Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Neo-Free Methodism: Shadow-Work As A Model For Racial Justice, Liz Simmons

Doctor of Ministry

The increase of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States is on a trajectory to shift the demographic of the Church over time to majority non-white. Because of the abolitionist spirit of its genesis, Free Methodist church contexts have the historical and theological foundations to become hosts for multicultural communities and culturally engaging conversations leading to racial justice. The homogeneous demographic of many Free Methodist churches today, however, results in blindness toward privilege and resistance toward social engagement, reinforcing an insulated identity narrative.

Particularly in rural and suburban areas where the surrounding demographic is shifting at a slower rate, …

The Commodification Of The Table: The Journey Toward The Forgotten Body And Blood Of Jesus, Guy L. Taylor

Doctor of Ministry

Bread and wine are metaphors for the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus the Christ. Jesus himself stated that these two metaphors are to represent his sacrifice for humans, yet these metaphors have lost much of their importance in present-day Christianity. Pentecostal churches specifically seem to have forgotten what the bread and wine symbolize. Due to cultural influences, these churches no longer place emphasis on celebrating what they call Communion.

Many Pentecostal Christians today attend a service that is convenient, efficient, and that meets all their spiritual needs at one stop—like a Super Walmart of Worship due to the …

Scriptural Contextualization: Understanding Chinese Philosophical Narratives, Gregory Appleby

Doctor of Ministry

Whether one is overseas or within their own home culture, when working cross-culturally scriptural contextualization is necessary to reduce confusion. When developing Chinese leaders, differing world views have caused conflict and confusion especially concerning an understanding of Scripture and the person of Christ. Westerners teaching, working, and living in a Chinese context participate in either widening or narrowing the philosophical gap between the East and the West concerning their understanding of Scripture. My hope is that Western leaders will see the value in alternative interpretations and understanding of the Scripture based on Chinese foundational narratives. Misunderstandings of cultural differences have …

Thriving Holistically As A Woman Married To A Minister: A Spiritual Formation Model To Support Women In The United States In The Role Of Pastor's Wife, Elisa Renae Ashley

Doctor of Ministry

While women married to ministers are blessed by God in many ways through their role as pastor’s wife, the role also presents many particular stressors. These stressors impact the systems of self, family, and church. A majority of clergy wives struggle to some degree with interpersonal loneliness, with finding confidants, and creating spiritual community wherein they can be authentically vulnerable. These struggles negatively impact the spiritual, physical, and psycho-emotional health of the women in this role. In order for them to deepen their spirituality and thrive holistically as they navigate the challenges of this role, a tailored spiritual formation model …

Exvangelical: Why Millennials And Generation Z Are Leaving The Constraints Of White Evangelicalism, Colleen Batchelder

Doctor of Ministry

This research presents the argument that Millennials and Generation Z are not leaving the church; they are reconstructing their faith and distancing themselves from fundamentalism. When exploring the history of evangelicalism, church history, and generational distinctives, one is given the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of generational dynamics in regard to faith, theology, and praxis.

Chapter 1 explores the various distinctions and biases that encompass each generation. It also provides background for how generational influence shaped the narrative of the church, faith, and purpose.

Chapter 2 tackles the generational shift in ecclesiology and gives readers a glimpse into the …

Demographic Changes And Faithful Response: Helping Presbyterian Churches Flourish Into The Future, David G. Watermulder

Doctor of Ministry

The problem that this dissertation seeks to address is that in an increasingly diverse society, Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA) churches do not reflect the true racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the changing context in which they are located. This paper explores how PCUSA churches in American suburban areas can better understand themselves in order to be equipped to engage with an increasingly multicultural and globalized environment. The future health and witness of PCUSA churches will be enhanced and deepened through actively learning about cultural differences and preparing members and leaders to do ministry faithfully into the years ahead.

