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Leasing Land, Losing Sovereignty: Us Military Land Leasing In Okinawa, Japan, Kathryn Blau

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Military land leasing in Okinawa has played a central role in limiting Okinawan political sovereignty since the end of World War II by fostering economic dependence on US military bases and enabling policies that override local opposition. Tracing the evolution of the leasing system under both American occupation and Japanese administration reveals how land expropriation, compensation policies, and increasingly generous financial incentives encouraged reliance on base-related income while discouraging advocacy for land reversion and base reduction. The analysis further demonstrates how the Japanese government's legal enforcement of mandatory lease renewals, particularly during the 1996 Okinawa land dispute, curtailed the rights …

Editor's Preface, Gabe Smock

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This editor's preface explores the origins and enduring mission of The Thetean, BYU's undergraduate history journal. Through archival research in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, the journal's founding history is traced to its inaugural 1967 edition, revealing the origin, pronunciation, and meaning of its distinctive name as a reference to Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. The preface highlights the journal's longstanding commitment to encouraging scholarly research, providing publication opportunities, and introducing students to the work of historians. By recovering the journal's own history, it underscores the broader value of historical inquiry: understanding the past to better …

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Beyond Self-Defense: A Critical Analysis Of The Biden Administration’S Application Of ‘Just War’ Theory In The Israel-Hamas War, Thomas Elias

Graduate Student Research Symposium

Abstract

The Israel-Hamas war has ignited critical questions regarding the justification for violence, particularly the right to self-defense. Harm to Palestinian noncombatants and the conflict’s prolonged duration has contributed to critiques and doubts about Israel’s military operations and the Biden administration’s substantial military aid post-October 7th. The war’s extensive destruction and dehumanization creates a stark tension with the Biden administration’s invocation of just war theory. This paper critically analyzes the Biden administration’s use of just war theory in supporting the Israel-Hamas war, investigating how Christian theological ethics on just war and self-defense have been utilized and misapplied since October 2023. …

Is Genuine Redemption Possible Through A Counterfeit Christ?, Tams M. Mullins

Masters Theses

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), commonly referred to as Mormons, consider themselves Christians without equivocation. Evangelical Christianity has, however, challenged this claim since the inception of the Latter-day Saints. The Latter-day Saints purport to be Christian in doctrine and practice and claim a Christian identity centered around their acceptance of the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. While the Latter-day Saints ascribe to a high Christology, confess Jesus as Lord, and regard Him as their Redeemer, the Jesus of the Latter-day Saints’ literature bears little resemblance to the Jesus of evangelical Christianity. …

Implementation Of The Clinician’S Guide To Spiritual Recovery From Fetal Loss, Donald K. Eckhardt Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Obstetricians and midwives care for a surprising number of patients experiencing perinatal loss each year, yet they lack formal training in grief support. Lack of training heightens their stress, anxiety, and burnout, especially when chaplain support is unavailable. Miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death profoundly affect families, and healthcare providers share in their pain as they deliver the deceased baby and offer comfort, counseling, and hope. This project’s creator hypothesized that enhancing providers’ knowledge of grief support and biblical Scripture as well as highlighting how God’s grace and love can ease guilt, grief, anxiety, and depression would reduce provider burnout while …

Doctor Of Ministry Final Portfolio: Developing A Dynamic Educational Curriculum For Truthwins.Com Supporting Its Global Prospective On Individual's Spiritual Formation, Randall Thomas Keith

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This portfolio presents the development of a dynamic educational curriculum for Truthwins.com designed to support its global mission of fostering individual spiritual formation across cultural, social and theological boundaries. The project integrates biblical principles, intercultural competency and contemporary educational practices to cultivate rounded spiritual growth among learners worldwide. Drawing on theological reflection, qualitative research and practical ministry applications, the study outlines a framework that embraces inclusivity, promotes critical engagement with spiritual formation, and equips participants to embody authentic discipleship in a dynamic context. The resulting curriculum aims to inspire transformative learning experiences that unify spiritual development with Truthwins.com commitment to …

A Virtual Coach Model For Christian Leaders: Addressing Burnout And Other Mental Health Challenges, Hillary Arlene Hinds

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The demands placed on pastoral leaders have increased immensely, and according to Eser (2025), this has caused emotional exhaustion, declining mental health, and feelings of isolation that threaten their well-being and ministry. Data on pastoral leadership burnout and the extent to which a coaching approach is used to assist them in addressing mental health challenges in Canada are limited. This research reported on the use of Whitmore’s (1980) GROW model contextualized within a biblical worldview to mitigate burnout with a group of pastoral leaders (N = 5) in Saskatchewan, Canada. Findings from this research, though from a small population, were …

