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Book Review: "Piety And Responsibility: Patterns Of Unity In Karl Rahner, Karl Barth And Vedanta Desika," John N. Sheveland, Reid B. Locklin

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of John N. Sheveland's "Piety and Responsibility: Patterns of Unity in Karl Rahner, Karl Barth and Vedanta Desika" by Reid B. Locklin.

Book Review: "Ramanuja And Schleiermacher: Toward A Constructive Comparative Theology," Jon Paul Sydnor, Sucharita Adluri

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of Jon Paul Sydnor's "Ramanuja and Schleiermacher: Toward a Constructive Comparative Theology" by Sucharita Adluri.

Announcement: Best Book In Hindu-Christian Studies

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

THE Society for Hindu-Christian Studies announces Dualities: A Theology of Difference (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) by Michelle Voss Roberts as the winner of its award, “Best Book in Hindu-Christian Studies-- Theology and Philosophy (2008-2011).”

Viewpoint: Reflections On Ludic Dimensions In Hindu-Christian Scholarship, Kenneth R. Valpey

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

AS scholars committed to explore and illuminate the varied regions of thought and practice, text and image, or prescription and custom circumscribed by the rather curious samāsa “Hindu-Christian,” we may do well to pay more thoughtful attention to ludic features of the landscape. Several decades ago Johan Huizinga counted the inclination to play to be so definitive of being human as to merit reference to our species as homo ludens. Happily, some attention is already being given to this in the area of South Asian religion, as Selva Raj and Corinne Dempsey have shown with their edited volume, Sacred Play: …

Toward A Fusion Of Theological Horizons: Constructivist Reflections And Responses To The Question Of Theism In The Yoga Sutra, Graham M. Schweig

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

IT is important to explore and disclose how--perhaps even why--we are going to speak about Christian and Yogic theism before conducting an exploration on theism in comparative relation between the two traditions. In this kind of discussion, it is inevitable that working definitions of key terms be provided, particular terms that will be clarified and offered to facilitate the discussion. In this study, I examine and draw from the particular studies of three scholars in the field who address the relationship between Christianity and Yoga in order to illuminate the dialectical tension between a resistence toward and the persistence of …

Yoga's 'A-Theistic'-Theism: A New Way Of Thinking About God, Gerald J. Larson

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

I want to begin with two intriguing quotations. The first is a passage quoted by John Cottingham in his book, The Spiritual Dimension, in which he mentions what C. S. Pierce calls “abductive inference,” or “inference to the best explanation.” The passage is from Simon Blackburn’s book, Think.

The Malleability Of Yoga: A Response To Christian And Hindu Opponents Of The Popularization Of Yoga, Andrea R. Jain

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

FOR over three thousand years, people have attached divergent meanings and functions to yoga. Its history has been characterized by moments of continuity, but also by divergence and change. This applies as much to precolonial yoga systems as to modern ones. All of this evidences yoga’s malleability (literally, the capacity to be bent into new shapes without breaking) in the hands of human beings.

A Blueprint For Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism Of Seno’O Girō (1889–1961) And The Youth League For Revitalizing Buddhism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. One notable exception to this trend, however, was the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), founded on 5 April 1931. Led by Nichiren Buddhist layman Seno’o Girō and made up of young social activists who were critical of capitalism, internationalist in outlook, and committed to a pan-sectarian and humanist form of Buddhism that would work for social justice and world peace, the league’s motto was “carry the …

On Helping One's Neighbor, Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

Few people doubt that severe poverty is a pressing moral issue. But what sorts of obligations, if any, do affluent people have toward the severely poor? If one accepts the idea that one has some obligations to the severely poor there still remains disagreement about the magnitude of this obligation and when it obtains. I consider Peter Singer's influential “shallow pond” argument, which holds that affluent people have greater obligations toward the severely poor than ordinary moral judgments suggest. Critics hold that Singer's view is excessively demanding and therefore untenable. I thus turn to the parable of the Good Samaritan …

Framing Salvation: Biblical Apocalyptic, Cinematic Dystopia, And Contextualizing The Narrative Of Salvation, Caesar A. Montevecchio

Journal of Religion & Film

Christian biblical authors used the apocalyptic genre to help contextualize the meaning of salvation for their audiences. Today, dystopian film can serve a similar function. In each case, the narrative diagnoses a sinister mis-ordering of human civilization and attempts to prescribe ways in which it can be overcome. Just as apocalyptic gave biblical authors the ability to make statements about what salvation was salvation from, dystopian narratives can similarly demonstrate what social conditions today remain in need of remediation. When these dystopian narratives do so by making use of symbols and themes associated with Christian soteriology their diagnoses can become …

