Religion Commons^™

The Good Design Of Limits, Teresa Terhaar

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Being present in the here and now takes intense practice."

Posting about our relationship with time ­­­­­­­­from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

The Good Design of Limits

Women In Ministry In The Churches Of Christ: A Comparative View, Jennifer Reinsch Schroeder

Discernment: Theology and the Practice of Ministry

This article examines the experiences of women serving as full-time ministers in the Churches of Christ. Analysis of the Siburt Institute’s 2025 Salary Survey shows a large gender pay gap that speaks to concerns regarding support and sustainability in ministry. To better understand mechanisms that impact both support and sustainability, a separate qualitative study was performed that analyzed the interviews of twenty-one full-time, female ministers. The study revealed recurring features of unhealthy systems and the impact of unhealthy systems on women in ministry. Conversely, the interviews illuminated hallmarks of healthy systems and the results that emerge out of such systems. …

A Theology Of Public Witness For Churches Of Christ In The 21st Century, Collin Packer

Discernment: Theology and the Practice of Ministry

In a time of increasingly divisive rhetoric and polarization, churches are facing new challenges that threaten their unity and mission. Churches of Christ find themselves in a peculiar position in this cultural moment. We do not bear the negative baggage associated with Evangelicalism’s drift into Christian nationalism and an enmeshment with the Religious Right. And yet, our witness has been muted through our silence pertaining to matters of public life and ethics. In this paper, I set out to investigate the historical reasons for our silence and to suggest a theology of public witness for Churches of Christ in the …

Through Him, All Things Hold Together, Justin R. Vander Werff

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"[God's] upholding hand and His sustaining word are always at work, maintaining the physical structures of His creation and also caring for His people and His church."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­God's intricate design of the physical world from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

Through Him, All Things Hold Together

A Secret Chord: Finding Meaning In Music, Science, And Faith, John Macinnis

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Through the harmony and beauty of music, we are resonating with the deeper harmony of creation and perceiving the Triune God who calls it good."

Posting about how music affects the whole person from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

A Secret Chord

A Personal Devil: Another Legacy Of The Reformation, Isaias D'Oleo-Ochoa

CTS Student Publications and Creative Works

Although the topic of the Devil and the Powers was popular in 16th-century Europe, the Reformers briefly discussed the Devil and the origin of evil. Despite the limited discussion, I appreciate the Reformation’s emphasis in presenting the Devil and the Powers as personal beings, whom God initially created good but later got corrupted. I invite readers to remember on Reformation Day the role that the Reformers played in clarifying the figure of the Devil and the Powers, putting aside the popular myths and legends.

Aging By Design, Bruce Vermeer

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"While we may be tempted to see aging as a loss, let us receive it as a gift that refines our faith, strengthens our witness, and deepens our longing to dwell forever with the Lord."

Posting about a ­­­­­­­­healthy perspective on getting older from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

Aging by Design

Developing A Ministry Model That Reengages The Members Of Mount Zion Into Fulfilling God’S Purpose, Desmond Wayde Wallace

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Making a meaningful difference within a ministry that requires intervention demands not only strategic planning and teamwork but also leadership that is unwavering in its commitment to fulfilling God’s purpose through service. The church under review has faced significant shifts within its community beginning in the late 1990s and extending into the early 2000s. Unfortunately, these changes did not lead to the anticipated growth and development; instead, they triggered a noticeable decline within both the ministry and the surrounding area. This decline has had a cascading effect, negatively impacting the community and further eroding the church’s vitality, resulting in decreased …

Identity, Purpose, And Value: Amplifying The Position Of The Millennial At The Beulahland Bible Church, Sam Reid

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Beulahland Bible Church (BBC) experienced growth in 2024. However, a closer look into the development of the BBC revealed a vital concern: the Millennial growth accounted for only 5 percent of the church's overall growth. The researcher of the current DMIN project identified this as a problem. This DMIN undertaking has developed a comprehensive design that addresses the concern and restores the Millennial to its position at the Beulahland Bible Church. This creation is rooted in the instructions given by Jesus Christ to make disciples; this intervention will move beyond the physical construction of the church and carry out this …

Staying Connected To The Vine As A Means Of Leading Worship In A Christ-Like Manner, Paul Edward Bryant

