Religion Commons^™

What's In A Word? Diakonia And Deacons In The Bible And Today, Benjamin Hartley

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This paper was presented at a small, September 2014 conference in Nashville, Tennessee sponsored by the Office of Deaconess and Home Missioner of the United Methodist Church. It will also be posted to the website of the United Methodist Women.

This paper draws upon a revised interpretation of diakon- terms in the New Testament provided by John N. Collins. It examines how the stories of the choosing of the seven (Acts 6:1-7), Stephen’s speech (Acts 6:8 – 7:56), and the evangelistic ministry of Phillip (Acts 8:4-40) together provide a fresh impetus for understanding expressions of the United Methodist diaconate today …

Written With The Finger Of God: Divine And Human Writing In Exodus, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

"The presence of writing in the book of Exodus must be considered not only for its contribution to the narrative as story, but also as a witness to several key socio-political issues (such as the interplay of textuality and orality in ancient Israel), for the role of writing in the history of Israel's religion, and for the struggle to define, through several centuries and editorial layers, the nature of YHWH's "true image'' in the world."

“You Shall Write On The Stones”: Deuteronomy 27 And The Inscribing Of Ritual Curses (Society Of Biblical Literature: San Diego, 2014), Melissa Ramos

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In Deut 27 Moses commands the elders of Israel, once they have crossed the Jordan and arrived at Mount Ebal, to erect large stones and write on them את–כל–דברי התורה הזאת “all the words of this torah.” I would like to begin by asking the question “What was written on the stones?” In the narrative, what formed the content envisioned in such an inscription? This question is important for the discussion of how chapter 27 fits into the broader compositional schema of Deuteronomy.

The Community That Raymond Brown Left Behind: Reflections On The Johannine Dialectical Situation (Chapter In Communities In Dispute : Current Scholarship On The Johannine Epistles), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Among the paradigm-making contributions in Johannine studies over the last half century, one of the most significant is the sketching of “the community of the Beloved Disciple” by Raymond E. Brown (1979). Extending beyond Johannine studies, Brown’s (1984) work on the history of early Christianity and “the churches the apostles left behind” is also among the most practical and interesting of his forty-seven books. Here, Brown’s analysis of the unity and diversity of early Christian approaches to leadership and community organization have extensive implications, not only for historical and sociological understandings of the first-century Christian movement, but also for approaches …

“For The Relief Of Human Suffering”: The Methodist Committee For Overseas Relief In The Context Of Cold War Initiatives In Development, 1940–1968, Benjamin L. Hartley

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The Methodist Committee for Overseas Relief (MCOR) was one of the first and largest denominational relief and development agencies in the nation from 1940 to 1968. Its ecumenical engagement was robust from the start; it was one of the largest donors to United China Relief, Church World Service, and other ecumenical overseas relief organizations during this time. This article provides a decade by decade assessment of MCOR’s work with particular attention to (1) its ecumenical engagement in relief and development efforts; (2) the relationship of MCOR’s work to the wider context of overseas relief and development efforts by nongovernmental, bilateral, …

Peace And Wrath In Paul's Epistle To The Romans, Mary K. Schmitt

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In this paper I would like to accomplish two things. First, I will draw attention to wrath and peace in Romans, focusing on the three passages in which the terminology of wrath and peace occurs in close proximity: 2:5-10; 5:1-11; and 12:18-21. Second, I will comment on how Paul’s concept of the relationship between wrath and peace is worked out in the unfolding of the epistle.

On Being The Literal Image Of God: Rethinking Human Essence As Uniqueness, Mark Mcleod-Harrison

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Typically theologians take the image of God rather metaphorically and reduce the metaphor to a set of properties in virtue of which we are humans. This emphasis on the common features shared among humans supports the doctrine of shared sin and the provision of salvation by another human, Jesus. By analyzing three separate notions of image and applying them to the image of God, this paper argues that humans as God’s image can be taken more literally then it typically is. The result is that the uniqueness of each human is a significant aspect of the human person, grounding our …

The Loss Of Lament, Anderson Campbell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

A History Of The Floating Societies Of The Christian Endeavor, Robert A. Danielson

Academic Books

No abstract provided.

Piecing It Together: Spiritual Tinkering From An Orthodox Perspective, R. C. Miessler

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Book Summary: Churches in the U.S. are grappling with unprecedented change. Financial challenges, globalization, the digital revolution and church-dividing topics are taking a toll on the institution and membership. Americans are increasingly not affiliating themselves with any religion, including one third of adults under 30.