Hitchcock And The Scapegoat: Violence And Victimization In The Wrong Man, David Humbert

Journal of Religion & Film

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man tells the story of Emmanuel Balestrero, arrested for a crime committed by his physical double. This paper examines the theme of the scapegoat in the film and argues that it portrays in miniature what theorist René Girard has described as a mimetic crisis. While the plight of the central character is usually portrayed as a product of blind chance, it is instead due to the mimetic fears, desires, and vanities of the members of society that accuse him. The fate of Balestrero reveals the operation of a specific kind of scapegoat mechanism that has its …

Sexism In Practice: Feminist Ethics Evaluating The Hookup Culture, Conor M. Kelly

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

Hooking up—the practice of pursuing sexual activity without any expectation of a relationship—has become a fixture of the U.S. college experience, resulting in an identifiable hookup culture across the country that can and should benefit from a feminist analysis. Sociological research reveals that this practice appeals to college students by ostensibly providing greater independence than traditional relationships. An outside analysis of these claims, however, demonstrates that the heterosexual hookup culture operates in a decidedly sexist fashion. In fact, the four common features of this culture: lack of commitment, ambiguous language, alcohol use, and social pressure to conform, all undermine the …

Philosophy & World Religions Department Newsletter, V5, Fall 2012, University Of Northern Iowa. Department Of Philosophy And World Religions.

Philosophy & World Religions Department Newsletter

Inside this issue: -

The Scales of Justice: Liberty or Equality

Notes from the Head: Art on Campus

Faculty Spotlight: Francis Degnin, Professor of Philosophy

Faculty Spotlight: John Burnight, Professor of Religion

Harry Brod: Superman is Jewish?

Francis Degnin on Ethics in a Hospital Setting

Philosophy & World Religion Picnic

Student Interview: Jordan Bancroft-Smithe, Philosophy

Student Interview: Wynne Johnson, Study of Religion

Impact of Scholarships...making serious study possible

Explorers of Religion

Philosophy Club, Explorers of Religion Book Sale

Alumni Updates

Alumni Spotlight: John Fordyce, Philosophy

Grant Rozeboom: "If you are my End, then what are my Means?"

Alumni Response Form

Dominus Mortis: Martin Luther On The Incorruptibility Of God In Christ, David Luy

Dissertations (1934 -)

Contemporary literature broadly presupposes that Luther's Christology represents a definitive course correction within Christian reflection upon the doctrine of God. The hinge point of Luther's innovation, according to this understanding, resides in his apparent endorsement of a mutual transfer of predicates between the divine and human nature of Christ. This mutuality represents a significant radicalization of pre-existing theological opinion, which is content to affirm the statement `God suffers', for instance, only in the carefully restricted sense that Christ (who happens to be divine) suffers according to His human nature. According to this more traditional explanation, it is not the divinity …

From Profane To Divine: The Hegemonic Appropriation Of Pagan Imagery Into Eastern Christian Hymnody, Jordan Lippert

Scripps Senior Theses

Spanning the first seven centuries of Christianity, this paper explores how Eastern Christian and Byzantine hymn chant was developed alongside pagan and Jewish worship traditions around the Near East. Comparison of hymns by Christian composers such as St. Romanos the Melodist and pagan poetry reveals many similarities in the types of metaphorical imagery used in both religious expressions. Common in Christian hymn texts, well-known metaphors, like the “Light of God,” are juxtaposed with pagan mythological gods, such as Apollo and Helios. This paper attempts to explain how and why Christians appropriated and adopted ancient pagan imagery into the burgeoning musical …

I Will Send You Elijah The Prophet, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Chapter 3 from the volume from the 2012 BYU Sperry Symposium, "I Will Send You Elijah the Prophet" investigates contemporary Christian and Jewish beliefs in the 1830s regarding Biblical prophecies regarding the return of the Prophet Elijah.

