Religion Commons^™

Behind The Lens, Jolie M. Adams Miss

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

What Fuels Me as a Photographer?

Many photographers don’t realize their ability and opportunity to give back and make a difference. I believe photography extends beyond taking a series of photographs. For me, it is my way of serving others, connecting with people, and sharing their stories. I believe photography is a powerful tool to inspire change in communities—especially in those that are underserved. Photos are visual statements of humanity: an abstract of our failures, ignorance, arrogance, compassion, resilience, progress, and so much more. I want my photography to go beyond a small circle of influence. All of us have …

Catastrophic Christianity: An Iconological Study Of The Messianic Idea In American Protestant Christianity Circa 1900-1940, Adam D. J. Brett

Dissertations - ALL

A historically variegated emblem of trust and faith, the messianic idea is the offer of religion to the people for salvation from the coming catastrophe. This dissertation analyzes the messianic idea in "America." The foci of the study are popular messianic figurations that serve as heuristic devices to explicate early 20th century U.S. culture, revealing two ideological impulses that encapsulate collective responses to the anxieties of the age: authoritarian-populism and catastrophic-utopianism. Four case studies, encompassing four different genres of media, define and illustrate these ideological impulses: The Fundamentals, Superman comic books, Bruce Barton's capitalist Christianity, and The Wizard of Oz …

Puritan Patriarchal Construction Of American Sexual Morality And Woman's Worth: A Daughter's Response, Savannah Mather

Honors Projects

While modern conceptions of Puritanism regard it as an artifact of American history, whose woman-killing theologies are long buried and forgotten, the bible in my father’s closet and the recently leaked Supreme Court draft to overturn Roe. Vs. Wade would argue otherwise. Cotton Mather’s favorite book Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion outlined both the ideals and detriments of the Anglo-American female identity. In this text, white women were taught to absolve themselves of the “nakedness” in dress Puritan settlers associated Indigenous people with. A woman’s ability to align herself to the ideals of chastity determined her own and her …

Revival Today: America’S History Of Biblical Revival And Its Modern Application, Matthew Musser

Senior Honors Theses

There is a need for revival within the church today. Christian revivals are becoming less and less popular in the current times. Is this due to a subtle shift in America’s culture? Or is this decline of religious revival the result of something deeper? This thesis will seek to discover the biblical foundations of revival in American history. First, it will analyze some of the biblical revivals that took place in the Old Testament, Gospels, and Book of Acts. Then it will transition into how these biblical principles have been the cornerstone for many of the great revivals in American …

Talk This Way: A Look At The Historical Conversation Between Hip-Hop And Christianity, Joshua Swanson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Christianity and Hip-Hop culture are often said to be at odds with one another. One is said to promote a lifestyle of righteousness and love, while the other is said to promote drugs, violence, and pride. As a result, the public has portrayed these two institutions as conflicting with no willingness to resolve their perceived differences. This paper will argue that there has always been a healthy conversation between Hip-Hop and Christianity since Hip-Hop’s inception. Using sources like Hip-Hop lyrics, theologians, historians, autobiographies, sermons, and articles that range from Ma$e to Tipper Gore, this paper will look at the conversation …

The Stained River Of Immaculate Conception: An Analysis Of Judeo-Christian European Dominion Of Nature Along The Mississippi River, Rosalie Looijaard

Race, Ethnicity, & Religion

This paper analyzes how the Mississippi River and its surrounding land were co-opted by European explorers to establish Christian dominance in hopes of remaking the Garden of Eden. Christian colonizers both deified and dominated nature to both justify colonization and display their own power over space and religion. This paper first analyzes Hernando de Soto's and Jacques Marquette's naming of the river, and then argues how this initial naming is indicative of a larger trend of occupying and deifying perceived virginal nature and wilderness in order to establish a Christian space on the North American Continent.

