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Supplanting The Wrong With The Right: A Synoptic Overview Of Christian And Islamic Reactions Towards The Subject Of Heresy, Brett G. Barnard

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Whenever there is a faith that is claiming to be the “one true religion,” just what is it that defines that most sinister of opposition known as “heresy?” Is it the choices made by these aforementioned “heretics” to hold beliefs that are contrary to the mainstream? Or is the way in which “orthodox” authorities have historically asserted their own superiority while legally eliminating the competition? When overlooking monotheistic belief systems that claim universal theological authority, such as Christianity and Islam, what stands out the most is the fact that the greatest threat almost always comes not from exterior rivals, but …

The “Minimal Facts Of The Resurrection” Argument Applied To Islam, Jacob Kounter

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis explores the “minimal facts” argument, an argument established by Dr. Gary Habermas concerning the minimal historical facts surrounding the death of Jesus of Nazareth that a majority of scholars, both Christian and non-Christian, attest to. It will specifically address mainstream Islamic arguments against the historicity of the resurrection. The Islamic view maintains that Jesus of Nazareth was either not crucified or that he survived his crucifixion, while Christianity posits that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. The essay examines scholarship from Muslims, Christians, and secular Atheist/Agnostics, and concludes that the biblical view of the resurrection is backed by historical …

Yahweh And Allah -- The Essential Differences: Why Christians And Muslims Do Not Worship The Same God And Why It Matters, Sarah D. Stewart

Senior Honors Theses

The question of whether or not Muslims and Christians worship the same deity has become a heated debate in many theological circles. This debate, in particular, is a growing question for Christians in the West, as large numbers of Muslims are entering the population, and the answer given helps to determine interactions with them.

This study was made by a review of various literature materials. Primary sources included translations of the Qur’an and the Bible. Secondary sources included books written by prominent Christian apologists. An important book used was by Yale theologian, Miroslav Volf, which took the opposing side of …

Alumna’S Research At Gwu Prepared Her For Dual Master’S Program, Office Of University Communications

Gardner-Webb NewsCenter Archive

The most beneficial course Andrea Thomas ’14 took at Gardner-Webb University was Honors Research and Thesis. Her project examined how sacred stories from Islam, Judaism and Christianity could be beneficial to the coping process for rape survivors of each respective tradition. “I loved being able to immerse myself in my project and create a paper from my own ideas,” she reflected.

The Intersection Of Politics And Theology: Reading Augustine In Light Of Augustine, Landon P. Wilcox

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Augustine’s The City of God is a foundational theological text for the development of Christian thought across time. Over the centuries, political scientists and theologians have been especially interested in this text in a variety of ways, but for the purposes of this discussion, the focus will be on Books I-V and Book XIX. Typically, theologians have been interested in Augustine’s rebuttal of pagan claims that are found in the first five books, while political scientists focus most of their attention on Book XIX for its discussion of the highest ends of the state through the means of politics in …

Internal Renewal And Dissent In The Early Christian World, Sheila E. Mcginn

2017 Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

Demonic Possession And Fractured Patriarchies In Contemporary Fundamentalist Horror, Lindsey Slanker

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a survey of contemporary horror films from the perspective of fundamentalist American audiences. Using Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity and religious studies scholarship as framework, I investigate how five visual texts perpetuate patriarchal family structures. The five texts I explore are The Last Exorcism (2010), The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Witch: A New England Folk Tale (2015), and The Exorcist television series (2016). In each chapter, I analyze a key family member per patriarchal norms, and how violations of these norms contribute to the family’s supernatural crisis. The figures I analyze for …

Religion, Politics Expert To Speak At Gardner-Webb, Office Of University Communications

Gardner-Webb NewsCenter Archive

Gardner-Webb University’s Life of the Scholar (LOTS) program invites the public to “Lethal Religion: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” a lecture by Dr. Charles Kimball on Tuesday, Sept. 20. His lecture at Gardner-Webb will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Blanton Auditorium inside Hamrick Hall on the GWU campus. Copies of Kimball’s book, “When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” will be available for purchase and signing.