Outreach, September 2012

Outreach

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland

Outreach Finding Aid

The Ecology Of Vocation, Terri L. Elton

Faculty Publications

Those who care about the future of the church have a vested interest in both the quantity and the quality of candidates preparing for ministry in this generation and into the next. And it is easy to see those pastors as the product of a series of independent and individualized decisions. A college student, for example, meets with her pastor to discuss her future. Or an engineer sits at the kitchen table with his wife asking if they have the money for him to quit his job and head off to seminary. The future of ministry does indeed depend on …

Child Sacrifice In Egyptian Monastic Culture: From Familial Renunciation To Jephthah's Lost Daughter, Caroline T. Schroeder

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

The Apophthegmata Patrum tells the story of a man who, wishing to join a monastery, reenacts Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac by proceeding to throw his son in the Nile River on the command of the monastic father. Like Isaac, the boy is spared. This account of extreme familial renunciation in the service of the ascetic life is not the only account of a child killing or attempted killing in monastic literature. Nor does the biblical prefigurement of ascetic renunciation exhaust these narratives' significance. This essay examines accounts of child killings in Egyptian monastic culture through the lens of various textual …

The Lds Church In Italy: The 1966 Rededication By Elder Ezra Taft Benson, James A. Toronto, Richard N. Holzapfel

BYU Studies

Since the early years of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Italy has attracted the attention of Church leaders as a proselyting field. It is the practice of Church leaders to dedicate a land to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this article briefly describes the 1850 dedication of Italy by Apostle Lorenzo Snow, followed by a report of a second dedication in 1966 by another Apostle, Ezra Taft Benson. Elder Benson, as president of the European Mission, was warmly welcomed in Italy because of his prior work as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, when he …

Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth And The Rise Of Popular Premillennialism In The 1970s, Cortney S. Basham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

How people think about the end of the world greatly affects how they live in the present. This thesis examines how popular American thought about “the end of the world” has been greatly affected by Hal Lindsey’s 1970 popular prophecy book The Late, Great Planet Earth. LGPE sold more copies than any other non-fiction book in the 1970s and greatly aided the mainstreaming of “end-times” ideas like the Antichrist, nuclear holocaust, the Rapture, and various other concepts connected with popular end-times thought. These ideas stem from a specific strain of late-nineteenth century Biblical interpretation known as dispensational premillennialism, which …

Review Of: Thompson, J. Milburn, Introducing Catholic Social Thought, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This book enters a crowded field. There are many books on Catholic social thought (CST), as suggested by this book’s select bibliography of over 200 items. Most religious studies publishers—especially those of a Catholic orientation—have one or more books on the topic. There are roughly thirty to forty texts in print that a college professor would consider when teaching a course or a module on Catholic social thought. Nonetheless, J. Milburn Thompson’s Introducing Catholic Social Thought is a welcome addition to the field. Thompson has written a clear, informative, and fairly engaging book for college students and others wanting to …

Honorable Shame: The Rhetorical Use Of Didactic Shame Discourse In Ezekiel 36:16-32, Ronald Mudge

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Mudge, Ronald R. "Honorable Shame: The Rhetorical Use of Didactic Shame Discourse in Ezekiel 36:16-36" Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2012.328 pp.

After promising Israel such wonderful gifts as a new heart and a return to the land, Ezek36:16-32 ends with a command for Israel to be ashamed. Biblical scholars have offered a number of different explanations for this unusual order without consensus.

A methodology that employs sociological interpretation and rhetorical analysis covers new ground and resolves the crux of Ezek 36:16-32. A basic word study demonstrates that primary shame lexemes in Ezekiel refer to low status as judged by an …

The Regime Legitimacy Of One-China: How The Vatican Can Make China Whole Again, Jonathan David Bradley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Currently, the sovereign state of Vatican City does not formally recognize the People's Republic of China. Nor does the Vatican recognize the Chinese Communist Party as the legitimate regime over China. Instead the Vatican recognizes the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan. There are 23 countries in the world who share the Vatican's legitimization of the Republic of Taiwan. The largest concentration of those countries is in heavily Catholic Central America. This thesis looks at the dynamics of the Sino-Vatican relationship in three areas: political tension management of the Chinese people by the CCP, improved relations between the …

What Language Shall I Borrow: The High And Low Of It, Lynn Mitchell

Leaven

No abstract provided.

The God We Worship: Encountering His Person, Ronald Highfield

Leaven

No abstract provided.

Unleashing The Scripture: Freeing The Bible From Captivity To America, Stanley Hauerwas, Mark Manassee

Leaven

No abstract provided.

Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey From Bozeman To Banares, Diana J. Eck, Kathy J. Pulley

Leaven

No abstract provided.

Care Of The Soul: A Guide For Cultivating Depth And Sacredness In Everyday Life, Thomas Moore, Constance M. Fulmer

Leaven

No abstract provided.

Two Churches, Two Journeys, Mac Dauphin, Emily Jones Rushing, Kathy Pulley

Leaven

No abstract provided.