Digital Commons Network^™

The Reputation Of The Apostle Paul: Was He A Misogynist?, Melinda Nelson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The Apostle Paul is a fundamental figure in the history, traditions, and beliefs of Christianity, yet his thoughts are sometimes viewed as controversial. Through his letters, Christians for centuries have learned about early Christianity and have been guided by Paul’s writings into following the ways of Jesus as he is interpreted by Paul. However, Paul did not begin as a crusader for Christ; initially Paul was extremely opposed to this reform of Judaism and made his stance known through aligning himself with the Jewish Pharisees during the persecutions of Christians during the early years of Christianity. While Paul’s letters and …

“I’M A Jesus Feminist”: Understandings Of Faith, Gender, And Feminism Among Christian Women, Megan Pritchett

Scripps Senior Theses

The emergence of the Christian Right and the feminist movement in the mid-to-late 20th century have had a significant impact on the political, psychological, and social landscape of the U.S., and this is especially true for Christian women who sit at the cross-roads of these movements. To understand the context surrounding this group, I examine different areas of sociological literature: the primacy of gender and religion in identity formation, Christian marriage and gender roles, the “culture wars” of the Christian Right, and a brief overview of feminist theory. Utilizing qualitative research methods, I interviewed 13 self-identified Christian women to learn …

Grafting Onto `The Jew': The Importance Of Being Jew-Ish To Early Modern English Christian Identity, Joan Blackwell Wedes

Wayne State University Dissertations

The dissertation examines how Jewish figures in early modern plays, prose, and poetry moved beyond the uncomplicated medieval image of murderous villain and towards a more reasoned consideration of the Jew's position in Christianity as well as in English life. While there has been significant scholarship on early modern representations of Jews, particularly in drama, these studies have not examined how Paul's Letter to the Romans, in forming much of Reformation doctrine, was also crucial in forming attitudes towards and representations of literary and living Jews. My project uniquely combines history, biblical studies, and literary analysis to reveal how early …

Religion And Intimate Partner Violence: A Double-Edge Sword?, Lee E. Ross

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This article examined hypothesized relations between Judeo-Christian religion and intimate partner violence. Given its complex and controversial nature, the following two questions were explored: (1) whether batterers selectively misinterpret scripture to justify or rationalize violence toward women, and (2) whether certain religious tenets around faith, the nature of marriage, the role of women and men, obedience, forgiveness, and salvation constrict and inevitably bind women to abusive relationships? An integrative literature review was employed to draw inferences among male patriarchy, religious scripture, and intimate partner violence. Overall, the findings are twofold: (1) elements of male patriarchy are included in much of …

Review Of: Andrew R. Murphy (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion To Religion And Violence, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Blackwell Companions, and instalments from similar series, should be initially sized up according to their purpose and audience. Such hefty tomes present themselves first as reference books—as collections of articles by scholarly experts that treat the key methods, topics, historical developments, etc., in the field. Second, each Companion is addressed to students and teachers as a state-of-the-field resource that provides several benefits: a sound picture of the field, assessment of various theories and methods used in the field, a sense of the innovative developments and open questions, and plenty of information to follow up on. Finally, some Companions give primacy …

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. …

Issues Of The Ends Of Life: The Segelberg Series, Terry Waite, Jocelyn Downie, Karen Lebacqz, Harvey M. Chochinov, Genevieve Thompson, Allan E. Blakeney, Eric Beresford, Innis Christie, David Stuewe

Innis Christie Collection

The Segelberg Series explores the intersection of religious faith and public policy. This book contains the lectures focused on The Ends of Life. Dalhousie University’s School of Public Administration managed the series through a lecture committee under the able leadership of the former Dean of Dalhousie’s Law School, Professor Innis Christie, QC.

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 …

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 …

Can't Be Tamed: A Feminist Analysis Of Apocrypha And Other Scripture, Catherine Alison Ballard

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper is my own unique feminist analysis of certain apocryphal texts. Though the texts I use have common themes, they are divided into what I consider the three most societally important aspects of an ancient woman’s identity: virgin, mother, and whore. The Acts of Thecla and The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena deal with virginity. II Maccabees, The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, and select chapters of Augustine’s Confessions represent motherhood. Finally, the hagiographies Life of Pelagia and Life of Mary navigate through the mire of sexualities that deviate from norms.

Christian Witness To The Urban Poor, Evangelical Advocacy: A Response To Global Poverty

Papers, PDF Files, and Presentations

No abstract provided.