The Problem Of Authority In Conservative Evangelical Christianity: A Critique Of American And South Korean Expressions, Harold Arthur Brower Iv

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis explores and compares the ways in which the Bible is read, interpreted, and held as an authority by conservative Evangelicals in the United States and South Korea. By examining the history, literary practices, and social systems in each country, I reveal authorities other than the Bible that emerge from Evangelical culture. Discourse theory, reader-response theory, and rhetorical criticism provide the theoretical lenses through which each expression is viewed. My research strategies included: (1) a six month ethnographic project held in two Korean Evangelical communities; and (2) a survey of Korean laity. Data were collected from direct observations, Evangelical …

"The Family" & Faith: The Theology Of Power, Erika Phillipo

Senior Theses

The Family & Faith: The Theology of Power hopes to shed light on the relationship between American politics, American history, and the Christian Fundamentalist group known as The Family. This paper uses the book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet as its main source. By connecting the relationship between this mega-group with American politics and politicians, the theme of power arises and refuses to go away. Thus, the focus goes beyond simply just political influence and history and instead results ultimately with how the group gains and maintains their power within the …

Christian-Stoicism: Exploring The Relationship Between Christianity And Stoicism And Constructing A Manual Of Christian-Stoic Wisdom, Trevor Kelly

Master of Arts in Religious Studies (M.A.R.S. Theses)

While the theological assumptions of Christianity and Stoicism may seem disparate, their philosophies are highly compatible. This compatibility is one of the reasons that early Christian authors looked to pagan Stoic authors for support and inspiration. Many Stoic and Christian authors compiled manuals for right living. The historical connections and conceptual similarities between the two schools of thought suggest the viability and value of constructing a combined Christian-Stoic manual of wisdom. Such is the constructive task of this thesis. Passages from Christian and Stoic sources are brought together to illustrate major common themes. The passages are followed by original commentaries …

The Mystical And Political Body: Christian Identity In The Theology Of Karl Rahner, Erin Kidd

Dissertations (1934 -)

Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner (1904-1984) is well known for initiating the turn to the subject in Catholic theology. The heart of Rahner’s theological reflection is the experience of God as encouraged by Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. In questioning how the subject experiences God, Rahner develops a theological anthropology that attempts to elucidate the original unity of spirit and matter. As he argues, the human being is “spirit-in-world,”—the one who actualizes her transcendence in space and over time. While Rahner’s readers have been quick to draw out the implications of the subject as spirit, they have been less attentive to …

"Introduction" To Theology And Science Fiction, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

What is the difference between a god and a powerful alien? Can an android have a soul, or be considered a person with rights? Can we imagine biblical stories being retold in the distant future on planets far from Earth? Whether your interest is in Christianity in the future, or the Jedi in the present--and whether your interest in the Jedi is focused on real-world adherents or the fictional religion depicted on the silver screen--this book will help you explore the intersection between theology and science fiction across a range of authors and stories, topics and questions.

Throughout this volume, …

To Have Done With Forgiveness: Capitalism, Christianity, And The Politics Of Immanence, Timothy Snediker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This essay seeks to formulate a critical account of the genealogical link between capitalism and Christianity by interrogating the ontology and the processes of subjectivization which subtend these two apparently disparate social and political formations. To this end, I make use of the philosophical thought of Gilles Deleuze, in particular his readings of Spinoza, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Sacher-Masoch. The central themes of the essay--the identity of God and money, and the vicissitudes of the creditor-debtor relation--culminate in a theory of a theodicy of money, which deploys an apparatus of forgiveness in order to obscure and displace the stakes and …

The Relationship Between Christian Religiosity And Heterosexism In The Southern United States, Patricia Hare

