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The Socialist Devout: Religious Orders And The Making Of An East German Catholic Community, Kathryn Julian
The Socialist Devout: Religious Orders And The Making Of An East German Catholic Community, Kathryn Julian
Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation explores the central role of Roman Catholic orders in the creation of a resilient and stable Catholic community in post-1945 East German society. The persistence of these highly visible religious figures as well as their work in charities, retirement homes, schools, and hospitals not only threatened the socialist state’s mission to create a secularized society, but also bolstered and unified the dispersed East German Catholic population. Though the German Democratic Republic (GDR) ostensibly embraced scientific atheism, religious orders remained important in the postwar era, particularly in their performance of social functions. Catholic institutes upheld the integrity of their …
In The Company Of Angels: Expressions Of Personal Autonomy, Authority, And Agency In Early Anglo-Saxon Monasticism, William Tanner Smoot
In The Company Of Angels: Expressions Of Personal Autonomy, Authority, And Agency In Early Anglo-Saxon Monasticism, William Tanner Smoot
Theses, Dissertations and Capstones
In this thesis I examine the opportunities for individual agency and social and spiritual autonomy in the seventh-and-eighth-century Anglo-Saxon kingdoms occasioned by the introduction and development of Christian monasticism. The term “autonomy” concerns the degree to which individuals managed to determine the social order and nature, as well as spiritual character, of their ensuing lives through an adherence to monastic practice. Early Anglo-Saxon Christianity assumed a monastic character, and from the outset coenobitic communities acquired and maintained certain rights regarding their internal governance and social development from their ecclesiastic and secular superiors, which conceptually separated religious households from those of …