Religion Commons^™

Structure And Mission Effectiveness: A Study Focused On Seventh-Day Adventist Mission To Unreached People Groups Between 1980 And 2010, Abraham Guerrero

Dissertations

The present study examines the impact of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's structure on mission effectiveness in taking the gospel to unreached people groups between 1980 and 2010. A historical descriptive study, this dissertation's theory base includes structure from an anthropological perspective; structure, mission, and effectiveness from an organizational perspective; and church structure and mission effectiveness in Christian history.

The impact of structure on mission effectivenessis evaluated in the present work by looking for patterns in history in which the structure has been either a facilitator or a hindrance for establishing churches among those who have not been reached with the …

Towards A Roman Catholic Soteriology For The Sinned-Against Creature: An Intercultural Dialogue Between The Soteriology Of Edward Schillebeeckx And Korean-American Theologies Of 'Han', Kevin Patrick Considine

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to point towards a Roman Catholic soteriology for the sinned-against creature that uses 'han' as a fundamental theological source. This dissertation is concerned with two main areas--Roman Catholic soteriology and intercultural theological dialogue--due to their growing importance in the 21st century in which globalization continues to be the driving force that organizes the economic, social, cultural, and political structures of the world, for the benefit of some and the dehumanization of many others.

I argue that Korean-American theologies and anthropologies of 'han' provide one important resource for supplementing and developing the relatively inadequate Roman …

Q 10:21-22 And Formative Christology, Olegs Andrejevs

Dissertations

Q 10:21-22 is the famous "Johannine Thunderbolt," a passage whose precise meaning and role in Q have long been debated by New Testament scholars with seemingly no consensus reached to this date. This crux interpretum presents the readers with a thanksgiving prayer by Jesus that appears particularly puzzling in its present context in the reconstructed Q. In his prayer Jesus appears to express gratitude to God, whom he calls Father, for something that contradicts the very purpose of the immediately preceding mission discourse (Q 10:2-16). In a shocking turn of events, Jesus appears to rejoice over the selective disclosure of …

The Influence Of K-12 Christian Education On Leadership Development, Jeffrey S. Mcmaster

Dissertations

Problem. Christian schools are an environment that intentionally works to bring coherence to a student’s moral and ethical development, which is a critical component of leadership development. It is then important to understand how the effect of that educational experience has carried over into the later development of leadership. However, there is very little study on the influence of Christian Kindergarten through 12th-grade education, let alone the influence of Christian education on leadership. Therefore the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of Christian education on leadership development as perceived by people in leadership positions.

Research Design. This …

Factors Associated With Pastoral Preaching On Financially-Related Topics Within The Missionary Church, Terry A. Zeitlow

Dissertations

Problem

The Bible gives significant direction and insight concerning financial stewardship. One of the roles of pastors is to teach biblical principles, including these financial concepts and practices. While there have been a few studies on pastoral preaching and teaching on financial matters, no known studies examine factors related to pastoral preaching on finances in smaller evangelical communities. This study focused on senior pastors in the Missionary Church, and factors that predicted their frequency in preaching and teaching about financial topics. The Missionary Church was selected because its five theological traditions (Anabaptism, pietism, Wesleyan-holiness movement, Keswickian-holiness movement, and evangelicalism) value …

The Role Of Religious Orientation And Ethnic Identity On Religious Coping Among Bereaved Individuals, Luis G. Cruz-Ortega

Dissertations

Problem: The literature suggests that religious orientation and ethnic identity inform the religious coping process, which is better understood in the context of a particular stressor. However, research on this topic is limited, particularly among ethnic minorities.

Method: A survey was used to collect data on religious orientation, ethnic identity, and religious coping from a sample of 319 adults who had lost a significant other within 36 months of the study. A total of 11 variables were measured using The Means-Ends Spirituality Questionnaire, the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure-Revised, and the Brief RCOPE.

Results: A canonical variate labeled "religious engagement" was …

The Influence Of University Personnel Upon Students' Spirituality At Selected Adventist Universities In West Africa, Isaiah Ola Abolarin

Dissertations

Problem and Purpose. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a deep concern for youth and young adults' spirituality. Hence the church established institutions of higher learning with the aim of restoring in youth and young adults the image of God in which they were created. There are programs and activities in these institutions to accomplish the aim, but there is still concern among church leaders and parents that young people will abandon their faith and exit the church. This study explored the influence of interactions between students and university personnel in selected Adventist universities in West Africa that, apart from programs …

Narratives Of The Leadership Development Of Adults Who Served As Summer Camp Staff In The Mennonite Setting : A Multiple Case Study, Jason Harrison

