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Il Complesso Allontanamento Di Boccaccio Dal Cristianesimo E Dal Giudizio, Olivia Jane Lomax

Honors Theses

Il Decameron di Giovanni Boccaccio presenta un gruppo di giovani che fuggono da Firenze per rifugiarsi nella campagna nel 1348 durante la Peste Nera. La brigata, come viene chiamato il gruppo, è composta da 7 giovani donne e 3 giovani uomini. Boccaccio introduce questo gruppo in fuga dalla peste di Firenze attraverso il commovente discorso di Pampinea. Lei sottolinea alle sue amiche l'importanza di proteggere la propria vita. Boccaccio inizia il Decameron con la proposta di una giovane donna forte, che implora altre giovani donne di prendere controllo delle loro vite: “ ‘Donne mie care, voi potete, cosí come io, …

Consensus, Convergence, And Covid-19: The Ethical Role Of Religious Reasons In Leaders’ Response To Covid-19, Marilie Coetsee

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Focusing on current efforts to persuade the public to comply with COVID-19 best practices, this essay examines what role appeals to religious reasons should (or should not) play in leaders’ attempts to secure followers’ acceptance of group policies in contexts of religious and moral pluralism. While appeals to followers’ religious commitments can be helpful in promoting desirable public health outcomes, they also raise moral concerns when made in the contexts of secular institutions with religiously diverse participants. In these contexts, leaders who appeal to religious reasons as bases of justification for imposing COVID policies may seem to fail to show …

[Introduction To] Religion And The Medieval And Early Modern Global Marketplace, Scott Oldenburg, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Bookshelf

Religion and the Medieval and Early Modern Global Marketplace brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to examine the intersection, conflict, and confluence of religion and the market before 1700.

Each chapter analyzes the unique interplay of faith and economy in a different locale: Syria, Ethiopia, France, Iceland, India, Peru, and beyond. In ten case studies, specialists of archaeology, art history, social and economic history, religious studies, and critical theory address issues of secularization, tolerance, colonialism, and race with a fresh focus. They chart the tensions between religious and economic thought in specific locales or texts, the complex ways …

How To Be A Good Believer: A Multifaceted Defense Of Christian Belief, Cameron Bonsell

Honors Theses

In this paper I will argue that holding Christian beliefs is consistent with intellectual virtues. I must first clarify that holding Christian beliefs does not consist only in the affirmation of certain propositions like “God exists”. This is not to say that affirming certain doctrine is not essential to Christian belief, but this is only part of what it encompasses. When I refer to Christianity and Christian beliefs in this paper, I mean affirming basic religious propositions like “Jesus was the son of God”, but I also take certain practices to be part of Christian belief. For example, spiritual disciplines …

Semantics And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This essay argues that the approach to meaning articulated by Donald Davidson supplies all the student of religion needs to know about this subject. By focusing on interpretation as understood by Davidson, we can understand, for example, the beliefs and practices of a people such as the Dogon of Mali. By adding to this the evidence of ethnography and history, students of religion can give a compelling account of change and adjudicate between competing analyses.

Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part 2, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Throughout the bitterly cold month of January 1805, John Meacham (1770-1854), Issachar Bates (1758-1837), and Benjamin Youngs (1774- 1855), struggled through mud and ice, biting winds, blinding snow, and drenching rains, on a 1,200-mile “Long Walk” to the settlements of the trans-Appalachian West. Traveling south toward Cumberland Gap, the three Shaker missionaries from New Lebanon, New York, were tracking a strange new convulsive religious phenomenon that had gripped Scots-Irish Presbyterians during the frontier religious awakening known as the Great Revival (1799-1805). Observers called the puzzling somatic fits “the Jerks.” Ardent supporters of the revivals believed the jerks were a sign …

Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part I, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Reports of a bizarre new religious phenomenon made their way over the mountains from Tennessee during the summer and fall of 1804. For several years, readers in the eastern states had been eagerly consuming news of the Great Revival, the powerful succession of Presbyterian sacramental festivals and Methodist camp meetings that played a formative role in the development of the southern Bible Belt and the emergence of early American evangelicalism. Letters from the frontier frequently included vivid descriptions of the so-called “falling exercise,” in which the bodies of revival converts crumpled to the ground during powerful sermon performances on the …

