Religion Commons^™

The Theological Structure For Forming Christian Vocational Spirituality: A Practical Method For The Whole Of The Christian Life, Yong Sub Sim

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

The Christian church works for reconciliation between God and his creatures through Jesus Christ. For this, the church calls people and helps them hear, understand, recognize and receive the Spirit of God through Jesus. This dissertation explains this process as walking with, working with and following Jesus.

This dissertation builds a theological structure for forming “Christian vocational spirituality” as the whole of the Christian life reconciled with the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ. This theological structure guides the process through which a human being becomes a true Christian being, and a Christian being becomes a true human being reconciled …

Ghosts’ Stories: Addictive Behaviors And Complicated Grief In George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo, Jc Leishman

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

When experiencing the natural motions of the grieving process, some individuals encounter an inability to pass this process by a phenomenon known as complicated grief. To deal with the cyclical trauma this causes, the human mind seeks to engage in addictive behaviors (both substantive and behavioral) that work to artificially and momentarily circumvent grief. This process, as it appears in George Saunders' experimental novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, reveals a depth of commentary on human attachments and grieving processes through the lives and narratives of ghosts found in the bardo.

Seeking Reconciliation: An Examination Of Churches' Response To A History Of Lgb Discrimination, Alexandra Kauffman

Senior Theses

The Church’s response to LGB people has evolved quickly in the past century. Gay visibility and understandings of sexuality as it is known today only began to emerge in the mid- to-late 20th century. Within that time, responses to constantly evolving science and shifting understanding of LGB people invoked a variety of religious and political responses to the issue of legal protections of gay people. Theological interpretations of the Biblical passages surrounding same-sex relations have evolved as the church’s response to gay people has shifted from ex-gay therapy, to calls for celibacy or affirming gay marriage. The issues surrounding LGB …

Beacons Of Peace And Tolerance: The Politics Of Memory In Judeo-Moroccan Cultural And Historical Institutions, Audrey Ming An Hirsch

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Bayt Dakira, a historical, religious, cultural, and academic institution located in the heart of Essaouira’s old medina, seeks to conserve Jewish-Moroccan memory and promote values of peace and tolerance as exemplified by the city’s history of Jewish-Muslim coexistence. As an institution dedicated to conserving the culture of a people that have all but virtually emigrated from Morocco, Bayt Dakira’s purpose is initially unclear. This study uncovers the ways in which Bayt Dakira is an example of a seemingly apolitical institution being wielded to advance national and international political agendas. As an officially apolitical place of cultural and academic exchange, Bayt …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

Hidden Christians And Non-Churches: Indigenized Christian Practices In Japan, Shayne Naoyuki Yano

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Throughout Christianity's tumultuous history in Japan, there have been several traditions which have stood independent from Western missionary churches. Two such traditions are the Kakure Kirishitan (“Hidden Christians”) and Uchimura Kanzo's Non-Church Movement. Both have interpreted Christianity in ways that make sense within their own historical and cultural contexts. Japan's Hidden Christians were forced by strict persecution to practice their faith in secret, where they developed ways to disguise their practices. Meanwhile, at the dawn of a new era of religious freedom in Japan, Uchimura Kanzo formed a new way to practice Christianity that both integrated Japanese traditions such as …

The Religious Lexicon Embedded In Public American Curricula, Daniel R. Jones

Student Publications

What is the relationship between one's own religious beliefs and their everyday colloquial diction choices? Moreover, why is the subfield that encompasses the intersection of sociolinguistics, education, and religious studies one that has gained little scholarly interest in recent years, where one could argue the importance of religious belief, and other socio-political beliefs in education have come center stage in the heart of American political debate? This article will tackle this broad range of topics through a case study focusing on my primary research question: How does a teacher’s own religious identity affect the religious language utilized in their classroom …

Consensus, Convergence, And Covid-19: The Ethical Role Of Religious Reasons In Leaders’ Response To Covid-19, Marilie Coetsee

