Religion Commons^™

Repetition Repeated: Reconstructing A Lacanian Subjectivity Through Kierkegaardian Repetition, Thomas R. Ryan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When Descartes declared “Cogito ergo sum,” he triggered a fundamental shift in the trajectory and scope of the philosophical discourse. Hegel called this the beginning of modern philosophy, but the Cartesian cogito elevated human reason, ushered the Enlightenment, and led to scientific and political revolutions. But as Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, almost from the moment Descartes posited the mind-body problem, there was an anxiety about what it meant to be “one who thinks.”1 This anxiety presents itself as a continuous questioning of the ontology of the subject, and ultimately, whether there is a subject at all. By the time …

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 …

Identity And Resistance: Queer Puerto Rican Subjects, Pentecostalism, And The Shadow Of U.S. Imperialism, Jared Vázquez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

James K.A. Smith argues that the first principle of Pentecostalism is that the same Holy Spirit described in the New Testament is !actively, dynamically, and miraculously present both in the ecclesial community and in creation” today. This ontological experience of the Holy Spirit transforms Pentecostalism into a hermeneutic thorough which Pentecostals interpret their social world. In his attempt to articulate a Pentecostal epistemology Smith leaves implied what this project seeks to make explicit: the emergence of subjectivity is mediated through the experiences of the body and is therefore affective and phenomenological in nature. I argue that pentecostal spiritual practices are …

Economic Theology And The Death Of God In The Context Of The Crisis Of Neoliberalism, Jared A. Lacy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In light of the ongoing political and economic crises in the twenty-first century, this study aims to apply the discourse of political theology, alongside Nietzsche’s concept of the death of God to an understanding of neoliberalism and the problems it faces on a global level. However, because of the centrality of sovereignty in political theological discourse and the view of neoliberalism as diffusing sovereignty in favor of an ordered system, I attempt to further develop an offshoot discourse of political theology referred to as economic theology. This discourse allows a theological signature of power to be traced through the history …

In This Issue Of Ijts, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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There's A Duwende On My Shelf: The Parapsychological Studies Of Fr. Jaime C. Bulatao, Sj, Carl Lorenz Cervantes

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

In the Filipino transpersonal worldview, the mind is not contained within the brain, and is often projected onto the world as “spirits”. Studying these cultural metaphors may allow for a deeper understanding of the Filipino psyche. Fr. Jaime C. Bulatao, SJ, one of the founders of the Psychological Association of the Philippines, studied the projections of the Filipino psyche as they manifested in paranormal phenomena. Bulatao provides the metaphor of eggs frying in a pan as a framework to understand this: the egg whites fuse despite the yolks being far apart. It is in the dissolution of boundaries that transpersonal …

Life Before Birth: A Thematic Analysis Of Memories Of Coming Into Life Part 2: Recollections Of Fetal Life And Birth, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This article examines a second set of data produced in a thematic analysis of 68 “earliest memory” narratives submitted to an independent website to explore the question: what do people who claim to remember how they came into the world say about their experience prior to and including birth? Part 1 examined the first and largest subset of the data, narratives of an otherworldly existence consistent with Western reincarnation intermission stage 2 experiences, near-death experience accounts and mythic traditions. This article thematically analyzes descriptions of life in the womb, birth, and apparently veridical out-of-body and other paranormal impressions of events …

Quantum Tunneling And Exceptional Human Experiences: Illustrating Different Skepticisms In Physics And Psychology, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Quantum tunneling is a phenomenon where a particle appears on the other side of an energy barrier that it does not have enough energy to pass through, according to classical physics. This notion, first proposed by a German physicist in 1927, runs improbably counter to common sense and to rules thought for hundreds of years to govern physics. Acceptance of this and other quantum phenomena has required the reconceptualization of subatomic particles from solid bits of matter to probability clouds that extend infinitely in every direction. As such, quantum physics has required a skepticism driven by the need for sound …

In This Issue Of Ijts

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Unexpected Side Effects: A Cautionary Note On Challenges Of Persistent Self-Transcendence, Elizabeth D. Stephens, Harris L. Friedman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Self-transcendence is an ambiguous construct without consensual meaning, yet many claim that it relates to, or even causes, beneficial outcomes. Few discuss its potential deleterious side effects, choosing to focus primarily on positive effects. However, anything with sufficient potency to heal may have unintended side effects, especially when it leads beyond a transitory state to becoming an enduring trait, such as when self-transcendence (ST) becomes persistent self-transcendence (PST). With PST, evidence is overviewed here, along with two illustrative case reports, that people can suffer emotional difficulties, motivation changes, loss of self-reflexivity, anhedonia, dissociation, depersonalization, memory problems, and other psychological concerns. …

Emotion And Judgment In Young Women Of A Society In Transition, Maura A. E. Pilotti, Khadija El Alaoui