Lament Shift: Utilizing Biblical Lament As A Reframing Process To Help Church Members Of First Baptist Church Of Lumberton, Mississippi, Cope With Emotional Distress, Paul Wiseheart

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this DMIN action research project was to address the problem that church members at First Baptist Church of Lumberton, Mississippi (FBCL) were unprepared to use biblical lament as a meaning-making coping practice to manage emotional distress. The thesis statement was that if FBCL church members participated in Lament Shift, they would report greater preparedness to manage emotional distress. Lament Shift is a curriculum-based program designed to equip FBCL church members to use biblical lament as a meaning-making coping practice in the context of a four-week peer support group. The study used a pre-experimental mixed methods design and …

Bridging The Generational Gap: Enhancing Unity And Engagement In The Church, Lesley H. Booker

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The contemporary church is increasingly characterized by the presence of multiple generations worshiping and serving together, each bringing distinct values, communication styles, expectations, and approaches to faith. While this diversity presents significant opportunities for spiritual growth and community development, it can also create challenges that hinder unity, participation, and effective ministry. This study examines the generational gap within the church and explores strategies for enhancing unity and engagement among members from different age groups. Using a qualitative research approach, the study investigates the perceptions, experiences, and interactions of church members across generations. Data were collected through interviews, focus groups, and …

Trinity And Moderate Communitarianism: The Shape Of Social Engagement Within The Godhead, Harry Allotey

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation explores the doctrine of the Trinity through the lens of Social Trinitarianism in dialogue with African communitarian anthropology, particularly the Ghanaian construct of moderate communitarianism as articulated by Kwame Gyekye. The central thesis is that the concept of moderate communitarianism in African cosmology provides an appropriate conceptual framework for understanding the intra-Trinitarian relationship, one that complements Western insights and avoids some concerns associated with modalism and tritheism. By engaging African categories of personhood, community, and relational ontology, the study demonstrates that the life of the Triune God resonates deeply with African communitarian insights, while also offering theological correction …

Ecclesiastes’ Framework For The New Testament Doctrine Of Personal Eschatological Judgment, Brent D. Denney

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation examines the relationship between the assertions of divine judgment in the book of Ecclesiastes and the New Testament passages that depict the final judgment of humans. Chapter One introduces the topic and thesis by foregrounding modern scholarship's neglect of the conceptual relationship between Ecclesiastes’ assertions of divine judgment and the New Testament’s mature doctrine of personal eschatological judgment, which underpins this study. Chapter Two examines Qohelet’s deployment of the term הֶבֶל (heḇel) as a tensive symbol for the conditions stemming from the fall and its effects on humanity's pursuit of anything of lasting value (יִתְרוֹן, yiṯrôn). For Qohelet, …

Women’S Peace Agency: Reading Africae Munus In The Framework Of Emilie Townes’ Womanist Ethics And The Cultural Production Of Evil, Leonard N. Zifac

Graduate Student Research Symposium

This paper employs Emilie M. Townes's womanist ethical framework—particularly her concept of the "cultural production of evil"—to critically examine Pope Benedict XVI's post-synodal exhortation Africae Munus (2011) and its treatment of African women's agency in peacebuilding. While Africae Munus calls the Church in Africa to serve reconciliation, justice, and peace, and acknowledges women's dignity and contributions to family and community life, the document largely confines women's roles to maternal, supportive, and domestic spheres without adequately challenging the patriarchal structures that systematically marginalize women from strategic leadership and formal peace processes. Drawing on Townes's analysis of how cultural narratives, religious discourse, …

Promises Fulfilled: 114-Year-Old Alelia Murphy’S Life Of Faith And Resilience, Jacqueline B. Koonce

The Journal of Faith, Education, and Community

Alelia Murphy was the oldest living person in the United States, turning 114 in July 2019 until her death in November 2019. She and her family credit her longevity to her faith in God. This premise is explored through her words as she stated she had not seen everyone she needed to see and compared that statement to Simeon from the Bible who did not die until he saw the Messiah. Alelia Murphy also had not seen everything. She was seeing the relative success of her much admired, former President Barack Obama, and she had just met me, her great …

Our Children Are Sacred: Faith, Disability Justice, And Educational Hope, Charles E. Becknell Jr., Pricella Morris, Monique Matute-Chavarria, Deirdre A. Williams