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

With a society focused on performance-driven worship, most worship leaders today have difficulty maintaining a God-focused, Christ-centered, and Spirit-filled worship experience during worship services. Worship leaders are having difficulty leading worship because they do not follow Christ daily to produce fruit that will help the leader effectively lead worship that honors God. This qualitative research explores the Bible, explicitly using John 15:1-11, Galatians 5:22-23, and 1 Corinthians 2:14-15 as the foundation for the worship leader to remain in Christ to produce the fruit of the Spirit and lead with Godly wisdom and understanding. Worship and leadership textbooks and dissertations covering …

1-2-1 Reciprocal Discipleship: A Transformation Strategy For Effectively Growing Mature Disciples Of Jesus Christ, Scott M. Whitley

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are called to be transformed into the image of Christ through the intimacy of knowing the Father (Eph. 4:13; 2 Cor. 3:18; John 17:3). This can be taught and experienced through one-on-one discipleship, thus fulfilling the Great Commission. Unfortunately, many different discipleship models have become the prevailing stratagem, leaving one-on-one discipleship less emphasized or wholly abandoned. This has resulted in significant transformation through intimacy being lost in many churches and leading to a departure from scriptural discipleship. Therefore, this action research project assumed that consistent participation in the 1-2-1 Reciprocal Discipleship: A Transformation Strategy …

Job Burnout And Executive Leader Turnover, David Zayas

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Executive leadership roles are characterized by increasing organizational demands that necessitate substantial cognitive and physical effort, thereby elevating the risk of emotional exhaustion, diminished work engagement, decreased job satisfaction, and increased turnover intention. This study investigates the impact of organizational and occupational stressors on executive clergy leader burnout and turnover intentions. A qualitative single case study was undertaken to delve into the challenges faced by executive clergy leaders (senior, executive, or associate pastors) in the religious sector, where demanding workloads are exacerbating role ambiguity, creating work-life balance conflicts, fostering unhealthy work practices, and influencing job burnout. Three organizational theories (e.g., …

Generation Z And The Church: A Phenomenological Study Of Perceptions, Barriers, And Opportunities For Church Engagement, Hector Albert Soto

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the perceptions, barriers, and opportunities that shape the relationship between Generation Z and the Christian church, with particular attention to how these factors influence patterns of engagement. Recent trends indicated a significant decline in church engagement among Generation Z, contributing to the erosion of vital resources necessary for the sustained vitality of contemporary Christian congregations (Barna, 2020; Braddy, 2021; Earls, 2020). The study was guided by three research questions: 1) What Generation Z variables did the church need to focus on to attract and retain Gen Z (e.g., social concerns, leadership …

Preparing New Life Pentecostal Ministries Young Adults For God’S Design Of Marriage Through Identity Development, Ameerah Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis project, Preparing New Life Pentecostal Ministries Young Adults for God’s Design of Marriage Through Identity Development, addresses the growing crisis of identity, purpose, and relationship instability among young adults within NLPM and beyond. The purpose of this action-oriented research is to provide a theological and spiritually formative framework that prepares young adults for marriage by biblical principles. The project identifies key spiritual and emotional barriers, including unresolved wounds and distorted self-identity. Lack of discipleship and cultural confusion hinder spiritual maturity and readiness for God-ordained relationships. Grounded in Scripture and supported by human development theory and spiritual formation scholars, …

كتابات المؤرّخين السريان عن الدولة العربية الإسلامية في القرنين الثاني والثالث الهجريين/القرنين الثامن والتاسع ميلاديين, محمّد مجيد حميد بلال

Horizons et Conjonctures

تتناول هذه الأطروحة حضور السريان ودورهم في التاريخ العربي والإسلامي خلال القرنين الثاني والثالث الهجريين/الثامن والتاسع الميلاديين، من خلال تحليل مصادرهم التاريخية ومقارنتها بالمصادر العربية والبيزنطية
[...]