Consumer Capitalist Christmas: How Participation In Christmas Frames Us As Religious Subjects, Shelby Burroughs

Religion: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier every year. It starts with the music that plays on the radio, then retail stores begin to drape their shelves with red and green streamers, followed by Christmas movies running on every other channel. Every December, Christmas feels almost inescapable. The holiday manages to find its way into every facet of public life in the United States. Christians and non-Christians alike find themselves exchanging gifts with friends and loved ones on the 25th of December every year. Christmas is able to be so pervasive because of how unassuming it is. You participate in …

Toward A Theology Of Transformation: Destroying The Sycamore Tree Of White Supremacy, Hannah Kathleen Griggs

Celebration of Learning

Black liberation theologians come to terms with white supremacy by collectively remembering the story of the Exodus and Jesus' crucifixion--affirming God's preference for freedom and in-the-world salvation. The particular history of white American Christianity requires a different story to provide the foundation for our social memory. As white American Christians, we have certain blind spots—blind spots created by historical and social privileges that have given white people unequal access to power and resources. The story of Zacchaeus has the potential to help reframe white Christianity’s conception of race relations in the United States, shifting from a reconciliation paradigm to a …

Ms – 208: The Jim Henderson Papers, Class Of 1971, Devin Mckinney

All Finding Aids

This collection contains documents, photographs, and other material, mostly relating to Jim Henderson’s career at Gettysburg College. There are various writings, and a scrapbook with images covering Henderson’s life from just before to just after his time in Gettysburg. A significant subset of material concerns Henderson’s commencement address, and the subsequent controversy. The bulk of the material is in the form of handwritten scores and program notes created for various musical performances between 1966 and 1973. Most of these are rock or jazz arrangements of religious themes, and most premiered at Gettysburg College.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids …

The Pneuma Network: Transnational Pentecostal Print Culture In The United States And South Africa, 1906-1948, Lindsey Brooke Maxwell

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exploding on the American scene in 1906, Pentecostalism became arguably the most influential religious phenomenon of the twentieth century. Sparked by the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, the movement grew rapidly throughout the United States and garnered global momentum. This study investigates the original Los Angeles Apostolic Faith Mission and the subsequent extension of the mission to South Africa through an examination of periodicals, mission records, and personal documents. Using the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa as a case study, this study measures the significance of print media in the emergence and evolution of the early Pentecostal movement. …

“Inhumanly Beautiful”: The Aesthetics Of The Nineteenth-Century Deathbed Scene, Margo Masur

English Theses

Death today is hidden from our everyday lives so it cannot intermingle with the general public. So when a family member dies, their body becomes an object in need of disposal; no longer can they be recognized as the familiar person they once were. To witness death is to force individuals to confront the truths of human existence, and for most of us seeing such a sight would fill us with an emotion of disgust. Yet during the nineteenth century, the burden of care towards the sick or dying was shared by a community of family, neighbors, and friends; the …

Did Religion Make The American Civil War Worse?, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

If there is one sober lesson Americans seem to be taking out of the bathos of the Civil War sesquicentennial, it’s the folly of a nation allowing itself to be dragged into the war in the first place. After all, from 1861 to 1865 the nation pledged itself to what amounted to a moral regime change, especially concerning race and slavery—only to realize that it had no practical plan for implementing it. No wonder that two of the most important books emerging from the Sesquicentennial years—by Harvard president Drew Faust, and Yale’s Harry Stout—questioned pretty frankly whether the appalling costs …

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

Classics, Philosophy, and Religion 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.

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 …

Using The Past To "Save" Our Nation: The Debate Over Christian America, John Fea

History Educator Scholarship

The article examines the widespread cultural debate in the U.S. regarding whether or not the country was founded as a Christian nation. The author charts the development of right-wing Christian nationalism in the U.S., which sees the country as essentially Christian in origin, noting their belief in American exceptionalism, anti-historical revisionist stance, and belief in the Christian identity of many Founding Fathers. She goes on to argue that many founders actually supported the separation of church and state despite their Christian beliefs, and notes that applying 20th and 21st century religious ideals to the founding moment is anachronistic and erroneous. …

After Edwards: Original Sin And Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Book Summary: Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely regarded as one of the major thinkers in the Christian tradition and an important and influential figure in American theology. After Jonathan Edwards is a collection of specially commissioned essays that track his intellectual legacies from the work of his immediate disciples that formed the New Divinity movement in colonial New England, to his impact upon European traditions and modern Asia. It is a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the reception of Edwardsian ideas, with scholars of Edwards being brought together with scholars of New England theology and early American history to produce a …

Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth And The Rise Of Popular Premillennialism In The 1970s, Cortney S. Basham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

How people think about the end of the world greatly affects how they live in the present. This thesis examines how popular American thought about “the end of the world” has been greatly affected by Hal Lindsey’s 1970 popular prophecy book The Late, Great Planet Earth. LGPE sold more copies than any other non-fiction book in the 1970s and greatly aided the mainstreaming of “end-times” ideas like the Antichrist, nuclear holocaust, the Rapture, and various other concepts connected with popular end-times thought. These ideas stem from a specific strain of late-nineteenth century Biblical interpretation known as dispensational premillennialism, which …

Anti-Slavery And Church Schism Among Protestants In Antebellum Central Kentucky, Lance Justin Hale

Online Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of the effects of anti-slavery and church schism among Protestant Christians in the Bluegrass region of antebellum Kentucky. A variety of secondary and primary sources are utilized, including books and journal articles from current scholarship, journals kept by historical actors, books, letters, and articles, written during or some years after the time under consideration, as well as publications of churches and denominations. Throughout the antebellum years, churches and denominations in the United States fractured over disagreements on slavery and theology. Pastors, such as James Pendleton and Peter Cartwright, endeavored to keep Christianity vibrant and relevant …

Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp

Faculty Publications

Though not well known, Rowson's Mentoria-a curious conglomeration of thematically-related pieces from multiple genres, including the essay, epistolary novel, conduct book, and fairy tale-offers particularly fertile ground for thinking about the nexus between eighteenth-century didactic books and earlier works for young readers.2 At the heart of Mentoria is a series of letters describing girls who yield, with dire and frequently deadly consequences, to the passionate pleas of male suitors.3 Fallen women populate Rowson's world, and scholars have traditionally read Mentoria within the familiar bounds of the eighteenth-century seduction novel.4 However, Rowson's creation transforms the older tradition of didactic, child-centered conversion …

Introduction To America's Four Gods: What We Say About God And What That Says About Us, Paul Froese, Christoper Bader

Sociology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Despite all the hype surrounding the "New Atheism," the United States remains one of the most religious nations on Earth. In fact, 95% of Americans believe in God--a level of agreement rarely seen in American life. The greatest divisions in America are not between atheists and believers, or even between people of different faiths. What divides us, this groundbreaking book shows, is how we conceive of God and the role He plays in our daily lives.

America's Four Gods draws on the most wide-ranging, comprehensive, and illuminating survey of American's religious beliefs ever conducted to offer a systematic exploration of …

"To Educate, Agitate, And Legislate": Baptists, Methodists, And The Anti-Saloon League Of Virginia, 1901-1910, Mary Beth Mathews

Classics, Philosophy, and Religion Articles

Organized in 1901, the Anti-Saloon League of Virginia (ASLVA) became the leading statewide association in battling the liquor forces. The league claimed to be nonpartisan and nonpolitical; its motto was "The saloon must go."3 A variety of white Protestant clergy and laymen staffed the ASLVA, and these leaders kept up a unified front as they promoted their sale stated goal, the eradication of the saloon.

A Question Of Plain Dealing: Josiah Cotton, Native Christians, And The Quest For Security In Eighteenth-Century Plymouth County, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In the wake of King Philip's War (1675-76), Wampanoags throughout the "Old Colony" - Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstable Counties in southeastern Massachusetts - struggled to pick up the pieces of a culture shattered by violence and warfare, riven with internal dissension, and plagued by economic exploitation and English racism. As several revisionist studies have shown, Indians like Ned turned to Christianity to combat the social and economic challenges confronting their communities during the first half of the eighteenth century, but they did so in complex and at times contradictory ways. The tenant families at Plain Dealing, for example, consigned their …

Samuel Morris Or A Holy Ghost Life, D E. Reed

Samuel Morris Collection

A short booklet about the life of Samuel Morris. It was a part of a series of The Beautiful Life Booklets, a series of attractive stories of unquestioned merit as helps in spiritual life.