"A Considered Conversion": The Conscious Choice To Accept Christianity By The Populace Of Iceland And Greenland In The Era Of Scandinavian Conversion, Robert A. Burt

Theses and Dissertations

A Considered Conversion: The Conscious Choice to Accept Christianity by the Populace of Iceland and Greenland in the Era of Scandinavian Conversion Robert A. Burt Department of History, BYU Master of Arts Most studies of the Christianization of Scandinavia attribute the phenomenon to the influence of powerful kings. However, many times the conversion experiences of Iceland and Greenland are either ignored, or tied to the influence of these distant kings. This thesis unites sociological ideas relating to conversion along social and familial lines, ideas introduced by Roger Stark and Rodney Finke, with historical details of Icelandic and Greenland family genealogies …

Irish Clergy And The Deist Controversy: Two Episodes In The Early British Enlightenment, Scott Breuninger

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

D uring the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, an important question facing Anglican divines was the relationship between reason and religion. Initiated by the publication of John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), the controversy concerning deism raged across both sides of the Irish Sea and called into question the sanctity of revealed religion, forcing believers to articulate more "rational" defenses of Christianity. Closely associated with the problematic origins of the "English Enlightenment;' Toland's provocative tract valorized reason in matters of religion and drew heavily upon the ideas of natural philosophy. Although viciously attacked for its heretical tenets, Toland's position …

A Re-Evaluation Of Early Christian Pilgramage The Letters Of Gregory Of Nyssa, Jerome, And Egeria, Emma Cawlfield

Theses & ETDs

How did the earliest Christian pilgrims conceive of their practice? This thesis analyzes the motivations and interests of three fourth-century CE Christian pilgrims through a close reading of their surviving letters. The first chapter discusses the limitations of contemporary scholarship on pilgrimage and elaborates on the difficulties in treating these early pilgrims as a cohesive group. The second and third chapters provide close readings of the letters of Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, and Egeria, illuminating the diverse and sometimes contradictory ways in which these three pilgrims conceived of their journeys.� Although each author consistently expresses a concern over personal piety, …

Highway Religion: Truckstop Chapels, Evangelism, And Lived Religion On The Road, David Brett Greenberg

Honors Papers

This study examines manifestations of Christian faith found along the highways of the United States, particularly in the form of truckstop chapels. Through ethnographic research and social-historical/theoretical analysis, this study seeks to explore the ways in which Evangelical Christianity, when combined with certain cultural and social particulars of the trucking profession, may be markedly re-contextualized, giving rise to distinctive approaches to ministry, worship, and religious life.

By identifying widespread and often codified specializations among trucking ministries and examining the ways in which the trucking-specific evangelism of such ministries may be applied and lived out by individual drivers of faith, this …

The Life And Teachings Of The New Testament Apostles, Gaye Strathearn, Joshua M. Sears

Faculty Publications

In the well-known 1842 Wentworth letter, Joseph Smith included thirteen statements about the beliefs of The Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known today as the Articles of Faith. The sixth statement says: "We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth" (Articles of Faith 1 :6). Later, Elder James E. Talmage wrote: "In the dispensation of the meridian of time Jesus Christ established His Church upon the earth, appointing therein the officers necessary for the carrying out of the Father's purposes.

Book Review: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Just War As Christian Discipleship: Recentering The Tradition In The Church Rather Than The State, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

From his conversations in church settings and classrooms, Daniel M. Bell, Jr. has observed that Christians by and large do not know the church’s just war tradition very well, but that they are receptive to learning about it. Most theologians would likely agree that they know a number of Christians who are hungry to see better thinking and more effective action in response to war in our time. Bell, a Lutheran seminary professor and ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, wrote this book to interpret ‘the just war tradition in terms of concrete practices that might contribute to the …

Mere Mormonism, Thomas B. Griffith

BYU Studies

Devotees of C. S. Lewis will recognize that I have adapted the title of my remarks from Mere Christianity, his classic exposition of the fundamentals of the Christian faith. An hour lecture is not the forum to attempt for Latter-day Saint Christianity what Lewis achieved for traditional Christianity. In any event, I lack the skill to pull that off. What follows is something much more modest. I will speak from my own observation and try to identify what is at the heart of the Mormon experience in an attempt to provide an introduction to the faith. A disclaimer is …

The Leadership Of The Umc As A Prophetic Community For The Holistic Transformation Of Post-Conflict Liberia, Jerry Paye-Manfloe Kulah

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Thai Buddhism And Women With A Christian Response, Alice K. Terrell

Masters Theses

Thai Buddhism is a subset of Theravada Buddhism. Theravada Buddhism is one of two main branches of Buddhism which was founded by Siddartha Gautama around 560 B.C. Theravada is the strictest branch of the two. Thai Buddhism is a mixture of Theravada, local folklore and superstitions. Thai Buddhism is practiced by ninety-five percent of the population of Thailand. Within Thai Buddhism, men and women participate in the religion differently. Men are given the opportunity to be ordained into the sangha and serve as a monk. Through this path, men are able to achieve nirvana. Women are not given the same …