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The internalization of heterosexism places lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals at disproportionately higher risks of depression and self-destructive behaviors. For LGB Christians, this phenomenon is often exacerbated. Although literature on heterosexism has increased, little research has examined more insular, religious environments. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Christian denominational religiosity and heterosexism and to compare the degree of religiosity and heterosexism between members of 5 Christian denominations and between same-sex sexuality perspectives in the southern United States. Guided by the attribution theory, a correlational, cross-sectional survey design was used to analyze degree of religiosity …

Understanding African American Preaching: The Style, Culture, And Rationale For The Worship Experience And The Value For Education, Harry Zimmerman Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Preaching is an oratorical method for sharing the biblical text, which God uses to affect the lives of people for His glory. In the context of the African-American culture, preaching highlights differences between the rationales of the practical approaches of African-American and other styles of preaching. This project will examine fundamentals of African-American preaching as well as its dynamics while focusing on African-American traditions in a critical and creative manner. It will provide insights for training associate ministers at Faith United Missionary Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. The research utilizes a single method research approach, utilizing surveys of pastors and …

Early Christianity, Gaye Strathearn

Faculty Publications

As Jesus stood on the Mount of Olives at the end of his forty-day resurrected ministry, he directed his apostles to be witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8; see also Matthew 28:19–20). In giving this direction, he rescinded the command he gave when he first called them to “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans” (Matthew 10:5). The shift in emphasis and direction brought significant challenges for the fledgling church. It is in the church’s response to meet those challenges that we see many …

Wearing Memories: Clothing And The Global Lives Of Mourning In Swaziland, Casey Golomski

Anthropology

This article situates a cultural phenomenon of women’s memory work through clothing in Swaziland. It explores clothing as both action and object of everyday, personalized practice that constitutes psychosocial well-being and material proximities between the living and the dead, namely, in how clothing of the deceased is privately possessed and ritually manipulated by the bereaved. While human and spiritual self-other relations are produced through clothing and its material efficacy, current global ideologies of immaterial mortuary ritual associated with Pentecostalism have emerged as contraries to this local, intersubjective grief work. This article describes how such contrarian ideologies paper over existing global …

A Way Forward: An Alternative Way For Understanding What The Bible Is And How It Is Understood, Joshua Scott

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Christianity in America is in decline. Millennials are leaving the evangelical churches of their youth in droves, but they aren’t leaving the idea of God or spirituality. Statistics show that the theology of the fundamentalist/conservative evangelical church is contributing to this exodus of Millennials, particularly when it comes to issues of environment, sexuality, and violence. This thesis explores the roots of fundamentalist theology—particularly their understanding of what the Bible is, and how it is to be understood—and how this theology is practically worked out in their approach to the three issues mentioned above. Finally, I offer an alternative framework for …

Struggling Towards Salvation: Narrative Structure In James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain, Darren Spirk

Student Publications

This paper argues that John Grimes, the protagonist of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, represents the struggle inherent in the path towards salvation and holds the potential ability to break down the binaries that create this struggle. Of particular interest is a similarity in the narrative framing of John’s story with Jesus Christ's, as told in the four Gospels. The significance of both their symbolic power is dependent on a multitude of narrative viewpoints, in John’s case the tragic pasts offered of his aunt, father and mother in the novel’s medial section. Their stories inform the …

African Initiated Churches : The Case Of The Igreja Evangelica Amor De Deus, Romanos 5 : 5, Em Mocambique : (Love Of God Evangelical Church, Romans 5 : 5, In Mozambique), Philip H. Troutman

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

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 …

African Americans Speak To Spectacle Lynchings, Mary Beth Mathews

Cultural and Philosophical Inquiry Articles

Donald Mathews’s “The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice” both describes southern lynching as a lived interpretation of Christianity and claims a role for the religious study of lynching. Relying largely on historiography, Mathews contends that white southerners created this religion and ignored obvious parallels between lynched black men and the death of Jesus on the cross. But missing from this and other interpretations is a key voice: that of contemporary black evangelical pastors.