الحياة على محّك التقنيّة: مقاربة لاهوتيّة - أخلاقيّة لمسؤوليّة الإنجاب, جوسلين عوّاد, الأب إدغار الهيبي

Horizons et Conjonctures

Life at Stake in Technology: A Theological-Ethical Approach to Procreative Responsibility

In an age when artificial intelligence and genetic engineering shape life's origins, human procreation stands at a decisive threshold. This article offers theological and ethical reflection on human agency before technological power. Beyond biomedical concerns, it examines how digitization unsettles freedom, dignity, and divine providence. Drawing upon Catholic tradition—from Augustine to John Paul II—it proposes renewed theology of co-creation, wherein human creativity becomes participation in life-giving. Through Imago Dei and moral discernment, it contends that progress must serve life, not fabricate it. Christological ethics can guide reproductive technologies toward …

Gardens And Galaxies: Through Child-Like Eyes, Jason N.E. Ho

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"... just like food tells a deeper story about who we are as human beings, the universe tells a deeper story about a God that created it."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­looking at the world with wonder from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

Gardens and Galaxies

Between Sound And Theology: Timbral Performativity In Brazilian Religious Musicking, Marcell Silva Steuernagel

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article explores the performativity of timbre, summarizing key perspectives from the English-language scholarship on the topic and setting them in conversation with Latin American perspectives on timbre. In addition, it examines a performance of “500 Graus” (500 degrees), a song performed by Brazilian Pentecostal artists Cassiane and Shirley Carvalhaes, to demonstrate how the performativity of timbre unfolds within a particular expression of Latin American religious musicking. In doing so, it investigates the phenomenon of timbre between music and sound studies, and theology and church music studies, providing insights relevant to the study of timbre and the study of religious …

Timbre — A Transcendent Paradox?, Eugenia Siegel Conte

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Timbre, as ethnomusicologist Cornelia Fales writes, is “paradoxical” precisely because it is one of the most exacting processes in which the human body may sense and comprehend the source of a sound even as that comprehended sound is impossible to describe outside of metaphor or comparison. As one of the more recognizable qualities of sound but the most difficult to describe, timbre allows us to consider physical/emotional (affective) experiences of sound as a key aspect of faith and meditation. In this article, I examine physical-affective intersections of faith and meditation that often are key to praxes of worship, and show …

Singing A Wide Heart: Timbre And Sung Prayer In Senegal’S Layène Community, Margaret L. Rowley

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Layène sung prayer (called sikkar) is embedded within the religious practices of the Layène community, a minority Sufi order in Dakar, Senegal. This article explores the functions of Layène sung prayer, focusing especially on its loud, vibrational timbre. Both men and women vocalists in call-and-response sing loudly, using wide vibrato and electronic amplification to ensure that the sikkar reaches the inhabitants—both human and non-human—in the surrounding community. This article demonstrates that the distinctive timbre of Layène sung prayer serves the spiritual functions of binding the community together in spiritual and social cohesion, increasing individual and collective generosity, and demarcating …

Live Wires: The Angelus Temple And The Timbre Of Power, Catherine Provenzano

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article is a media history and contemporary case study of The Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in 1923. My analysis of the Angelus insists upon the centrality of a hyperaudible paradigm of worship that uses media to maximize the legibility of a Christian message, and, more than this, imagines that media itself as a living soul in need of redemption. Many contemporary megachurches employ savvy applications of sound and sound transmission as instruments of belonging as well as action, and these rely on high-budget investments in church infrastructure, software and personnel. I argue that …

Performing "Manly" Worship Music: Gender And Timbre At Mars Hill Church, Maren Haynes Marchesini

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Ten years ago, Mars Hill boasted fifteen campuses and 15,000 members. Amid mounting allegations of abuse and mismanagement leveled against founding pastor Mark Driscoll, the church famously collapsed, closing its doors at the end of 2014. Driscoll had built Mars Hill’s core brand around his opposition to the perceived feminization of the Christian mainstream, and appointing himself the “leader of a heterosexual male backlash” in the church and broader culture. While Driscoll’s muscular Christianity stands in a wide historical stream, Mars Hill long led the charge in establishing a youth-oriented, hipster brand of hypermasculine Calvinism. And while rhetoric and theology …

From The Heaviest, Dirtiest Depths To The Washy Ambient Clouds: Guitar Timbre In/As Schismogenesis In North American Christianity, Joshua K. Busman, Nathan Myrick

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This essay argues that within the socio-cultural context of North American Christianity, the timbral qualities of electric guitar, with its long lineage as a site of cultural values conflict and identity negotiation, serves a theological function in the emerging and cohering sonority of digital worship. Using as comparative case studies the timbral qualities of delay and ambience as promoted and sold by Worship Tutorials as representing normative sonic values for these Christians, on the one hand, and the dialectic and schismatic deployment of distortion by the band My Epic on the other, we suggest that these timbral qualities become important …

Sounds Like 'Saudade': Eschatological Echoes In Brazilian 'Gospel' Music, Fernando Berwig Silva

