College Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Resurgence Of The Traditional Justice System In Postcolonial Benin (Nigeria) Society, Itohan Idumwonyi, Solomon Ikhidero

Religious Studies Faculty Scholarship

Rules and norms of behaviour are common features in human society. This is confirmed by human being’s desire for protection, fairness and mutual respect from fellow humans in their social groups. Recognized authorities whose sanctions are respected help to ensure fairness and mutual respect for each other. For the traditional Benin (African) society, the issue of law and justice is the joint concern of the deities, ancestors and the human members within the society. The aim of this paper, is to examine (i) the relevance of traditional justice system in postcolonial Benin (African) society; and (ii) the unwavering respect for …

The National Muslim Forum Nepal: Experiences Of Conflict, Formations Of Identity, Megan Adamson Sijapati

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

With Nepal's recent transition to state secularism, the politicization of Muslim religious identity has emerged with increasing vitality. One particular pan-Nepali Muslim organization, the Rastriya Muslim Mane Nepal (National Muslim Forum Nepal), offers a window into the complex relationship between national and religious identity that animates this politicization. Through analysis of the National Muslim Forum's earliest discourses, produced between 2005 and 2006, both immediately before and after the people's revolution that resulted in the declaration of Nepal as a secular state, this essay highlights the ways that experiences of conflict coupled with a national political transition shape and contribute to …

The Hybrid Spirit Animating Chinese Pentecostals In Malaysia, Eu Kit Lim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the assertion in postcolonial scholarship, especially from the work of Homi Bhabha that the construction and performance of hybrid identities act as a form of resistance for marginalized communities against structures of oppression. While this study supports this assertion, it also critiques how hybridity fails to address issues of unequal power relations. This has led to an uncritical use of hybridity that reproduces the very idea of static identity which its proponents claim to transcend.

Through qualitative study of Chinese members of a Pentecostal church in Malaysia, this study argues that church members engage in "unequal belonging" …

Digital Storytelling: Empowering Feminist And Womanist Faith Formation With Young Women, Mary E. Hess

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.