In light of all this, what is the future of the churches? In For Such a Time as This: Young Adults on the Future of the Church, Christian young adults offer an invigorating, new, and timely word on issues such as eco-justice, immigration, interfaith relations, peace and justice, and inclusivity of those on the …

"As He Thinketh In His Heart", Dallin H. Oaks

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Textual And Comparative Explorations In 1 & 2 Enoch, Samuel Zinner

Interpreter Foundation Books

My beloved late father introduced me as a child to the mysterious Ethiopic Book of Enoch. My father was of mixed ancestry, his mother being of Native American and English-Scottish descent, while his father was a Protestant Volga German who observed Saturday Sabbath rather than Sunday, and perhaps not surprisingly his ancestors were Ashkenazi Jews who in the high Middle Ages had been forced to convert to the Christian faith under pain of death. My father had a fundamentally indigenous soul, so much so that even his Christianity, like that of his mother, was of a fundamentally indigenous character. Although …

In God's Image And Likeness 2 Enoch, Noah, And The Tower Of Babel, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, David J. Larsen

Interpreter Foundation Books

As I neared completion of the first volume of In God’s Image and Likeness in 2009, I had a chance to discuss the project with my former mission president, Virgil J. Parker. Grateful for the lasting influence President and Sister Parker have had on my life and still being in awe of the great store of practical and spiritual knowledge they have accumulated over decades of learning and service, I was thrilled when Virgil told me that the Moses was his favorite book of scripture. When I asked him what part he liked best, he spoke without hesitation, “The story …

Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate ‘signifieds’ created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …

The Fifth Principle Of The Gospel, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

With the 2004 publication of Preach My Gospel as the new handbook for LDS missionaries, the official explanation of Christ’s gospel incorporated a previously unrecognized fifth principle—enduring to the end. This article will review ways in which this principle surfaced occasionally in early Mormon missionary work and writings. It will also demonstrate that the principle is explicitly and consistently emphasized in Book of Mormon presentations of the gospel in passages that are now generally recognized as authoritative foundations for LDS gospel teaching.

“The Frontier Thesis In Transnational Migration: The U.S. West In The Making Of Italy Abroad,” In Immigrants In The Far West: Historical Identities And Experiences, Edited By Jessie L. Embry And Brian Q. Cannon (Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2014), 363-381., Mark I. Choate

Faculty Publications

In 1879, a young postal worker in the small town of Lendinara, Italy, decided to emigrate. Adolfo Rossi, twenty-two years old, was discouraged with his prospects in his small town near Venice. Adolfo lived at home with his mother in the heavily populated Polesine valley. Although he had a steady job, he wanted to become a journalist. In Adolfo’s words, while taking a walk along the Adige river one night, a strange idea struck my mind like a bolt of lightning. I reflected only a moment and committed myself to an audacious resolution. “No, I will not stay vegetating here,” …

A Strategy To Train Local Church Elders For Effective Assimilation And Nurture Of New Converts, Enock Chifamba

Doctor of Ministry Projects

Problem

In most multi-church districts the pastoral burden rests with the local church elders. However, these elders receive little or no training concerning the important pastoral duty of assimilation and nurture of new converts into a local church fellowship. Thus, new converts often feel isolated and neglected and some either backslide or remain inactive in their new-found faith. In the East Zimbabwe Conference 18,349 new members were added in 2010 bringing its membership to 247,935 with only 56 district pastors. The conference needs a cost effective strategy to nurture new members.

Method

The role of elders as pastoral care givers …

Contents

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

No abstract provided.

Buddhism As Caricature: China And The Legitimation Of Natural Religion In The Enlightenment, Jeffery D. Burson

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Europe was unusually familiar with the ancient civilizations of East Asia, but however familiar China may have seemed, European missionaries and those who utilized and subverted their accounts in the literature of the eighteenth century made sense of China through their own hermeneutical lenses. David Porter's work Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europeargues that Jesuit missionaries and Enlightenment philosophers imposed upon China their Eurocentric quest for "representational legitimacy;' which Porter defines as "the presence of an originary wellspring of meaning that gives rise to a succession of grounded signifiers in which the living image of the origin …

Wesley And Methodist Studies: Book Review, Kathryn Stasio

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Wesley and Methodist Studies once again provides carefully researched, worthwhile material demonstrating the important niche that the annual occupies. The word niche seems more applicable to volume 3 than to volume 2. This is certainly not a complaint or a criticism, but the primary articles of volume 3 are highly specialized and less likely to attract a wide audience. Clearly, the title of the annual alerts readers to its specialization, but some of the authors could have framed their arguments to show the reader the bigger picture instead of, for example, offering conclusions that summarize.