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The present study asked whether emotional responses to narratives of moral transgressions are shaped by the reader’s assumed relationship with the injured party (i.e., oneself, familiar other, and unfamiliar other). Its goal was to test a cultural, religious, and individualistic account of such responses in young females of a traditional society in transition towards a sustainable integration into the global economy. To this end, female college students from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were asked to identify their emotional reaction to each of several moral transgressions, report its intensity and then judge the severity of the transgression. In agreement with …

How Perception Meets Hermeneutics: An Empirical Investigation Of Tasseography, Elizabeth Avetisian

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Tasseography is a divination method to provide insight about the seeker’s past, present, or future life by interpreting patterns in the dregs of a liquid. Although it has been practiced with coffee throughout Europe and Middle East, particularly among women, no known studies exist on the seer’s perceptual process of the ambiguous patterns or how the roles of the seeker and seer, symbols, ritual, and cultural epistemology shape the divinatory hermeneutics. This study focused on the Armenian coffee divination ritual, asking what are the processes and conditions that enable experienced cup readers to obtain divinatory insight in tasseography? Two seekers …

“The Lord God Will Proceed”: Nephi’S Wordplay In 1 Nephi 22:8–12 And The Abrahamic Covenant, Matthew L. Bowen

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

Nephi quotes or alludes to four distinct Old Testament passages — Genesis 22:18; Isaiah 29:14; Isaiah 49:22–23; and Isaiah 52:10 — twice each in 1 Nephi 22:6, 8–12. These four texts form the basis of his description of how the Lord would bring to pass the complete fulfillment of the promises in the Abrahamic covenant for the salvation of the human family. These texts’ shared use of the Hebrew word gôyim (“nations” [> kindreds], “Gentiles”) provides the lexical basis for Nephi’s quotation and interpretation of these texts in light of each other. Nephi uses these texts to prophesy that the …

Honoring Joseph’S Theophany Two Centuries Later, Spencer Kraus

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

In the year 2020, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints celebrated the 200th anniversary of the First Vision of the Prophet Joseph Smith. As a part of honoring that seminal moment in the Church’s history, the Church History Symposium focused on the context, place, and meaning of the First Vision. Selected papers from the conference have been published in Joseph Smith and his First Vision: Context, Place, and Meaning, edited by Alexander L. Baugh, Steven C. Harper, Brent M. Rogers, and Benjamin C. Pykles, offering new insights and research into Joseph Smith’s theophany in the Sacred …

“We Might Have Enjoyed Our Possessions And The Land Of Our Inheritance”: Hebrew Yrš And 1 Nephi 17:21, Matthew L. Bowen

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

The verbal expression “we might have enjoyed,” as used in a complaint that Nephi attributes to his brothers, “we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance” (1 Nephi 17:21), reflects a use of the Hebrew verb yrš in its progressive aspect, “to enjoy possession of.” This meaning is evident in several passages in the Hebrew Bible, and perhaps most visibly in the KJV translation of Numbers 36:8 (“And every daughter, that possesseth [Hebrew yōrešet] an inheritance [naḥălâ] in any tribe of the children of Israel, shall be wife unto one of the family of the tribe …

An Unfortunate Approach To Joseph Smith’S Translation Of Ancient Scripture, Spencer Kraus

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

This is the first of two papers that explore Jonathan Neville’s two latest books regarding the translation of the Book of Mormon. Neville has long argued that Joseph Smith did not use a seer stone during the translation of the Book of Mormon, and he has more recently expanded his historical revisionism to dismiss the multitude of historical sources that include the use of a seer stone. Neville’s “Demonstration Hypothesis” is explored in A Man That Can Translate, arguing that Joseph recited a memorized text from Isaiah rather than translate Isaiah from the Book of Mormon record. This hypothesis, meant …

Hannah’S Adversity And Peninnah’S Redemption, Loren Spendlove

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

Most biblical students are familiar with the story of Hannah, who after years of barrenness, finally gave birth to the prophet Samuel. Some will remember her adversary, Peninnah, who allegedly tormented Hannah to tears. My objective in this article is to reclaim Peninnah’s good name by reinterpreting the passage found in 1 Samuel 1:6.

“For Their Good Have I Written Them”: The Onomastic Allusivity And Literary Function Of 2 Nephi 25:8, Matthew L. Bowen

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

Nephi’s writings exhibit a distinctive focus on “good” and divine “goodness,” reflecting the meaning of Nephi’s Egyptian name (derived from nfr) meaning “good,” “goodly,” “fine,” or “fair.” Beyond the inclusio playing on his own name in terms of “good” and “goodness” (1 Nephi 1:1; 2 Nephi 33:3–4, 10, 12), he uses a similar inclusio (2 Nephi 5:30–31; 25:7–8) to frame and demarcate a smaller portion of his personal record in which he incorporated a substantial portion of the prophecies of Isaiah (2 Nephi 6–24). This smaller inclusio frames the Isaianic material as having been incorporated into Nephi’s “good” writings on …