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Focusing on current efforts to persuade the public to comply with COVID-19 best practices, this essay examines what role appeals to religious reasons should (or should not) play in leaders’ attempts to secure followers’ acceptance of group policies in contexts of religious and moral pluralism. While appeals to followers’ religious commitments can be helpful in promoting desirable public health outcomes, they also raise moral concerns when made in the contexts of secular institutions with religiously diverse participants. In these contexts, leaders who appeal to religious reasons as bases of justification for imposing COVID policies may seem to fail to show …

Interpreting 9/11: Religious Or Political Event?, Fadime Apaydin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Terrorism or violence can be triggered by a variety of circumstances, including the religious, cultural, political, or economic conditions of the social environment, as well as the perpetrator’s personal characteristics. However, studies conducted in the aftermath of 9/11 have largely described the attacks as religious events, arguing that religion inherently causes violence or that religion is the main motivation for violence. The primary argument for the approach adopted by such studies is that secular institutions are inclined to be less violent than religious ones. A second approach, on the other hand, fundamentally opposes the arguments that led to describing the …

Zen And The Art Of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

In the Western and oftentimes Asian imagination, Buddhism generally—and Zen more specifically—is understood as being resolutely disengaged, attaching itself to a form of awakening that is not only, as the classical phrase has it “beyond words and letters,” but in the modern summation by D. T. Suzuki, perfectly compatible with any and all forms of political and economic “dogmatism,” whether capitalist, communist, socialist, or fascist. Of course, as numerous scholars have shown over the past century, on the level of historical actuality, Buddhist and Zen teachers and institutions have long participated in (usually hegemonic) economic and political structures. The …

An Ethical, Empathetic Jesus Is A Radical Jesus: Womanist Theological Methods For Addressing Police Brutality And The Prison Industrial Complex, Maggie Talbott

Womanist Ethics

No abstract provided.

Mia San Mia: Professional Club Soccer, Religion, And Social Ethics, Rebecca A. Chabot

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For thousands of soccer fans around the world, soccer is their religion. This dissertation marks the first extended examination of what religious soccer is, what it looks like in practice, and how it impacts the lives of fans in the context of professional club soccer. It provides a framework for non-fans to understand how religious supporters view the game and addresses major moments in the development of soccer throughout the world, paying special attention to the difference between the United States and the rest of the world. Religious soccer is then explored in depth, drawing on ethnographic research with over …

Review: Matthew L. Harris. Watchman On The Tower: Ezra Taft Benson And The Making Of The Mormon Right. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2020., Carmen Celestini

Mormon Studies Review

Ezra Taft Benson, to those of us who study the joint impact of overlapping belief systems of religion and conspiracy theories on politics, personifies the implications of these beliefs not only within his lifetime but within contemporary times as well. In Watchman on the Tower, Matthew L. Harris provides insight into Benson and his thinking. Using Benson’s personal correspondence, speeches, and public writings, Harris creates an image of a man significantly influenced by his faith and his life experiences.

The Expression Of Satanist Identity: Does Visible Identification Of Satanism Predict Discrimination And Depression?, Allyson Dudley

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The current research examines the relationship between visible expression of religion, identification within Satanism, experiences of discrimination, and depression in a sample of modern Satanists (n = 1,272). Historically, Satanism has been scrutinized as immoral and a threat to public safety. The current research attempts to challenge that viewpoint by employing culturally competent methods and understanding of modern Satanism. Findings indicate a negative relationship between expression of Satanism and discrimination, expression of Satanism and depressive symptoms, in-group ties and discrimination, and identification (in-group ties and in-group affect) and depressive symptoms. Results show a positive relationship between identification with Satanism and …

Review: Joanna Brooks. Mormonism And White Supremacy: American Religion And The Problem Of Racial Innocence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020., Nichole Renée Phillips

Mormon Studies Review

Race and religion scholar Joanna Brooks offers an atypical treatment of the imbrication of anti-Black racism and American Christianity in her book, Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence. While treatment of the subject is influenced by her background and membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, readers are given new language and the vocabulary to dissect and understand White supremacy and White racial privilege, particularly regarding how it has infiltrated and operated in the American Christian church. Brooks accomplishes this through content analysis of rare but significant documents and a historical …

The Shape Of Faith: Understanding God Through Pottery, Kenton Ke

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The Bible uses the relationship between a potter and the clay as a metaphor to describe the relationship between God and humans. “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8, NIV). This paper will expand on this metaphor, and draw parallels between the development of personal relationships with God and the complicated processes of pottery making.