Under The Cape Of Religion: Herder And Shamanism In The Eighteenth Century, Vera Jakoby

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

I f one were to undertake a genealogy of how Western Europe established a concept of otherness, the eighteenth century would be one of the most rewarding "information hubs" for such a study. Ethnography, ethnology, anthropology, and other new knowledge fields exploring global populations and environs were founded in this century, analyzing and systematizing the waves of travel reports that had been flooding Europe since the time of Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Stories and images of paradisiacal and terrorizing spaces, peculiar humans, and wondrous animals and plants had taken root in the Western imagination beginning in the sixteenth century. …

Sentimentality In The Service Of Methodism: John Wesley's Abridgment Of Henry Brooke's The Fool Of Quality ( 17 65-1770), Mary Peace

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

This article examines the relationship between Methodist and sentimental discourses in the second half of the eighteenth century through the lens of John Wesley's abridgment of Henry Brooke's sentimental novel The Fool of Quality (1765-70). John Wesley's abridgment was published in 1781 under the title the History of Henry Earl of Moreland. My article is driven by the question of how a worldly Enlightenment text such as Brooke's Fool might have seemed ripe for the propagation of a Methodist theology that had abandoned the possibility of any true virtue existing in the world. In considering the relationship between Brooke's …

"Conversing With Animal Forms Of Wisdom'': Blake's Visions Of Eternity In Context, Judith C. Mueller

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Had anyone been paying attention, the endings of Blake's major prophecies-Milton, The Four Zoas, and Jerusalem-might have either puzzled or appalled Blake's Christian contemporaries. Each ends in a movement out of the fractured, fallen state and, in the case of The Four Zoas and Jerusalem, into the promised, eternal paradise, if only for a brief glimpse. Blake's visions of the restored or "heavenly" state respond to common eighteenth-century Christian depictions of the afterlife, most of which he treats with suspicion, even disdain. Scholars have shown how conceptions of heaven shift during the period; theocentric eternities of …

''A Dreadful Phenomenon At The Birches": Grace, Nature, And Industry In The Ministry And Writings Of John Fletcher Of Madeley, Peter S. Forsaith

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

n the morning of Thursday, May 27, 1773, the evangelical Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire, the Reverend John Fletcher, went with throngs of other curious onlookers to view the dramatic scene of a landslip that had occurred in the early hours on the edge of his parish, at a location known locally as "the Birches." Meeting several of his parishioners there, he announced that he would return the following evening to preach a sermon on this "Dreadful Phenomenon:' He took for his text "If the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up ... …

Living With Religious Diversity In Early Modern Europe: Book Review, Michael Mclaughlin

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

This volume, consisting of many different approaches to religious diversity and religious coexistence, is part of the extensive series St. Andrews' Studies in Reformation History and is the successful product of a conference on religious diversity held at Carl von Ossietzky Universitat (Oldenberg, Germany) in September 2007. An introduction by C. Scott Dixon and a concluding attempt to theorize religious diversity by Mark Greengrass frame the volume.

On A Dawning Era For The Book Of Mormon, Joseph M. Spencer

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

The Doctrine And Covenants Made Harder: Scripture Study Questions, James E. Faulconer

Maxwell Institute Publications

Latter-day Saint philosopher James E. Faulconer’s Made Harder series raises many more questions than it answers. And that is precisely the point. Faulconer wrote The Doctrine & Covenants Made Harder on the premise that our scripture study is only as good as the questions we bring to the endeavor. The book consists almost entirely of challenging questions (with occasional commentary for clarity’s sake) because, in Faulconer’s experience, questions themselves are the key to reflective and deep scripture study. This book is intended to make reading harder—and therefore fresher—by priming your pondering pump with insightful study questions.

So much of …

The Book Of Mormon Made Harder, James E. Faulconer

Maxwell Institute Publications

Latter-day Saint philosopher James E. Faulconer’s Made Harder series raises many more questions than it answers. And that is precisely the point. Faulconer wrote The Book of Mormon Made Harder on the premise that our scripture study is only as good as the questions we bring to the endeavor. While many books about the Book of Mormon provide useful shortcuts, chapter synopses, timelines, and memorizable bullet-points, this book consists almost entirely of challenging questions (with occasional commentary for clarity’s sake) because, in Faulconer’s experience, questions themselves are the key to reflective and deep scripture study. This book is intended to …

Revelation, Reason, And Faith: Essays In Honor Of Truman G. Madsen, Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, Stephen D. Ricks

Maxwell Institute Publications

The distinguished career of Truman G. Madsen has earned him wide respect in and outside of LDS circles as an outstanding teacher, scholar, researcher, speaker, university administrator, church leader, and religious ambassador. With the publication of Revelation, Reason, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, the Institute pays tribute to this remarkable man whose many accomplishments include helping to advance Book of Mormon scholarship and related interests of the Institute.

Edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and Stephen D. Ricks (each of whom also author a chapter), the 800-plus-page volume contains contributions by 31 scholars, …

A Scientist Looks At Book Of Mormon Anachronisms, Neal Rappleye

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Anachronisms, or out of place items, have long been a subject of controversy with the Book of Mormon. Several Latterday Saints over the years have attempted to examine them. Dr. Wade E. Miller, as a paleontologist and geologist, offers a some new insights on this old question, especially regarding animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon, including a report on some preliminary research which might completely change the pre- Columbian picture for horses in America. Overall, this is an indispensable resource on Book of Mormon anachronisms.