The Journal of Faith, Education, and Community

This manuscript examines how Black families interpret dis/ability through faith, caregiving, and communal life using Sacred Narrative Inquiry (SNI), a collaborative approach that treats family stories as sources of sacred and cultural knowledge. Grounded in disability theology and informed by Black liberation theology and Womanist epistemology, the study explores how families understand dis/ability as sacred and embodied, shaped by struggle, endurance, and hope. Through shared storytelling and collective interpretation, the analysis identifies recurring patterns of early moral formation, embodied knowledge that precedes institutional recognition, faith as a sustaining practice under constraint, and moments of recognition that affirm dignity and interrupt …

Reflections: The Journey Continues, Jerry L. Pitts

Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reflections: The Journey Continues is a deeply moving memoir of faith, loss, love, calling, and the quiet strength that carries a life forward when everything familiar has been shaken. In this powerful continuation of Reflections: My Personal Journey, Dr. Jerry L. Pitts invites readers into the chapters that followed his first book—the ones marked by profound suffering, unexpected grace, and a renewed sense of purpose.

This memoir traces the season when Jerry’s life was transformed by his late wife Janice’s four‑year battle with cervical cancer. With honesty and tenderness, he recounts the surgeries, treatments, setbacks, and moments of courage …

Illuminating Sanja Matsuri: Lived Religion And Festival Practice In Asakusa, Caleb R. Merckle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Sanja Matsuri, a major Shintō and Buddhist festival in Asakusa, Tokyo, through the lenses of lived religion, participant observation, autoethnography, and anthropology. Departing from institution-centered approaches, it foregrounds the experiential dimensions of festival participation, showing how physical devotion, collective movement, and festive intensity function as expressions of spiritual meaning. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2023 and 2025 included participant observation, informal interviews with local and foreign participants, and Reflexive Discourse Analysis of fieldnotes and bilingual transcripts. Analysis reveals a dynamic interplay between formal sacralization strategies — such as mitama-ire rituals and structured processions — and spontaneous, informal participant …

The Pope, American Politics, And The Battle For Tolkien’S Soul In The Twenty-First Century, Kelsey A. Fuller-Shafer

Journal of Tolkien Research

This essay considers the contemporary ramifications of the use of Tolkien’s works and personhood in the political and cultural dialogues of the United States. Tolkien’s fiction was recently cited by Pope Leo XIV, the first pope from the United States, in his encyclical letter in May of 2026 reacting to artificial intelligence, in the same era that tech billionaires are selecting names for their AI companies from Tolkien’s legendarium. These actors find themselves not just in a dispute about ethical usage of AI, but also as commentators on and subjects to the growing political divide in the United States, and …

Judaism And Catholicism: Possibilities Of An Inter-Spiritual Dialogue, David Neuhaus

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines the possibilities of an inter-spiritual dialogue between Catholics and Jews. Describing the transformation of the Catholic attitude to Jews andJudaism in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, moving from a teaching of contempt to one of respect, it analyses the far-reaching reformulations of Catholic theology that promote an interreligious dialogue. After centuries of traumatic history, Jewish reactions have been hesitant. However, the past decades have led to a burgeoning relationship that can indeed flower into a mutual inter-spiritual dialogue that deepens the faith of both Catholics and Jews.

Jainism And Catholicism – Dialoguing Spiritually, Bryan Lobo

Journal of Global Catholicism

The inter-spiritual dialogue between Jainism and Catholicism lends itself towards discovering similarities and dissimilarities between the two spiritualities. Recognizing this discovery, this paper, without claiming to be exhaustive as regards the spiritual themes, discusses the chosen themes to facilitate greater reflection and potential to re-discover elements that can help the growth of understanding and practicing the preferred spirituality.

Islam And Catholicism: Theology And Practice Of Inter-Spiritual Dialogue, Felix Koerner

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article explores foundations, preconditions, aims, persons, groups, practices, methods, texts, and criteria of Muslim–Christian inter-spiritual dialogue. In-ter-spiritual dialogue thrives within the network of other dialogical forms: dialogue of life and collaboration, of theological and practical understanding. This article argues that the spiritual dimension of dialogical encounter may itself constitute a critical site of moral reflection, enabling participants to perceive injustice more clearly and to respond to it more responsibly. Nevertheless, the integrity of in-ter-spiritual dialogue depends upon the cultivation of trust, candor, and a shared orientation toward mutual enrichment and spiritual purification. Where dialogue is subordinated to extrinsic strategic …