Section …

Frontmatter (Volume 40, No.1), Paul B. Mojzes

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Paul B. Mojzes, Beth Admiraal

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

We hope you, our readers, find these reflections on the 30-year anniversary of the Great Transformation to be both edifying and fulfilling

The Idea Of A National Church In The Ukrainian Intellectual Discourse, Natalia Ishchuk, Oleksandr Sagan

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The reception of the idea of a national church in the Ukrainian intellectual environment in the context of current socio-political events in the country is examined here. Among the most influential Ukrainian religious scholars, there is a dominant idea that the formation of a national church is a part of the state formation and security of the country. They opposed historical distortions of this idea, as it occurs in case of ethnophyletism—domination of the national over the ecclesiastical, and etatism—the domination of the state, imperial (in the form of the Orthodox empire) over the ecclesiastical. Signs of these distortions are …

The Ustaše And The Roman Catholic Church In The Independent State Of Croatia, Golda Retchkiman

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

On April 6, 1941, the Axis—German, Italian, Bulgarian and Hungarian military forces- invaded, occupied and partitioned Yugoslavia. Four days later, Slavko Kvaternik, the commander of the Ustaša forces, assumed power in Zagreb and proclaimed the New Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). On April 10, Ante Pavelić arrived as head of the Ustaša, who was exiled in Italy under the protection of Mussolini, since he and his followers were wanted by the governments of France and Yugoslavia, accused of plotting the assassinations of the French Prime Minister Louis Barthou and King Alexander of Yugoslavia.1 One of his first …

How Ethnic And Religious Nationalism Threaten The Bosnian State, Matthew James Hone

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

When the wars ceased in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, as in the aftermath of other past conflicts in the Balkans, ethnic and religious divisions prevailed. Bosnia Herzegovina is perhaps the most vulnerable of the newly independent states of the former Yugoslavia, partially due to the manner it was established. Ethnic cleansing and discord have marred Bosnia while the three principal ethnoreligious entities continue to struggle to maintain their distinct identity within the context of a convoluted political system wrestling against domestic and international intrigue. Ethnoreligious nationalism threatens to further rupture the Bosnian state and create a renewed state …

Religion In Eastern Europe After The Fall Of Communism: From Euphoria To Anxiety, Paul B. Mojzes

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

In the decades prior to the implosion of the communist system, change could be discerned here and there in Eastern Europe. The purpose of this article is to provide a general overview of the most pertinent developments that spurred the transition from communism to post-communism, employing some fairly broad brushstrokes to make my case.

Winds Of Change 1989: A Perspective From An Office For Religious Affairs Somewhere In Eastern Europe, Vjekoslav Perica

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Under communism, in what used to be Eastern Europe, religion was neither outlawed nor favorably regarded either. In some cases, church and state had been at latent or open war as in Poland or in the former Yugoslavia. There, church-state relations radically changed over the course of more than five decades, which is the theme of this article. Confrontations began in 1945 and spanned to 1953. Accommodations from 1966 to 1980 permitted a relatively peaceful coexistence between church and state. Thereafter the public religions and ethnic mobilizations of the 1980s escalated into the Balkan wars of the 1990s. It was …

Shall Be Bright At Last: Reflections On Suffering And Hope In The Letters Of Paul, Nijay Gupta, Martha Byrne Van Houten, Sarah Swartzendruber, Alec Ward, Martha Ekhoff, Anna S. Carlson, Jared Bucko, Paul C. Moldovan, Alex Finkelson

Monographs

These nine essays on suffering offer exercises in Christian hope. The contributors reveal honest and tender wounds of the many harsh realities of life in a broken world awaiting full redemption. They meditate on Paul's holy words that teach us to pray with expectation and live by faith. They encourage fellow pilgrims to trust the path and stick together.

Shall Be Bright at Last is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

CC BY-NC-SA

When The Worst People Are The Best Rhetoricians: (Mis)Using Rhetoric In C. S. Lewis’S The Last Battle, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

In discussing John Milton’s manipulation of the reader in Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis comments generally on the art of rhetoric: “I do not think (and no great civili-zation has ever thought) that the art of the rhetorician is necessarily vile. It is in itself noble, though of course, like most arts, it can be wickedly used” (53). From comments in his letters and essays, we know that Lewis thought frequently about his own work as a Christian apologist, concerned that he pursue truth in his arguments rather than trying to win an argument at all costs. In fact, he …

“I Don’T Want To Hear Your Language!” White Social Imagination And The Demography Of Roman Corinth, Ekaputra Tupamahu