New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This fourth installment in a series exploring newly discovered manuscripts relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that drove Edwards from his Northampton pastorate presents an unpublished oppositional dissertation by Experience Mayhew, a prominent eighteenth-century Indian missionary from Martha’s Vineyard. Next to Solomon Stoddard, Mayhew was Edwards’s most important theological target during the conflict. Where Edwards pressed toward precision in defining the qualifications for admission to the Lord’s Supper, Mayhew remained convinced that the standards for membership in New England’s Congregational churches should encompass a broad range of knowledge and experience. His rejoinder to Edwards’s Humble Inquiry provides a rare opportunity to …

Maker's Breath: Religion, Magic, And The 'Godless' World Of Bioware's Dragon Age Ii (2011), Kristin M.S. Bezio

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The core conflict of BioWare’s 2011 digital role-playing game Dragon Age II places the Christianesque Chantry in opposition to both the hierarchical Qunari and the Circle of Magi. In Dragon Age II religious beliefs, particularly those of the Chantry, prove destructive; by demonstrating the chaos of religious conflict, the game guides the player to recognize the danger inherent in extremist devotion to religion, and argues that interpersonal relationships should form the basis of our ethics. In Dragon Age II, the player-character, Hawke, is evaluated by each of his (or her) non-player companions; the mechanic forms the basis for a …

[Introduction To] Religion Around Shakespeare, Peter Iver Kaufman

Bookshelf

For years scholars and others have been trying to out Shakespeare as an ardent Calvinist, a crypto-Catholic, a Puritan-baiter, a secularist, or a devotee of some hybrid faith. In Religion Around Shakespeare, Peter Kaufman sets aside such speculation in favor of considering the historical and religious context surrounding his work. Employing extensive archival research, he aims to assist literary historians who probe the religious discourses, characters, and events that seem to have found places in Shakespeare’s plays and to aid general readers or playgoers developing an interest in the plays’ and playwright’s religious contexts: Catholic, conformist, and reformist. Kaufman …

The Invention Of The Native Speaker, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

This paper argues that employing the designations “native speaker” and “native language” unreflectively is to engage in a gesture of othering that operates on an axis of empowerment and disempowerment. Bonfiglio examines the ideological legacy of the apparently innocent kinship metaphors of “mother tongue” and “native speaker” by historicizing their linguistic development. He traces the construction of ethnolinguistic nationalism, a composite of national language, identity, geography, and race, which informed the philology of the early modern era and culminated most divisively in the race-conscious discourses of the 19th century. Bonfiglio makes the case that scholarship should scrutinize the tendency to …

Spirit Politics: Radical Abolitionists And The Dead End Of Spiritualism, Robert Nelson

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

On June 30, 1858, abolitionist Parker Pillsbury wrote William Lloyd Garrison and readers of the Liberator that he had “just returned from attending one of the largest and most important Reformatory Conventions ever held in this or any other country.” In his report on the “Free Convention” held at Rutland, Vermont, Parker praised the “character and quality” and the “large brains and full hearts” of the convention participants. “The most numerous class” among these participants, he noted, were Spiritualists. Spiritualism had burst on the American scene a decade earlier, quickly attracting thousands of adherents who believed that communication and communion …

The Newbury Prayer Bill Hoax: Devotion And Deception In New England's Era Of Great Awakenings, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

[...] [T]he “Tappin manuscript,” as I refer to it in the essay that follows, presents an intriguing puzzle. If Christopher Toppan did not compose the unusual prayer request, then who did? When? Why? Solving the riddle of the Tappin manuscript leads us into the troubled final years of one of New England’s most pugnacious ministers and the evangelical underworld of the Great Awakening that he had come to despise.

Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Donald Davidson’s concept of “anomalous monism” is not nearly as well known as his related attack on the idea of “conceptual schemes,” though they are closely related. This concept, I shall argue, has several important implications for the study of religion. In particular, it implies that, as an account of mind and language, “cognitive science” is going to be of limited interest. Moreover, and that approaches to the study of religion based on models drawn from cognitive science are likely to be “degenerate research programmes.” If this is so, then we can reasonably marginalize such programmes to the extent that …

[Introduction To] Thinking Of The Laity In Late Tudor England, Peter Iver Kaufman

Bookshelf

Thinking of the Laity explains why proposals for expanding lay prerogatives failed to shape the Elizabethan religious settlement from the 1560s through the 1580s. It also greatly adds to our understanding of the policy debates that are closely associated with the origins of puritanism, presbyterianism, and congregationalism. This book will be essential reading for people interested in the history of early modern England and in the progress of sixteenth-century religious reform.

