History of Religion Commons^™

The Celtic Way: Order, Creativity, And The Holy Spirit In The Celtic Monastic Movement, Fiona Leitch

Senior Honors Theses

The Celtic monastic movement lasted hundreds of years and is responsible for much of the spread of Christianity to the West. Much of the movement’s success can be attributed to the Celtic Christians’ understanding of the importance of the role of creative culture and order as well as an openness and responsiveness to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is these three things working in tandem that influenced the success of the Celtic monastic movement. Although the movement ended a thousand years ago, it can offer guidance and wisdom for carrying out ministry today. A case study of Cuirim …

Luther And The Jews: An Exposition Directed To Christians On Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism, Defense, And Legacy, Megan Wilson

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the historical relations between reformer Martin Luther and the Jewish people. Its primary purpose is to defend Luther’s image as a prominent figure in Christian history while considering the possibility of his anti-Semitic views. This thesis focuses particularly on a number of Luther’s written works in order to achieve this goal, with a secondary concentration on historical and incidental defenses that can be used to exonerate him. This thesis also serves to inform contemporary Christians of the controversy surrounding these views and the result of his legacy in more recent centuries.

Jesuits And Their Books: Libraries And Printing Around The World, Kathleen M. Comerford

History: Faculty Publications

The geographical and chronological spread of topics in this thematic issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies is the result of a mandate to give coverage to both pre- and post-suppression research, around the globe, on Jesuit libraries and printing, in a total of six or seven articles. As this is no small task, a great deal of information is missing from the volume. I began with the premise that the subjects and regions which have received the most coverage over the previous two decades should be excluded: therefore, there is no article on Argentina, China, France, Hungary, Italy, Spain, …

Reclaiming And Reconciling What Was Originally Ours--Christianity And Feminism: A Concise History, Soquel Filice

History

No abstract provided.

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.

A Monastery For The Revolution: Ernesto Cardenal, Thomas Merton, And The Paradox Of Violence In Nicaragua, 1957-1979, Brendan Jordan

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

In 1957, a young Nicaraguan poet named Ernesto Cardenal, recently graduated from Columbia University, entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani, located outside Louisville, Kentucky. There he met a prominent Catholic thinker and pacifist, Thomas Merton, who soon mentored young Cardenal. Though Cardenal departed Gethsemani in 1959, Merton continued to counsel him in spirituality, poetry, and social activism until Merton’s death in 1968. While Cardenal during these earlier years was a committed pacifist, his experiences after returning to Nicaragua in 1965 radically altered his view of social action. Cardenal established a semi-monastic community in the Solentiname islands in southern Nicaragua, and …

Leo The Great On The Supremacy Of The Bishop Of Rome, Denis Kaiser

Faculty Publications

Pope Leo the Great built his rationale for the supreme authority of the bishop of Rome on an existing tradition, yet with his additions he developed a theoretical rationale for later papal claims to absolute and supreme power in the ecclesiastical and secular realms. Previous bishops and church leaders had laid increasing stress on the unique role of the Apostle Peter as the founder of the Roman churches and episcopacy, the significance of the Roman bishop as Peter’s successor, and the apostolic significance of the city and episcopacy of Rome. Yet Leo’s rationale for the absolute control and power of …

Peter Abelard’S Theology Of Atonement: A Multifaceted Approach And Reevaluation, Denis Kaiser

Faculty Publications

As a person trained primarily in philosophy, Peter Abelard employed an intense questioning mentality in fleshing out his theological ideas.  His extreme debating style of totally deconstructing theological positions and then afterward including some of those same aspects into his own views made it easy for his religio-political enemies to take apparently heterodox statements and declare these as representative of Abelard’s entire atonement theology.  However, many of his theological beliefs are supported in the New Testament and were already held by the church fathers.  He frequently affirmed Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice as the ransom to redeem man.  He rejected various contemporary …

[Book Review Of] American Protestant Theology: A Historical Sketch, By Luigi Giussani, Denis Kaiser