Dissertations

Problem. Leaders today need a new set of knowledge and skills to be effective in collaborative environments. The focus of this study was to investigate how collaborative environments can contribute to leadership development. The purpose of this study was to describe how the collaborative environment of summer camp helped shape emerging adults as leaders. The summer camp setting is inherently collaborative and, therefore, can inform and develop leaders for future collaborative settings. The research question in focus for this study was, How do adults who served at a summer camp as emerging adults describe the experiences that helped shape them …

Hans Urs Von Balthasar And Kenosis: The Pathway To Human Agency, Timothy J. Yoder

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the kenotic motif in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, particularly in light of his concern to protect human agency. This dissertation argues that Balthasar views kenotic spiritual practice as the pathway to achieve true human agency. This kenotic pathway to agency is placed in contrast to Balthasar's concept of original sin as an attempt by humanity to achieve agency on their own terms. The narrative of original sin results in two possible outcomes for Balthasar: a spiritual pathway toward the absorption of the self, which results in the annihilation of …

The Rhetoric Of Gender In The Household Of God: Ephesians 5:21-33 And Its Place In Pauline Tradition, Lisa Marie Belz

Dissertations

This dissertation demonstrates that the author of Ephesians rewrote the household code of Col. 3:18-19 in order to conform it more to Paul's own ideals regarding mutuality in relationships between Christians.

Word Of Life, Word Of God: An Examination Of The Use Of The Term Logos In The Johannine Literature, Joseph Michael Latham

Dissertations

The term "logos" is employed in various ways in the Johannine literature, most famously in the Prologue of the Gospel of John. There the Logos is said to have existed in the beginning, to be with God, to be God, and to have become flesh in Jesus Christ.

Ed. L. Miller maintains that the body of the Gospel of John was composed first, then the First Epistle, and finally the Prologue. He contends that we can trace an increasing christological significance in the use of the term "logos" as we proceed from the body of the Gospel through the First …

Hidden Treasure: The Epistemology Of Love According To Hans Urs On Balthasar, Timothy John Squier

Dissertations

Many contemporary thinkers have wrestled with the notion that Balthasar is unwilling to consider modern theology's starting point of the consciousness of the knower. Otherwise stated, some scholars argue that Balthasar's point of departure is the will (love) to the neglect of human consciousness (intellect). The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that a constructive analysis of Balthasar's doctrine of revelation brings to light an intricate epistemology that is critical to postmodern epistemological scholarship. By way of Neo-Scholasticism much conversation has taken place pertaining to the relationship between faith and reason within the human knower. Whereas the Neo-Scholastic tradition …

The Religion Of Consumption And Christian Neighbor Love, Christopher Porter

Dissertations

Loyola University Chicago

THE RELIGION OF CONSUMPTION AND CHRISTIAN NEIGHBOR LOVE

Consumerism is a word frequently used in various disciplines to express the variety of attitudes, motivations, and practices found among the middle and upper classes. It drives the global economy and influences individuals' socio-psychological perceptions. Some have gone so far as to call consumerism a religion, yet they have not substantiated this claim. This dissertation offers a framework that accounts for consumerism as a religion both as a person's ultimate concern and as a structuralized belief system. As such, it prescribes moral values that shape how people respond to …

Down To Earth Ethics: Exploring Relation And Environmental Responsibility, Matthew Gowans

Dissertations

This dissertation is aimed at exploring the question of direct engagement with the natural world as a way of establishing certain moral and ontological truths, particularly those connected to our current environmental struggles. Contrary to the wave of much of modern Western thinking, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Buber and Aldo Leopold demonstrate an ethics that is relational in nature, action oriented, and bound up in inexpressible wonder. Consequently, these thinkers are also critical of a world which bases the whole of reality solely on the logic of rational investigation and the material facts of science. The heart of ethical responsibility in …

John The Baptist And The Jewish Setting Of Matthew, Brian C. Dennert

Dissertations

Although recent discussions on the Gospel of Matthew have emphasized the document's setting within first-century Judaism, these studies have not analyzed how the figure of John the Baptist functions within this setting. The failure to address the significance of the Baptist for the Gospel's Jewish setting is striking because recent study on the historical Baptist has emphasized his ministry and place within first-century Judaism. Therefore, this dissertation places a perennial topic within a new framework, believing that attention to the Jewish setting of the Gospel may prompt fresh observations and explanations of the role of John the Baptist within the …

Religious Pluralism And The Catholic Church: Lonergan's Method And The Jacques Dupuis Controversy, Andrea J. Stapleton Berger

Dissertations

This project applies Lonergan's method to the controversy that resulted from the censure of Jacques Dupuis by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over his book, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. The application of Lonergan's method reveals the potential for the resolution of the issues presented by Dupuis in the area of developing a Catholic theology of pluralism as well as the tension between the Catholic Magisterium and the work of Catholic theologians.