Religious Discourse And Interdisciplinarity In Sport Studies, Zachary T. Smith

The Hilltop Review

Religious and theological explorations of leisure have remained few and far between, as religious studies perceive sport and game related studies as trivial, and as leisure theorists find social scientific methods more compelling. And yet, religious traditions and thinkers have been offering accounts and ethics of leisure activities for thousands of years, and anthropological evidence suggests the origination of sport and game play arose in the context of religious cult activity (Huizinga, 1949; Guttmann, 2007). Further, contemporary research has indicated that religion plays an important role in structuring the thought and behavior of religious persons towards their leisure (Waller, 2009) …

Postponing Heaven: The Three Nephites, The Bodhisattva, And The Mahdi, Jad Hatem

Maxwell Institute Publications

Christianity, like other world religions, surprisingly acknowledges the existence of a plurality of human messiahs. In this comparative work, philosopher Jad Hatem examines Mormonism’s Three Nephites, Buddhism’s Bodhisattva, and Islam’s Mahdi—distinctive messianic figures who postpone Heaven, sacrificially prolonging their lives for the benefit of humankind.

Originally published in French, this translation includes two additional papers written by Jad Hatem dealing with aspects of Latter-day Saint belief and a new interview between Hatem and Latter-day Saint philosopher James E. Faulconer.

The Christian Influence Over Secular Understandings Of Marriage In The United States: A Critical Analysis Of Augustinian Theology, Rebecca C. Shin

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I seek to contextualize the exclusivity of traditional marriage in the United States. I investigate the use of Christian beliefs applied to the American legal system, consequently becoming the foundation of American commonsense. I draw out the ways in which Augustinian thoughts on marriage have inadvertently been used to justify institutional favoritism toward heterosexual, monogamous couples. Through examining the Christian-American lens that shapes our understanding of traditional marriage, I argue that previous and current secular opposition to non-traditional marriage is fundamentally grounded in Christian faith, furthermore, American cultural understanding of marriage is unconsciously lined with Augustinian thought.

The Christian Farmers Federation Of Ontario: Integrating Christian Principles With The Practicality Of Farming, Suzanne M. Armstrong

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis examines the Christian identity and characteristics of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO), a general farm organization active in the diverse agricultural sector of Ontario, Canada. It highlights the intersection of religion and farming that emerged from interviews and participant observation within this group. The thesis probes what it means for them to be responsible Christian farmers in contemporary agriculture. Christian and secular scholars from three key areas of scholarship—Dutch immigration to Canada, agriculture of the middle or family farming, and Christian stewardship—help to contextualize their responses.

The CFFO was founded as a Dutch neo-Calvinist organization within …

Revitalizing Missions On The Cusp Of Change : Complex Systems Science Mazeways For Mission Theory Amid Twenty-First Century Realities, Samuel K. Law

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Philosophical Significance Of Slave Narratives, Darian Spearman

Theses

This thesis asserts that the slave narratives are a significant resource for philosophers. Following Lewis Gordon, I argue that the slave narratives should not be understood merely as experiential evidence by which to validate Western thought. Instead, the narratives should be read as moments in which Black narrators shared their unique insights on the Western world. In line with Angela Davis, I argue that these critiques are still relevant to philosophers of this day and age. However, I argue that Davis' Marxist reading of Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is still vulnerable to …

What's Wrong With The Christian West, Joseph Studemeyer

Senior Theses

Western Christian groups are losing significant numbers of adherents in the area formerly known as Christendom (Western Europe and European-dominated former colonies), a trend which seems to be quickening with time. In addition, the same Western Christian denominations are in the midst of an unprecedented period of fragmentation, with many splitting over questions of doctrine and practice. More controversially, traditionalists both within the Western churches and outside of them have claimed that the Western denominations are also experiencing a qualitative decline, asserting that the Christianity of the West has been doctrinally compromised. This thesis posits an underlying philosophical reason for …