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

This article aims to deconstruct the hidden pervasive whiteness in biblical scholarship and to propose another way to reimagine the linguistic dynamic of Roman Corinth from an Asian American perspective. It highlights the legal and historical interconnectedness of whiteness and the dominance of English. English is a critical marker of whiteness in the United States. In this context, immigrants are expected to conform to and assimilate themselves with whiteness by performing English. This particular racialized context has influenced and resulted in a scholarly historical reconstruction of immigrants in Roman Corinth as “Greek speaking im/migrants.” Immigrants can come from many different …

Luther’S Mysticism, Pietism, And Contemplative Spirituality, Daniel L. Brunner

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

To ask, “Why church?” certainly stirs multilayered theological, missional, ecclesial, and pastoral reflection. The question also has spiritual ramifications. To explore some of them, we will trace a thread of the Lutheran spiritual tradition from Martin Luther’s own “faith mysticism” through particular aspects of German pietism. That overview will provide a foundation for engaging the contemporary contemplative movement, in order to discern how its concepts and practices might provide insight for the practice of spirituality. Our conviction is that deepening the interior journey through a living, active faith leads not to withdrawal but to an awareness—even a vulnerability—that welcomes a …

The Art Of Balancing: Teaching A Mixed-Level Seminary Classroom, Ekaterina Lomperis

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

Disparate, mixed-level classrooms are composed of students of acutely diverse levels of academic preparedness, background, and knowledge of the subject matter. I was confronted with the challenge of managing such classrooms when I first began teaching at a denominational seminary. I continue to regularly engage such classrooms while teaching seminary students at my current institution.

The Synoptic Problem (Introduction And Chapter One Of A Beginner's Guide To New Testament Studies: Understanding Key Debates), Nijay K. Gupta

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

Excerpt: "When I first entered theological education as a seminary student, I found myself completely lost in the world of biblical scholarship. Not only were there so many technical terms I couldn’t define and histories of interpretation with which I was not acquainted, but it seemed like there were two, or three, or ten views on various debated issues, and I had trouble keeping them straight. Oh, how I wished I had a map that could help me find my way through the maze of scholarship, or a guide to clue me into this view and that view!"

The Gēr In Deuteronomy: Expanding Ancient Near Eastern Precedent For The Protection Of Vulnerable Classes, Josh Dunahoo

Seminary Masters Theses

The gēr in the Hebrew Bible is a legal classification representing persons who reside outside their ancestral lands with people outside of their kin. The status of the gēr is not static in the Bible. Rather, historical and textual evidence in the respective law codes informs the socioeconomic and religious standing of the gēr in Israelite society. In Deuteronomic tradition, the gēr is among the most vulnerable groups in Israel and is therefore appended to the ancient Near Eastern widow-orphan dyad in Deuteronomy. The first section of the present thesis traces the law codes and wisdom literature of ancient Near …

Introduction To The State Of New Testament Studies, Nijay K. Gupta, Scot Mcknight

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

Excerpt: "I (Nijay) first encountered the book The Face of New Testament Studies, this book's predecessor, when I was in graduate school. I went to seminary primarily because I wanted to learn how to study the Bible in depth for personal and ministry formation. I had not studied the Bible in an academic setting prior to that. The "world" of biblical studies for this neophyte seminary student was intriguing but mystifying-so many technical terms, multiple differing perspectives, views, and ideas proposed and presented, and all of this was in flux as scholarship moved forward decade after decade. Thankfully, The Face …

Conceptualizing Therapy As A Spiritual Discipline, Kristen M. White

Faculty Publications - Graduate School of Counseling

Psychological literature is in the beginning stages of reflecting the Church’s shift toward spiritual formation, incorporating theory and research regarding how spiritual disciplines might be relevant to the practice of therapy. This work may be expanded by viewing therapy itself as a spiritual discipline, particularly for the client. This article makes this connection by clearly defining spiritual disciplines and highlighting how therapy is or can be made congruent with them. It further discusses how therapy may be a very useful spiritual discipline within the Church today. Lastly, this article discusses the implications for viewing therapy as a spiritual discipline for …

Meals, Mouths, And Martyrs: Paulinus Of Nola And Sacrificial Spaces (Chapter 6 Of Food, Virtue, And The Shaping Of Early Christianity), Dana Robinson