Personality And Religiosity: The Influence Of Normative Personality On Black Sunni Muslims' Religious Attitudes And Practices, Halim Khidher Naeem

Dissertations

There is a dearth of literature on Black Sunni Muslims in the field of psychology. More so, there is no literature specifically analyzing the influences upon Black religiosity. The literature has established that personality has significant influence upon religiosity. The literature also says that females are more religious than their male counterparts. The present study analyzed the influence of personality, gender and social class upon religiosity for Black Sunni Muslims. The following hypothesis was investigated: Personality, gender, and social class will affect religious attitudes and practices.

A canonical regression analysis using SPSS revealed that personality, gender and social class had …

Attitudes Toward Science And Stem Cell Research Based On Religious Worldview: Comparing The Views Of Theists, Naturalists, Skeptics, And Dualists Toward Science As An Institution, Method, And Application Of Knowledge, Jon Van Wieren

Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of attitudes toward science and stem cell research based on religious worldview. This study examines the relationship through General Social Survey data (2006).

Religious worldview is measured here through some of the most common measures of religiosity. This study differs from many other sociological studies of religiosity in that it includes the view of naturalism alongside other religious worldviews, including theism, dualism, and skepticism. Science is understood and measured here as multidimensional. Comparisons are made between attitudes toward science as a social institution, a research method, and as an application of knowledge - where attitudes …

"When The Eternal Can Be Met": Bergsonian Time In The Theologies Of C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, And W.H. Auden, James Corey Latta

Dissertations

C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden all converted to the Christian faith and, upon conversion, turned to the theme of time in their post-conversion works. Interestingly, these Christian authors employed the secular philosophical framework of Henri Bergson’s theory of duration to construct their theologies of time. As texts fostered by Bergson’s ideas of intuition, the dualistic self, and durative force, Lewis’s The Great Divorce, Eliot’sFour Quartets, and Auden’s “Kairos and Logos” are theological works that depict time as an agent.

The Religious Aspects Of The 1893 Columbian Exposition: A Case Study Of Interreligious Interaction And Religious Pluralism In The Public Square, Cynthia Visscher

Dissertations

This case study of the religious aspects of the 1893 Columbian Exposition examines the conditions that supported religious pluralism in the public square in the nineteenth century; compares these conditions to contemporary social contexts, and; contributes to the sociological debate regarding the effect of increasing religious diversity on social structure in the United States.

The existing literature is more often focused on normative theory rather than empirical examination. This case study offers an empirical investigation of the accommodation of religious diversity in a society that was in early stages of secularization and addresses how a pluralistic public square existed. Specifically, …

Popular Perceptions Of The Relationship Between Religious And Ethnic Identities: A Comparative Study Of Ethnodoxy In Contemporary Russia And Beyond, David M. Barry

Dissertations

The relationship between religion and ethnicity is well documented. However, previous studies have usually approached the relationship by focusing on the converging of two 'objective' social categories, religion and ethnicity. In doing so, the subjectivity, or the actor's own understanding of the interplay between religion and ethnicity is typically neglected. This study fills this gap by exploring popular perceptions of group identities and the affiliation with imagined ethno-religious communities. To accomplish this, the concept of ethnodoxy, first developed by Vyacheslav Karpov and Elena Lisovskaya, is applied that captures the belief that affiliation to an ethnic group's dominant religion is essential …

Faithful Remembering: Constructing Dutch America In The Twentieth Century, David E. Zwart

Dissertations

The people of the Dutch-American community constructed and maintained a strong ethnoreligion identity in the twentieth despite pressures to join the mainstream of the United States. A strong institutional completeness of congregations and schools resulted from and contributed to this identity. The people in these institutions created a shared identity by demanding the loyalty of members as well as constructing narratives that convinced people of the need for the ethnoreligious institutions.

