Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Words With God, Krista Fassett

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

As a studio artist using multiple media, I investigate subjectivity of the female body as depicted within the context of evangelical doctrines and traditions. I explore misogyny and the absence of bodily autonomy in the bible, which designates women as property to be owned, purchased, and sold. Some overlapping themes include religious trauma, domestication, submission, and virginity. The intertwining of topics allows me to share my lived experience, and ignite conversation into certain religious doctrines that simultaneously live among cultural and political lines.

Emphasizing ‘holy’ scripture, my art varies through domestic materiality and includes crocheted textiles, oil paintings, installation with …

Paul And Gender: Early Reception And Modern Implications, Phoebe Carstens

Obsculta

Within Paul’s letters, there is a wealth of theological and ministerial material with a variety of implications and interpretations—what Paul seems to say about the position of women in the Church is the object of much debate. This piece highlights the ways in which Paul displays an openness to greater involvement of women in the Christian movement and a breaking of traditional female gender roles, yet simultaneously upholds rigid boundaries of marked gender distinction, thus mirroring a current stance of the Church today.

Redefining Unnatural: A Modern Understanding Of Paul’S Homophobia, Emma Bradley

Student Research Submissions

This paper examines the change in the meaning of the word “unnatural” in Romans 1:26-27, and establishes both an idea of what the Apostle Paul intended and a definition for how the word is used in modernity. There are five sections, each one building off of the next: Background, Analysis of the Text, Scholar’s Reading of the Text, Understanding and Usage in Antiquity, Modern Definition and Understanding, and Conclusion. The paper discovers that Paul’s intention with the word “unnatural” can be summarized as “any sex which is non-procreative, outside of marriage, and goes against gender roles.” However, a modern definition …

Improving Upon Traditional American Premarital Counseling Methods: Teaching A Foundational Theology For A Marriage Of Servanthood, Gregory D. Milewski

Masters of Theological Studies

The intention of this thesis is to stir up marriage counselors into taking a fresh look at their methods for preparing and educating American couples for marriage, as the research will show that couples need much more than mere test results and analytics. Couples need more than a diagnosis; they need the prognosis of the path for healing. The programs developed by Christian therapists that are used in many churches in America do a great job at showing areas where couples are strong and where they need work, but too little is done to address their core beliefs about marriage …

Women In Pastoral Leadership Within The Assemblies Of God: How Can The Numbers Advance?, Carolyne D. Butler

Selected Honors Theses

The number of women in pastoral leadership within the Assemblies of God grows by the addition of credentialed women. While the numbers seem increasingly exponential, their validity in credentialed growth of women is staggered, lacking true egalitarian equality. It is questioned how many credentialed women are actually in an active, executive role of leadership within the A.G. Data from the A.G. examines the increase in female credentialing and ministry status over a fifteen-year span and its contribution to the total number of female ministers. Biblical theology and historical examples enhance the credibility and authority of female leadership while gender roles …

Neo-Subordinationism: The Alien Argumentation In The Gender Debate, Matthew L. Tinkham Jr.

Faculty Publications

Over the last forty years, the debate over gender roles in the home, church, and society has unprecedentedly escalated among Evangelical Christians—including Seventh-day Adventists—due to the introduction of an alien argumentation that grounds the permanent functional subordination of women to men ontologically in the being of God. This argument, which I have termed “neo-subordinationism,” states that women are ontologically equal but functionally subordinate to men because of a prescriptive hierarchical order that exists in the immanent Trinity and is recognizable through the economic Trinity. In this Trinitarian hierarchy the Son and the Holy Spirit are said to be ontologically equal …

Androgyny/Hermaphroditism: Hebrew Bible, Jennifer J. Williams

Faculty Publications

The Hebrew Bible lacks a term for androgyny or hermaphroditism. The term tumtumim, which identifies persons of indeterminate or “hidden” sex, appears later in rabbinic texts. Nevertheless, sexual fluidity, ambiguity, intersexed persons, and persons with a combination of masculine and feminine characteristics appear in the Genesis creation stories and prophetic texts. While gender transgression is relevant to the general discussion, this entry from The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies: Oxford Biblical Studies Online focuses primarily on ancient understandings, namely those presented in the Hebrew Bible, of those of “both sexes.”