Animals And The Problem Of Evil In Recent Theodicies, Mark Maller

Philosophy Scholarship

This paper critically evaluates the theodicies of John Hick, Richard Swinburne and process theism regarding animal suffering and evils. The positions of Hick and Swinburne are based on false empirical assumptions, e.g., animals do not suffer. Process theism’s claim that God is not omnipotent is an unsatisfactory answer inconsistent with the traditional concept of God. These positions cannot fully explain the mass suffering and unnecessary deaths of animals throughout time. My positive position is that God’s putative love for all sentient beings does not necessarily entail that he loves every individual human and animal. Humans do not interfere with the …

Review: Bourgeois Hinduism, Or The Faith Of The Modern Vedantists: Rare Discourses From Early Colonial Bengal, Chad Bauman

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The article reviews the book "Bourgeois Hinduism, or The Faith of the Modern Vedantists: Rare Discourses from Early Colonial Bengal," by Brian Hatcher.

"To Educate, Agitate, And Legislate": Baptists, Methodists, And The Anti-Saloon League Of Virginia, 1901-1910, Mary Beth Mathews

Cultural and Philosophical Inquiry Articles

Organized in 1901, the Anti-Saloon League of Virginia (ASLVA) became the leading statewide association in battling the liquor forces. The league claimed to be nonpartisan and nonpolitical; its motto was "The saloon must go."3 A variety of white Protestant clergy and laymen staffed the ASLVA, and these leaders kept up a unified front as they promoted their sale stated goal, the eradication of the saloon.

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

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Developing A Contextual Theology Of Postcolonial Filipino American Diasporic Identity, Ferdinand C. Llenado

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Reverend Dr. Peter Christian Kierkegaard's "About And Against Mormonism" (1855), Julie K. Allen, David L. Paulsen

BYU Studies

Born on July 6, 1805, the Danish Lutheran priest Peter Christian Kierkegaard, brother of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, was an exact contemporary of Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Both men devoted their lives to the refinement and advancement of their religious beliefs, albeit within very different sociohistorical contexts, and both had profound impacts on the shape of the religious landscape in their home countries. While Peter Christian Kierkegaard, as the most eloquent and influential advocate of the views of the controversial nineteenth-century Danish religious reformer N. F. S. Grundtvig, concentrated on bringing …

Memory, Tradition And Text: Uses Of The Past In Early Christianity - Edited By Alan Kirk And Tom Thatcher [Review Of The Book Memory, Tradition And Text: Uses Of The Past In Early Christianity, By A. Kirk & T. Thatcher, Ed.], Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

The aim of this collection of essays is, at least in part, to remedy the lack of attention that studies of early Christianity have paid to recent developments, in the fields of sociology and anthropology, in the study of memory. An excellent introductory survey by Alan Kirk of recent developments in memory studies is followed by eleven essays applying some aspect of the approach to various texts or problems in the study of early Christianity, and then by responses by Werner Kelber and Barry Schwartz. While the various contributions interact in different ways with the relevant theories and models, all …

Abandoned To Lust: Sexual Slander And Ancient Christianity – By Jennifer Wright Knust [Review Of The Book Abandoned To Lust: Sexual Slander And Ancient Christianity By J. W. Knust], Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

The author argues that accusations of sexual depravity in early Christian literature, whatever their historical value, must be placed in the broader context of Greco-Roman rhetorical traditions in which charges of sexual deviance were stock elements of rhetorical slander. The first chapter, “Sexual Slander and Ancient Invective,” shows the degree to which the discourses of status and gender were intertwined in the Greco-Roman world. In this context, accusations of sexual deviance served the construction and maintenance of an elite identity understood as a male who is able to control his passions and avoid excess. In four subsequent chapters she tracks …

Missional Experiential Education For Developing Christian Global Citizens, David E. Fenrick

ATS Dissertations

At the start of the 21st century, Christian educators are faced with the challenge of equipping Christian disciples for participation in God's present mission in the world, a worldthatisinthemidstofradicalchangeduetotheforcesofglobalization. Christians around the world, most of whom will never have the opportunity to participate in formal ministerial education, are being called upon to demonstrate a missional multicultural witnessandgloballevelofcitizenshipinthecommunitieswheretheylive. Giventhis reality, Christian education at every level needs to discover a pedagogical process for preparing all Christians for missionary vocations that address the emerging missiological realities ofthe 21st century.

This research was undertaken in order to investigate the degree to which the principles …