Sikhs And Colonialism: A Study Of Religious Identity Across Time From Guru Nanak To The British Raj, Samrath S. Machra

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis deals with how a religious community shapes itself in the face of powerful external pressures. It explores ways the Sikh religion (code, creed, and cultus) was influenced by its encounters with the British Empire and in process, gave birth to a new combinative tradition. This paper will look at where the Sikh people located themselves during the Colonial period, to understand Colonialism’s imprint on the Sikh tradition. It traces the thread of contact throughout Sikh history and argues that British contact resulted in religious and cultural exchanges which reoriented Sikh creed, code, and cultus. The resulting combinative tradition …

Better Religion: A Primer For Interreligious Peacebuilding, John D. Barton

Faculty Books

Provides a conceptual framework for understanding global religiosity and explores avenues for interreligious collaborations across differences

The African Christian History Of American Songs Of Slavery, Elizabeth Adekale

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Christianity is an African traditional religion that played a vital role in the formation of American songs of slavery, also known as spirituals. These songs were created by the enslaved Africans in America to express their longing for freedom and preserve African Christian tradition. Within the lyrics of spirituals are coded messages that provided secret information to the enslaved African population. The text of many spirituals came directly from the Bible and speaks of the Spirit working in and through God’s people to set things right. Saint Augustine (354-430 AD) was an African Christian theologian and philosopher whose spiritual authority …

Different Versions Of Myself, Anya Smith

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This is a research-informed screenplay exploring the relationship between religion and recreational pole dancing. While the popularity of recreational pole dancing has grown over the last two decades, it remains a controversial topic in some circles. This study employed interviews, autoethnography, and a literature review to examine the tensions between pole dancing and religion. Creative Analytic Practice was employed as a method of evaluating and presenting the research, which culminated in a fictional screenplay.

The story is about Louise, a young woman caught between two worlds. She feels pressured to conceal her recreational pole dancing activities in order to retain …

Relationship Between Religion And Native American Identity, Gennaro W. Milo

Graduate Research Posters

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between religious affiliation and Native American Identity. Based on the findings of this study, a component of a Native American's Identity is their religious affiliation. To contribute to the research on Native American and Alaskan Native identity, this study targeted the teenage demographic of ages 12 to 19 years old. Over growing concern, expressed by tribal elders, about a loss of cultural identity amongst teens, this study investigates a connection between a teen’s sense of identity and their religious affiliation (Quigley, 2019). This study used a multiple-choice …

"Crossing Borders" The Life And Work Of Peder Borgen In Context, Torrey Seland, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Crossing Borders: The Life and Work of Peder Borgen in Context documents his personal sojourn and contributions to church and society, in addition to covering the scholarly contribution of a world-class biblical scholar and theologian. Too rarely is a scholar’s personal story considered as the back-drop, or even the foreground, of one’s academic work. In that sense, Torrey Seland’s detailed biography is inextricably linked to Borgen’s bibliography: a multitude of connections that contextualize the intrigue and significance of an exemplary scholar’s work.

Religion Has A Public Relations Problem: Integrating Evidence-Based Thinking Into Clinical Practice, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Religion and religious institutions receive a great deal of negative, rather than positive, attention and press. This creates an impression, for the casual observer, that religion and associated institutions are a plight on the planet. It is critically important for evidence-based research and best practices in clinical services to be well known and utilized within professional psychotherapy practice. Clinicians must be mindful of the many advantages of religious engagement for physical, mental, and community health and wellness. Psychologists, and other mental health professionals, tend to be secular and nonreligious and receive little, if any, training on religious diversity that may …

Review: Spencer W. Mcbride, Brent M. Rogers, And Keith A. Erekson, Eds. Contingent Citizens: Shifting Perceptions Of Latter-Day Saints In American Political Culture. Ithaca, Ny: Cornell University Press, 2020., R. Marie Griffith