Faculty Publications

Many scholars in the field of American religious and theological history may never have heard the name of Luigi Giussani (1922-2005) because he spent most of his life in his home country Italy, his proficiency in English was limited to reading literacy, and the majority of his writings were not concerned with American religious history anyway. Giussani was a Catholic priest, theologian, high school teacher, professor, and founder of the international movement Comunione e Liberazione. He was closely acquainted with Pope John Paul II and the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. His influence on Italian and European religious life and culture …

Inspiring Piety: The Influence Of Caravaggio’S Paintings In Santa Maria Del Popolo, Cara Coleman

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This article looks at the way Italian Baroque painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio broke from the artistic conventions of the Renaissance and Mannerist styles in his religious paintings to create an entirely new style that reflected the needs of the post-Tridentine Catholic Church. Caravaggio pushed painting throughout Europe in a new direction, away from the idealization of the Renaissance and the artistic extremes of Mannerism, by popularizing realism in art. Caravaggio’s unique style is examined through comparisons of his paintings, The Conversion of Paul, c.1601 and The Martyrdom of Saint Peter, c.1601 in the Roman basilica, Santa Maria del Popolo …

Faith, Works, And Praxis: Emergent Post-Colonialism And The Catholic Church In North America, Alexander Odicino

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The personal papers of American Jesuit priest, Wilfrid Parsons, evince an international information war concerned with the praxis of "facts" pertaining to Mexico’s Church and state conflicts of 1925 to 1939. While editor-in-chief of the Jesuit weekly magazine, "America", (1925-1936) Parsons transformed the publication into the pre-eminent Catholic source of information about the "Mexican situation", consequently enabling him to coordinate the publication of "facts" with several other New York based Catholic publications. However, rather than speaking to strictly Catholic interests in the Mexican conflict, research has shown that, when analyzed as a focal point of information processing, the sources in …

Luther’S Persistent Mentor, Scott Culpepper

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"In honor of Reformation Day on October 31, we reflect on the importance of a good, patient and persistent mentor, like Martin Luther's mentor, Johann von Staupitz."

Posting about Martin Luther and his mentor Johann von Staupitz from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/luthers-persistent-mentor/

“Did Jesus Die In Outer Space? Evaluating A Key Claim In Richard Carrier’S On The Historicity Of Jesus, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The attempt to use later sources, interpreted in ways that are at best open to dispute, in an attempt to argue against what generations of skeptical scholars have concluded to be likely with respect to the early Christian sources, is never going to make mythicism seem more probable than the hard-earned and intensely-researched consensus of historians and scholars, namely that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Printing And Protestants: An Empirical Test Of The Role Of Printing In The Reformation, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The causes of the Protestant Reformation have long been debated. This paper seeks to revive and econometrically test the theory that the spread of the Reformation is linked to the spread of the printing press. I test this theory by analyzing data on the spread of the press and the Reformation at the city level. An econometric analysis that instruments for omitted variable bias with a city's distance from Mainz, the birthplace of printing, suggests that cities with at least one printing press by 1500 were at minimum 29 percentage points more likely to be Protestant by 1600.

Roosevelt, Boy Scouts, And The Formation Of Muscular Christian Character, Gordon J. Christen

Religious Studies Honors Projects

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many prominent Christians and political leaders saw a degenerative influence in industrializing America. For them, urban culture had eroded gender roles, personal strength, and moral fiber. So-called “Muscular Christians” prescribed physical exertion and wilderness experience to cure these ills. I argue that these values were embodied in idealized characters such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jesus, and the Boy Scout to give a form to cultural remedies. In the process, they became the terms upon which proper Americanism, and proper Christianity, were constructed.