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This paper analyzes the song “Saudade” by the Brazilian gospel singer Stella Laura. In the song, I argue that Stella Laura uses Brazilian timbral markers from the Sertanejo and Gospel Brazilian music genres to articulate a unique perspective on eschatology, one that is based on the affective structure of the Lusophone word ‘saudade.’ Furthermore, I contend that the song, rooted in the Brazilian nostalgic sertanejo music tradition, leans on stylistic and timbral tools to communicate the idea of saudade from heaven. Beyond lyrics that feature theological notions of origin, identity, and nostalgia, Stella Laura’s song employs timbral, poetic, …

God’S Vow: A Note On C.S. Lewis’S Idea Of Human Freewill And Divine Omnipotence, Matthew Mckenna

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This note uses G.K. Chesterton’s understanding of vows as a hermeneutical key for a line from C.S. Lewis’ Miracles where Lewis says that God relinquishes part of his power by creating freewill. Chesterton’s idea of vows sees them as acts of power and freedom which paradoxically limit one’s freedom in the future by compelling one to keep one’s vow. The vow is an act of freedom which relinquishes one’s freedom by committing one to certain actions. Viewed through this lens, God’s creation of freewill is seen as an act of power and freedom.

Tolkien On Kennings And The River-(Woman’S) Daughter, Derek Simon

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

THIS IS A TWO-PART ARTICLE. IN ORDER TO READ OR DOWNLOAD THE OTHER PART, FOLLOW THE LINK AT THE END OF THIS ABSTRACT.

While the River-daughter is a prevalent poetic name for Goldberry, Tom introduces her as the River-woman’s daughter when singing and skipping along the banks of the Withywindle. The River-woman variant occurs only once in Goldberry’s narrative but is not easily dismissed. The contrast between the two variant names raises several questions on how to read Goldberry’s enigma. Tolkien’s brief commentaries on the kenning as a poetic device serve as the starting-point for exploring the literary function of …

America’S Best Idea: The Separation Of Church And State, A Review, Michael A. Smith

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This article critically assesses Randall Balmer’s America’s Best Idea, a historical and legal examination of the Jeffersonian principle of church-state separation. Drawing on Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists and Roger Williams’ earlier theological insights, Balmer frames the metaphorical “wall” as both a constitutional safeguard and cultural cornerstone. The review analyzes the book’s treatment of evolving Supreme Court jurisprudence, particularly the shift from strict separationism to accommodationism in recent decisions. It contextualizes this legal transformation within the broader rise of Christian Nationalism, examining the ideological and institutional pressures reshaping civic discourse. While affirming Balmer’s historical rigor and rhetorical …

The Architects Of Consensus: Propaganda, Patriotism, And The Owi’S Battle For The American Mind, Ryan G. Fix

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

During World War II, the Office of War Information (OWI) became the United States' most sophisticated domestic propaganda agency, charged with forging national unity in the face of global conflict. This paper explores how the OWI fused federal authority with private-sector cooperation to influence public sentiment through film, advertising, journalism, and rumor control. Rather than resorting to direct censorship, the agency relied on voluntary collaboration, emotional appeal, and strategic framing to shape a coherent narrative that blurred the line between democratic persuasion and ideological management. Drawing on an extensive range of primary sources, including internal memos, field reports, and public …

The Morality Of The Civil War: Just War Theory And Union Policy And Conduct, Michael Payne

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This article shall argue that the Union army, which was composed primarily of Christian soldiers and officers, prosecuted the Civil War in as moral a fashion as possible. It shall examine the different ways in which one can judge the morality of war, concluding that the tenets of Just War Theory are the best standard by which to judge a belligerent’s actions. It shall then examine Union war policy to determine if it is consistent with Just War Theory. This shall be done through a side-by-side comparison of Just War Theory’s tenets and Union policy. It shall then explore whether …

The Boxer Rebellion And Missionaries: A Study Of Historical Context And Ideological Perspectives, Danielle Russano-Simpkins

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This paper examines the complex interplay between missionary activity, imperial ambitions, and indigenous resistance in China during the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901). Analyzing primary sources and revisionist accounts, it is argued that the rebellion exposed the contradictions between missionaries' spiritual goals and their complicity in imperial structures. The study highlights how missionary theology, imperial relationships, and local resistance converged to create one of modern history's most significant anti-foreign uprisings, shaping subsequent Sino-Western relations and Chinese nationalism.