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

In January 406, Paulinus of Nola devotes his twelfth Natalicium, or birthday poem, in honor of St. Felix’s festival day (Carm. 20), to three miracle stories about local farmers and devotees of the saint.1 Each one vows to bring a fattened animal – two pigs and a calf, respectively – to the shrine of Felix as a devotional offering. After much misadventure, and thanks only to Felix’s intervention, each one successfully performs his vow. The first “cuts the throat of the fat beast he had vowed, as men bound by a promise do.” The second brings a pig who “demands …

Is Anybody There? Exploring The Role Of Social Presence In An Online Political Science Research Methods Class, Delton Daigle, Aaron Stuvland

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

Social presence, or the “being there” and “being real” presence of others in an online learning environment, is widely considered to have a positive impact on student motivation and participation, actual and perceived learning, course and instructor satisfaction, and retention in online courses (Richardson et al. 2017; Oh et al. 2018). Several aspects of social presence remain understudied however, such as how gender, class rank, and other demographical characteristics may influence perceptions of social presence and condition the relationship between perceptions of social presence and academic performance or course satisfaction. Furthermore, although studies of the impact of social presence abound, …

Israelite And Judean Society And Economy, Roger Nam

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

This article examines the economic worlds that correspond to the timeline of the histori­cal books of the Hebrew Bible from the conquest to the return from exile. During this pe­riod, Israel and Judah transformed from small subsistence-based tribal economies to more centralized organization, at least partially due to external military threats. Both the north­ern kingdom and eventually the southern kingdom fell to the Assyrian and Babylonian empires respectively, and the forced migrations instigated socially dis-embedded economies in the exile and repatriation. Even though these ancient economic modalities are largely assumed and unstated, critical analysis of the historical books requires a …

Review Of A History Of Death In The Hebrew Bible, Jesse M. Peterson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Review of A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible. By MATTHEW SURIANO. Pp. xii þ 296. Illustrated. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN 978 0 19 084473 8.

La Virgen María, ¿El Talon De Aduiles De La Teología De C.S. Lewis?, Jason Lepojärvi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

En principio, hay sin duda una poderosa raz6n para olvidar el influjo de otros escritores en la personalidad y la obra de Lewis, que no sean los propios Inklings, algunos cldsicos latinos, las sagas y poesias medievales, Dante, Milton, y dos bngelestutelares: Chesterton y MacDonald. La razon esta en los propios escritos autobiograficos de Lewis. En Cautiuado por la alegrla, se extiende largamente sobre lo que supuso para 61 descubrir las historias de Fantasla o los ensayos de Chesterton. Pero no podemos considerar por ello que esos testimonios supongan un fiable corpus de preferencias, y aun menos un cuadro …

With Jørn Utzon: Approaching And Preaching Architectural Texts, Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Architecture is communication. It conveys human stories, feelings, philosophies, and cultural histories and interacts through them with viewers, occupants, artists, and surrounding communities. Architecture, whether explicitly religious or not, is spiritual, too. Embodying and manifesting spatial spirituality, it invokes in the mind of the appreciator awe, wonder, and contact with the transcendent. All this is possible because architecture is, to borrow Paul Tillich’s language, an art form carrying the ultimate concerns of human life. Recognizing the communicative, spiritual, and existential nature of architecture exemplified in Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, this article meets a need and demonstrates the potential for …

Experiences Of Hope, Resilience And Spirituality In Kenyan Children And Adolescents, Anne King

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Resilience is a vital factor in overcoming adversity. The presence of hope and spiritual meaning have been demonstrated to contribute to resilience. Globally, there are millions of children and adolescents who have faced traumatic experiences including, but not limited to, the loss of their parents. The current study explored Kenyan children and adolescents’ experiences of resilience, hope and spirituality in the environment of a group home and school in Kenya. Mixed measures were utilized. Seventy-five participants ages 10-19 years old completed the quantitative measures including the CD-RISC, SEARS-C/A, the Children’s Hope scale, the Adult Hope scale, and a 1-item Spirituality …

Margaret Fell, Reading In The Heart, Michael Birkel

Quaker Religious Thought

In 1677 Margaret Fell composed a tract of nineteen pages, The Daughter of Sion Awakened, and Putting on Strength: She Is Arising, and Shaking Herself Out of the Dust, and Putting on Her Beautiful Garments. An attentive reading of the text shows her associative way of reading scripture, one that focuses on the imagery of the Bible as a guide to interior experience and a vocabulary for the life of the soul