Mormon Studies Review

There has been no shortage of books devoted to studying the intersections of religion and politics across US history. And the interest has cut across several scholarly fields: no more is religion the possession only or even predominantly of religious studies and anthropology, nor politics sequestered within the high and inward-looking walls of political science. Social history, a guild whose members once exuded a kind of deathly allergy to religion, has perhaps seen the greatest transformation; indeed, the field of history broadly speaking has experienced an unexpected gush of attention to religion and politics. Some of the historians new to …

Review: Patrick Q. Mason. Mormonism And Violence: The Battles Of Zion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019., David J. Howlett

Mormon Studies Review

John Krakauer’s 2003 best-seller, Under the Banner of Heaven, played upon a common narrative told in sections of American culture— a story that claimed that some religions are inherently violent. In Krakauer’s work, of course, the group under consideration was Mormonism, and his narrative was encapsulated in his pithy subtitle, “A Story of Violent Faith.”1 Patrick Mason’s new book fundamentally contradicts Krakauer’s salacious claim. Mason argues that all religious groups, including the Mormon tradition, contain “multiple and complex sources—scriptures, histories, myths, social networks, authority structures, and cosmologies that can be mobilized in the service of either violence or non-violence” (78). …

Gender Inequality: An Examination Of The Islamic Religious Affiliation And Female Infant Mortality Rates Among Muslim Wives In Nigeria, Jodie Denise Sanders

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Muslim-majority countries of low socioeconomic status have higher rates of poor health and infant mortality. Among the six regions of Nigeria, Islamic religious affiliation is more common in the country’s Northern region. Gender inequality is one of the most critical issues in the Muslim community. Female children are more likely to die because of gender inequality. Previous research has been conducted on gender inequalities and religion; however, researchers have not determined if a relationship exists between Islamic religious affiliation and female infant mortality rates among Muslim wives across the six regions of Nigeria. This study used a quantitative correlational research …

A Journey To Finding Space In The Tension: Experience Of Instructors' Relationship With Religion And Spirituality In Doctoral Psychology Programs, Samantha Mcgee

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Religion and spirituality, when viewed through a holistic lens, can reflect important aspects of a person’s identity. It can be a source of well-being and also struggle. The fields of religion, spirituality and psychology have had a history of being polarized, with some efforts to integrate the two fields. Tensions exist at multiple ecological levels around the topic of religion and spirituality, which can make it easier to avoid discussing it in classrooms and therapy rooms. It is important to address and create room for discussion of experiences around religion and spirituality in classrooms that are training psychologists so they …

"Because God Said So": A Thematic Analysis Of Why People Denounce Black Greek-Letter Organizations, Mea Ashley

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Today, Black Greek-letter organizations (BGLOs) struggle to use empirical data to address financial burden, elitism, hazing, relevance in social justice issues, and the anti-BGLO movement. The anti-BGLO movement frames this study. The movement stems from beliefs that secret societies, fraternities, and sororities are anti-Christian. Society will continue to question the relevance and importance of BGLOs if they cannot overcome the issues plaguing them. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to ascertain why members are leaving BGLOs, in case the organizations find the anti-BGLO movement to be a threat to organizational vitality. Through thematic analysis, 18 YouTube testimonials from denouncers …

Adverse Religious Experiences And Lgbtq+ Adults, Alex Fox

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which LGBTQ+ people are affected by adverse or traumatic experiences related to religion or spirituality. Many LGBTQ+ adults were reared in environments where negative, disaffirming beliefs or teachings about sexual orientation or gender identity were pervasive. This study utilized a mixed-methods approach to data collection and analysis. Participants responded to a brief online survey, the data from which was used for quantitative statistical analysis. Twelve participants were selected at random from a pool of survey volunteers and took part in in-depth interviews regarding adverse religious experiences (AREs). Results of …

Nonreligious Explanations Of Boko Haram’S Resilience In Nigeria, Jimmy Imo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Over the past decade, Boko Haram has become one of the world’s deadliest terror organizations. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore nonreligious explanations for the problem of resilience of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Rational choice theory provided the primary framework for the study. Data were collected through in-person and telephone interviews with 14 religious and government subject matter experts. Other sources of data included media publications, documents, audio-visual materials, and the internet. Data were inductively coded and subjected to thematic analysis. Findings showed that instead of religious ideology, Boko Haram’s resilience was due to poor policy …