The German Peasants’ War: The Intersection Of Theology And Society, Zachary Tyree

Senior Honors Theses

This paper examines the way that Reformation theology, particularly that espoused by Martin Luther, impacted German society. Sixteenth-century German society was very hierarchical in nature, with the Roman Catholic Church at the top, followed by the nobility, and finally the peasants, who suffered economic and political plight. Luther’s break from the Church in 1517 and the subsequent years brought tension to society. Developments extending from that break challenged the social hierarchy. One of the major social consequences of the Protestant Reformation, which was rooted in Luther’s theology, was the Peasants’ War. Luther criticized the peasants for the uprising, based on …

Money, Religion, And Tyranny: God And The Demonic In Luther's Antifragile Theology, Guillermo C. Hansen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

0816: First Presbyterian Church Of Huntington Records, 1890-2008, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection contains the records of the First Presbyterian Church of Huntington from the 1890s to the early 2000s. Most of the collection falls between 1930 and 2002. Within the collection are administrative records such as minutes, registers, and accounting records; photographs of members, non-members, former members, church functions; scrapbooks of sanctuary renovations, church functions, and miscellaneous ephemera; newspaper clippings; an international collection; histories of the First Presbyterian Church; a large collection of lantern slides; and other various items.

To view materials from this collection that are digitized and available online, search the First Presbyterian Church of Huntington, 1890-2008 here.

An Examination Of The Martyrdoms Of Lyon In Ad 177: A Critique Of The Theory Of The Trinqui, Timothy Yonts

Masters Theses

Historical research concerning the Christian persecution of Lyon in AD 177 has attempted to solve the question of relationship between the events in Lyon and the political and religious context of the Roman Empire. One such theory, the trinqui theory, posits that the Gallic aristocracy exploited Christians as sacrificial victims in an ancient Celtic ritual involving the use of criminals in gladiatorial entertainment. If true, the trinqui theory effectively shifts the responsibility for the killings from the imperial government under Marcus Aurelius to the provincial and aristocratic authorities in Gaul. This thesis will critique the trinqui theory by showing that …

Historical Movements And The Theology Behind The Pluralism Project At Harvard University, Scott Macleod

Masters Theses

The focus of this paper is to address religious pluralism as a belief along with examining multiple factors that have been a catalyst for the Pluralism Project at Harvard University to become part of American culture. The theology behind and ideology of the Pluralism Project will be examined along with the writings of Diana Eck, founder of the Pluralism Project. Outwardly, The Pluralism Project and the works of Eck give the impression of an impartial attempt to educate people on the growing religious diversity found within America. However, it will be shown that the Pluralism Project and the efforts of …

To The Jew First: A Socio-Historical And Biblical-Theological Analysis Of The Pauline Teaching Of `Election' In Light Of Second Temple Jewish Patterns Of Thought, Anthony Thornhill

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Paul's "doctrine" of election has remained a controversial and enigmatic topic for centuries. Few studies, however, have approached Paul's doctrine through the context of Second Temple Judaism. This study examines Paul's view of election through the lens of Second Temple Jewish texts written prior to 70 CE. In doing so, it is argued that the best framework through which to view Paul's discussion of election is through a primarily corporate model of election. While such a model is rooted in Judaism, Paul departs from his Jewish contemporaries in arguing that the locus of election is in God's Messiah, Jesus.

Active Religion: James Ireland, The Separate Baptists, And The Great Awakening In Virginia, 1760-1775, Cooper Pasque

Masters Theses

In the mid-eighteenth century, the religious fervor of the Great Awakening entered Virginia. Evangelical Baptists soon threatened to undermine the authority of the Anglican Church and its planter patrons. Despite their efforts to quiet the Baptists, evangelical religion took root in Virginia by the end of the American Revolution. Historical works on these events offer valid but incomplete explanations. Puzzling dynamics in the Virginian context require a more complex interpretation. The life of James Ireland provides a unique window into possible answers. His autobiography provides evidence for what appears to be the most fundamental reason for evangelicalism's successes in Virginia. …

Does God Have A Right To Judge? The Aztecs' False Worship Practices Result In God's Judgment In The Unlikely Form Of Hernán Cortés, Lisa Timmons

Masters Theses

This thesis covers religious aspects of the Aztec culture before and after the conquest of Hernán Cortés between 1519 and 1521. One aspect of this thesis details the Aztecs' history and rise to power, followed by their rapid demise at the hands of Spanish conquistadors, while the other examines the highly flawed but effective instrument used in the destruction of their sprawling Mesoamerican empire--a conquistador from Spain by the name of Hernán Cortés. At the root of this controversial topic is God's perfect justice in relation to this culture's blatant and repeated disregard for those created in His image--by all …