Rites Of Passing: Foucault, Power, And Same-Sex Commitment Ceremonies, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

According to Catherine Bell, "The popular contention that ritual and religion decline in proportion to modernization has been something of a sociological truism since the mid-19th century". Conventional wisdom maintains that ritual practices just don't hold central importance in the lives of those raised in the industrialized world as compared with the importance such things had for our distant ancestors or for our contemporaries in non-industrial societies. Some have contended that this is because ritual tends to be strongly correlated with pre-scientific cosmological beliefs that our society has for the most part outgrown. But for whatever reason, " [c]omparatively speaking," …

Wrestling With Religion: Pullman, Pratchett, And The Uses Of Story, Elisabeth Rose Gruner

English Faculty Publications

While children's and young adult fantasy literature is often concerned with "first things," with the struggle between good and evil, or with the fate of the cosmos, still it is rarely overtly religious in the sense of direct engagement with "faith, religion and church(es)" (Ghesquiere 307). Perhaps it is children's literature's vexed relationship with didacticism that keeps fantasy writers for children from engaging directly with religious language and concepts, or perhaps it is the setting in an alternate world that enables allegorizing impulse rather than direct engagement. In either case, despite a tradition of fables, parables, and allegorical treatments of …

War And Its Discontents: Pacifism And Quietism In The Abrahamic Traditions (Book Review), G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Review of the book, War and Its Discontents: Pacifism and Quietism in the Abrahamic Traditions, edited by J. Patout Burns. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996.

Philanthropy As A Virtue In Late Antiquity And The Middle Ages, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

"Philanthropy," "charity," and related concepts were well known to late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Rulers, wealthy individuals and, early on, the Christian church founded hospitals, distributed food, and established forms of relief for the needy of various sorts throughout the period. The problem comes in interpreting these activities, their motives, and their goals. Is the philanthropia of a pre-Christian philosopher of a piece with the agape, or Christian love, of a fourth-century bishop? When the Roman emperor provides bread and circuses, what does he intend and why does he do it? Does the twelfth-century nobleman intend the same? As …

Interpretations Of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, And The Just War Tradition (Book Review), G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, and the Just War Tradition, by Richard B. Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Policraticus (Book Review), G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Policraticus, edited and translated by Cary J. Nederman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Religion, Interpretation, And Diversity Of Belief: The Framework Model From Kant To Durkheim To Davidson (Book Review), G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Religion, Interpretation, and Diversity of Belief: The Framework Model from Kant to Durkheim to Davidson by Terry Godlove. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Milton And The Doctrine Of The Synod Of Dort Arminianism In Christian Doctrine And Paradise Lost, Robert James Fagg

Master's Theses

In order to understand the similarities or areas of agreement between Milton's theology and that of the Arminians one not only has to understand thoroughly the five Arminian articles but also must be familiar with the theologies which produced them. [I] will attempt to show why a few scholars and theologians refer to Milton's Christine Doctrine and Paradise Lost as being Arminian by simply comparing the two theologies and pointing out the areas of definite agreement between them.

Milton And Socinianism, Joseph Johnson Collins

Master's Theses

The seventeenth century was a period of enormous scholarship and erudition. In the wake of the Reformation and the Humanist movements great interest was awakened in the field of Biblical scholarship, Many of the scholars, lay­ men, and divines began to devote much of their time and energy to the new Biblical exegesis. The doctrine which was receiving much attention during this period suggested that one might assure that the strongholds of the reformed religion were sufficiently fortified through improved trans­lation and qualified Biblical exegesis.

This was the era which produced John Milton 's method­ ical and learned tractate of …

John Milton : Religious Independent, Allen Herbert Scott

Master's Theses

In the preface to -De Doctrina Christiana John Milton makes it clear that his religious views underwent a continual process of revision throughout his lite, and he assures us that at no time during his life did he follow any heresy or sect. During the century and a half prior to the discovery of !!! DOctrina Christiana in 1823, however, Milton was regarded as one of the highest figures in English literature, passing as an orthodox Protestant of the Calvinistic faith.

Religion In The Life And Works Of Longfellow, Morris Edward Cather

Master's Theses

An author's work is generally colored by the presence or the lack of religious convictions. The poetry and prose of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow indicate a deep-seated faith in God. Although this faith is most clearly manifested in the works of the man, its source is found in the life and character of the poet himself. It is the aim of this paper to discover the various contributing factors, to ascertain their effect upon the poet and his writings, and to draw certain conclusions concerning his religious faith.