The narratives of the Dutch-American community reflected and reinforced a shared identity, which relied on a collective memory. The framing, maintaining, altering, and remodeling of the collective memory from …

Romans 1:18-2:11 And The Substructure Of Psalm 106(105): Evocations Of The Calf?, Alexander James Lucas

Dissertations

Employing an architectural metaphor inspired by C. H. Dodd and utilizing methodology that draws from Richard B. Hays and Francis Watson, this dissertation presents a primary proposal and secondary sketch. The primary proposal is that both constitutively and rhetorically (through ironic, inferential, and indirect application), Ps 106(105) serves as the substructure for Paul's argumentation throughout Rom 1:18-2:11. Constitutively, Rom 1:18-32 (especially vv. 22-32) hinges on the triadic interplay between "they (ex)changed" and "God gave them over," an interplay that creates a sin-retribution sequence with an a-ba-ba-b pattern (vv. 22-23, 24-25, 26-27, 28-32). Both elements of this a-ba-ba-b pattern derive from …

Divine Sovereignty, Divine Providence, And Prayer In The Thought Of Evagrius Ponticus, Chris Steven Gombos

Dissertations

In the thought of Evagrius Ponticus, we discern an interdependent relationship between prayer and theological belief, particularly between prayer and divine sovereignty and divine providence. We find that Evagrius's teachings on divine sovereignty and divine providence inform and govern his teachings on prayer, specifically the forms of prayer known as petition and pure prayer. And conversely Evagrius's teachings on prayer inform and deepen his teachings on divine sovereignty and divine providence, thereby demonstrating the full interdependence between spiritual practice and theological belief in the thought of one of the early Church's monastic masters.

The first chapter is divided into two …

Toward A Holistic Interdisciplinary Model Of Human Being: A Hebraic-Christian Perspective Of The Human Observer And Its Beneficial Impact On The Theology-And-Science Dialogue, Society, And The Environment, Karen K. Abrahamson

Dissertations

Problem

A challenge faced by the theology-and-science dialogue is how to effectively communicate across disciplinary lines. The community assumes that there is a methodology or cluster of methodologies that allows for interdisciplinary conversation to take place. However, the community is not in agreement about how this process should occur or the hermeneutical principles that should guide it. Is it possible to surmount the problem of methodological compatibility and to generate mutually beneficial and fruitful dialogue through seeking a point of commonality between all the disciplines of the theology-and-science dialogue?

Purpose

The purpose of this dissertation is to discover a philosophical …

Rethinking Nation-Building: A Christian Socio-Ethical And Theo-Political Task For Appropriating The Common Good, Artemus Wlemongar Gaye

Dissertations

nation-building as a coomon good

A Multiple-Case Study Describing Collaborative Relations Between Adventist Pastors And Teachers In The Eastern United States, Pamela Consuegra

Dissertations

Introduction. Adventist schools and churches are embedded within a system that provides them with rich opportunities to achieve their missional goals. However, this is possible only through collaboration and the use of available social networks. The purpose of this study was to identify situations where the church and school work together collaboratively and then to describe the collaborative practices between those selected Adventist pastors and teachers. In the context of Adventist elementary schools, the school principal also fulfills a teaching role. Therefore, inthis study, the term "teacher" also refers to the principal. The broad research question was, How do Adventist …

The Relationship Between Liturgical Practice And Spirituality In The Church Of The Nazarene With Special Reference To John Wesley's Doctrine Of Christian Perfection, Dirk Ray Ellis

Dissertations

The Church of the Nazarene, following the pattern of the American holiness movement that gave it birth, adopted a modified version of Wesley's doctrine of Christian perfection. During the early years of the denomination Christian perfection was promoted feverishly through revivalism and worship structured after the camp meeting model; however, over time the promotion and propagation of holiness began to wane. Currently, the belief in and pursuit of inward holiness among both clergy and laity are rapidly vanishing. For more than a decade scholars and denominational leaders have recognized that this loss of spiritual vitality has placed the Church of …

The Origin Of The Eschatological Feast As A Wedding Banquet In The Synoptic Gospels: An Intertextual Study, Phillip J. Long

Dissertations

The Problem. The problem this dissertation seeks to address is the origins of the wedding banquet imagery in the teaching of Jesus. Frequently, scholars will state that the image of a wedding banquet was a common messianic image in the first century. However, other than Isa 25:6-8, sources for the image of a banquet for the messianic age in the Hebrew Bible are sparse. Yet the image of a banquet clearly appears in the Synoptic Gospels in both the actions of Jesus as well as his teaching. Because the metaphor of a wedding banquet is not found in the literature …

God And Integrity: A Case Study Of Walter C. Kaiser Jr. And Norman L. Geisler, Augustin Tchamba

Dissertations

The God of the Bible is sometimes portrayed as using and condoning deceit to achieve His purpose, especially when human life is at stake. Two evangelical scholars, Walter C. Kaiser Jr. and Norman L. Geisler, with a shared theological heritage, differ in their interpretation of Exod 1:15-21 and Josh 2:1-7 that addresses the ethical issue of lying to save life.

This dissertation not only refutes the claim that God uses and condones the use of deceit to achieve His purpose, but also clarifies biblical argument for His integrity. The study provides answers to a number of questions. First, what causes …