They Came Up Out Of The Water: Evangelicalism And Ethiopian Baptists In The Southern Lowcountry And Jamaica, 1737-1806, Samantha Futrell

Masters Theses

The Ethiopian Baptists in the eighteenth century Atlantic were not actually Ethiopians at all, but people of West African descent, traded as slaves to the southern lowcountry and Jamaica. Their identification with Ethiopia did not come from their geographic ancestry, but from a Christian heritage that they became a part of when they accepted the salvation of Jesus Christ. The evolution of this evangelical Afro-Baptist movement occurred in three stages. First, white evangelicals, like George Whitefield, carried Christianity to African American populations in South Carolina during the Great Awakening. Second, African American leaders, such as George Liele, rose up as …

Squire Adamsson: Or, Where Do You Live? An Allegorical Tale From The Swedish Awakening, By Paul Peter Waldenström, Mark Safstrom

Scandinavian Studies: Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works

It is now over 150 years since Squire Adamsson appeared in bookstores and helped to launch its author, P.P. Waldenström, to prominence within the religious revivals that were then sweeping across Scandinavia. The themes of the novel touched on many aspects of Christian life and its challenges, but particularly drew from the theology of one group of dissenters in the Lutheran state church, the so-called “new evangelical” Pietists surrounding Carl Olof Rosenius (1816-1868). There are a variety of themes that can be found in this text, but perhaps none both so provocative and poignant as the unique presentation of congregational …

More Than An "Immoderate Superstition": Christian Identity In The First Three Centuries, Edward Mason

Theses and Dissertations--History

Only recently have scholars given particular attention to the development of the racial discourse present in early Christian apologetics. This study is aimed at understanding the Latin and Greek literary antecedents to the development of a Christian discourse on race and identity and examining in detail the apex of this discourse in the work of third century apologist Origen of Alexandria. Origen’s work represented the apex of an evolving discourse that, while continuing to use traditional vocabulary, became increasingly universalizing with the growth of the Roman Empire. By understanding how Christians in the first three centuries shaped their attitudes on …

Evangelicalism And Religious Pluralism In Contemporary America: Diversity Without, Diversity Within, And Maintaining The Borders, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

Not that many people need convincing, but the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) provides confirming evidence that evangelicalism in America is alive and well. In this survey, which involved 54,461 telephone interviews, the 76% of respondents who identified themselves as Christians were asked a follow-up question: "Do you identify as a Born Again or Evangelical Christian?" Forty-five percent answered yes. This number obviously includes a fair number of folks within "mainline" denominations and within predominately African-American churches; more surprising, perhaps, 18.9% of American Catholics identified themselves as "born again" or "evangelical."

If one were to depend solely on the …

By This They Will Know: Discipleship Principles To Transform The Church, Mark R. Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Current research indicates that ninety-five million individuals in America do not attend church. Nearly forty percent, of this group, have a negative impression of Christianity. The purpose of this project is to study the forces that that are transforming the American culture, and the dynamics that are perpetuating a bad image of Christianity. The author will evaluate the current state of spiritual formation in the Christian community, and make recommendations for developing an effective discipleship strategy for the church. The impetus for this paper is the Great commission issued by Jesus as recorded in Matthew 28:19. The paper will incorporate …

A Spectacle Of Great Beauty: The Changing Faces Of Hagia Sophia, Victoria M. Villano

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Defined By What We Are Not: The Role Of Anti-Catholicism In The Formation Of Early American Identity, Brandi Hatfield Marchant

Masters Theses

From the colonial era through the mid-nineteenth century, anti-Catholicism colored key points of development in America's early history. Amidst the English colonial experience, the Revolution and establishment of the republic, and the educational reform efforts of the nineteenth-century, anti-Catholicism emerged as a fundamental factor in the development of America's characteristically Protestant political and religious identity. While many studies of early American anti-Catholicism focus on one region or time period, drawing connections across geographic boundaries and constructed historical periods attests to the sentiment's pervasive and enduring influence. While this sentiment varied in intensity throughout America over time, its presence profoundly shaped …