The Dialogue Of Spiritual Experience In Buddhist-Christian Encounter, S Mark Heim

Journal of Global Catholicism

Can one learn more about one’s own religion through the practices of another? My positive answer to this question is illustrated in this paper by reflection on aspects of the Buddhist practice of emptiness, in specific connection with Christian under-standing of our lives as creatures. The Buddhist meditative practices I have in mind have several things in common. They are introspective (activated in one person’s inner consciousness) and premised on the Buddhist understanding of emptiness (specifically “no self ” teachings). Buddhist introspective practice takes at least three broad forms. One of these is a meditative analytical awareness of the contents …

Hindu Poetry And The Project Of An Inter-Spiritual Catholic Theology, Francis X. Clooney

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article engages the work of the Indian south Indian Tamil-language Vaiṣṇava poet saints known as the Alvārs. The article specifically focuses the First HundredHoly Linked verses of Poykai Ālvār to argue for inter-spiritual learning between Catholics and Hindus. The article concludes with personal reflections on this encounter within the context of the global Catholic Church

Overview And Acknowledgments, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

An overview and introduction to the present issue on Inter-Spiritual Dialogue.

78 | Paneas V: Paneion Excavations 1988–1993; Part I, Zvi Uri Ma‘Oz

IAA Reports—Monograph Series of the Israel Antiquities Authority

This volume is the first of two presenting the results of the excavations conducted at Paneas by Z.U. Ma'oz in the area that housed the sanctuary of Pan (Paneion) established in the Roman period. It presents the archaeological remains uncovered at the site, shedding light on activity prior to the establishment of Paneion, the construction and use of the sanctuary, and the continued human presence after the Roman period, when the site ceased to function as a cultic compound. The chapters include an introduction to the excavations, a discussion of the site's name and identification, geological aspects, the stratigraphy of …

The Virtue Of Hope In Sports Through Spe Salvi And Its Role In Faith, Resilience, And Character Formation In Student-Athletes, Hansson G. Labisig, Arvin D. Eballo

Movement and Being: The Journal of the Christian Society for Kinesiology, Leisure and Sports Studies

Pope Benedict XVI, in Spe Salvi, presents hope as a transformative and redemptive virtue that enables believers to live and suffer differently, rooted in faith in God. He writes, “The one who has hope lives differently.” This study develops a theological-pastoral framework for integrating the virtue of hope into the faith formation of student-athletes within Catholic educational institutions, positioning sport as a genuine locus theologicus for Religious Education and evangelization. Employing the See–Judge–Act methodology, it draws from Spe Salvi, Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, and the Vatican document Giving the Best of Yourself, in dialogue with C. R. Snyder’s psychological theory …

The Pāḷi Text Of The Nīvaraṇasutta From The Aṅguttara Nikāya, Maksim Astashinskiy

Faculty Papers and Publications

The Pāḷi text of the Nīvaraṇasutta from the Aṅguttara Nikāya (AN 9.64) is anthologized in The Buddhist Era 2500 Great International Council Nīvaraṇasutta Pāḷi Tipiṭaka: 40 Volume Edition in Roman Script B.E. 2548 (M.L. Maniratana Bunnag Dhamma Society Fund, 2005), https://suttacentral.net/ms. English translations by Thānissaro Bhikkhu from 1998 (or 2002) together with Bhikkhu Sujato from 2016–2018 are housed in SuttaCentral. The historically significant English translation of AN 9.64 is part of the multivolume, The Book of Gradual Sayings (Anguttara-Nikaya), or More Numbered Suttas, Vol. IV (The Book of the Sevens, Eights and Nines), Pali …

The Integration Of Psychology And Theology: An Examination Of Personality And Spiritual Gifts In Christian Formation, Vocation, And Everyday Ministry, Suzannah W. Driver

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

Human beings are created in the image of God, formed through relationship with Him, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to participate in His mission. Yet personality and spiritual gifts are often considered separately, leaving believers with fragmented language for understanding who they are, how they have been formed, and how they are called to serve. Psychology offers meaningful insight into patterns of thought, emotion, behavior, and relationship, while theology grounds identity in divine creation, spiritual formation, and Spirit-empowered purpose. When these perspectives remain divided, believers may understand parts of themselves without recognizing how those dimensions work together within the …

Review Of Effective Intercultural Evangelism: Good News In A Diverse World, Authored By Moon And Simon, Terri Champion

Witness

No abstract provided.

Review Of Evangelism: Learning From The Past, Authored By Green, Jeffrey Stevenson

Witness

No abstract provided.