A Research Note: Continuing Exploration And Research In Oman, Warren P. Aston

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

The significance of the ongoing studies into the potential location of the Old World “Bountiful,” which Nephi reminds us was “prepared of the Lord” (1 Nephi 17:5), and is documented in great detail by him, can hardly be overstated. Bountiful’s resources had to be truly substantial and unique to enable the Lehites to recover from years of land travel from Jerusalem and to build a ship capable of reaching the New World. Exploration and scientific studies of the Dhofar region of southern Oman, the only section of the Arabian coast containing the feature Nephi describes, continue to the present. Here …

Review: Christopher James Blythe. Terrible Revolution: Latter-Day Saints And The American Apocalypse. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020., Matthew Avery Sutton

Mormon Studies Review

For too long, many scholars have argued that Christian groups obsessed with a coming apocalypse are so other-worldly focused that they have little impact on the politics or cultures around them. Those scholars are wrong. Rather than fostering a sense of indifference regarding the coming of an inevitable end of days, apocalypse-obsessed Christians have used their beliefs as a call to battle rather than a justification for withdrawal. God, they insist, has given them much to do and very little time in which to do it. Positive that Jesus is coming soon, they have sought converts and engaged directly and …

Review: Michael Hubbard Mackay, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, And Brian M. Hauglid, Eds. Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’S Translation Projects In The Development Of Mormon Christianity. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2020., Sonia Hazard

Mormon Studies Review

Joseph Smith was, among much else, a translator. One of the most distinctive qualities of early Mormonism is that saving knowledge came not only from revelations—though Smith received plenty of those— but also through texts from the ancient past. In order to be useable as scripture, those texts required translation, and Smith tackled the office of translator with relish. What did translation mean for Smith and early Saints?

The editors of Producing Ancient Scripture—Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid—set out to answer that question with a comprehensive treatment of Smith’s translations, and they delivered. Among the seventeen …

Review: Miles Harvey. The King Of Confidence: A Tale Of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, And The Murder Of An American Monarch. New York: Little, Brown And Company, 2020., Amy Derogatis

Mormon Studies Review

A little over a year ago I was in the Clarke Historical Library in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, sifting through documents with librarian John T. Fierst to answer a nagging question regarding the provenance of a remarkable daguerreotype. As we were musing about the limits of what could be known about this material object, he happened to mention that another person who was finishing a book about James Jesse Strang had recently visited and looked at the photograph. Like any other academic hearing about scholarly competition, my heart froze, and out of my dry mouth I managed to croak, “Oh, really, …

Review: Thomas G. Alexander. Brigham Young And The Expansion Of The Mormon Faith. Norman: University Of Oklahoma Press, 2019., Nicole Kirk

Mormon Studies Review

In Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith, Thomas G. Alexander delivers a new study of the second prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as an account of Young’s leadership of the Mormon migration and settlement in the Intermountain West. A part of the Oklahoma University Press’s Western Biography series, the collection employs the genre of biography to illuminate the history of the American West. Written by leading scholars for a general audience, the series excludes notes. The Western Biography series has included a wide range of figures, from Annie Oakley, Billy …

Review: Mary Ella Engel. Praying With One Eye Open: Mormons And Murder In Nineteenth-Century Appalachian Georgia. Athens: University Of Georgia Press, 2019., Jonathan David Hepworth

Mormon Studies Review

Tucked away on a mountainous road north of Atlanta is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ only historic property in the state of Georgia: the reputed field where missionary Joseph Standing was shot and killed. Standing’s companion (and later president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles) Rudger Clawson witnessed the murder, and narrowly escaped with his life. The 1879 incident has been the subject of numerous articles and book chapters, including one in a children’s book and a cameo in the second volume of Saints, the new multivolume history of the Latter-day Saints, but books on the …

Review: Ann Chamberlin. Clogs And Shawls: Mormons, Moorlands, And The Search For Zion. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2019., Alison Halford

Mormon Studies Review

Despite the oldest continuous Mormon congregations being in Britain, when recruiting for my study on British Mormon women, I found few British Latter-day Saint families that went beyond fifth-generation members. The institutional Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may have stopped the systemic dismantling of wards and branches through migration to Utah by the turn of the twentieth century, but the consequences of asset-stripping British congregations were still felt by some of those women who were part of a multi-generational Latter-day Saint family. For them, there was a residual resentment that their female relatives who converted and remained in …

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.

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Mormon Studies Review

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Mormon Studies Review

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Mormon Studies Review

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The Women’S Ordination Movement In The Reorganized Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints: Historical And Sociological Perspectives, Nancy Ross, David J. Howlett, Zoe Kruse

Mormon Studies Review

In The Angel and the Beehive, sociologist Armand Mauss chronicled how leaders and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon) made changes to fit into White Evangelical American society in the twentieth century, a process that Mauss described as assimilation.1 In parallel to the LDS story but unanalyzed by Mauss, the leadership of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church/Community of Christ) invested in a similar “assimilative” process, but drew closer to mainline Protestant norms, including ideas about expanding women’s roles in the church and in society. These competing trajectories pushed …