Religion Commons^™

Queering Jewish Theology In Parables, Gwynn Kessler

Religion Faculty Works

This essay applies queer theories of gender fluidity and gender performativity to readings of rabbinic parables. Although parables in rabbinic literature have been explored for their theological insights, they have not been placed in conversation with understandings of gender that emerge from queer theory. This essay suggests that queer readings of parables offer a compelling counter-narrative to an always and singularly rigid, binary construction of gender in rabbinic sources. Rabbinic parables, which highlight gender fluidity, multiplicity, and instability, illuminate a queer theology at the heart of rabbinic understandings of gender, God, and Israel.

Traversing Mass Tragedies: Material Religion Between The 9/11 And Newtown Memorials, Kate Deconinck

Journal of Global Catholicism

In keeping with recent anthropologists and scholars of religion who are re-imagining the phenomenon of pilgrimage as including more than just journeys to traditional “religious” sites, this article focuses on visitation to multiple sites of remembrance associated with mass tragedies. At the same time, my interest lies not only in the human actors who move between different memory sites, but also in the things that journey alongside or independent of them. In this article, I trace the movement of one particular object—an angel statue—that was initially created to memorialize individuals killed in the September 11 attacks and was later gifted …

Substituting Stories: Narrative Arcs And Pilgrimage Material Culture Between Lourdes And Csíksomlyó, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

In this essay, I propose that substitution is one way subjects situate themselves in relation to European Catholics’ growing interest in multiple pilgrimages. I elaborate this claim through a case study of one Transylvanian Hungarian Catholic woman, Emilia, who substituted a story about a Transylvanian Hungarian shrine, Our Lady of Csíksomlyó, for a story about the Lourdes pilgrimage in France. I set also Emilia’s experience within a social context of memory production in the World Family of Radio Mária, a global Catholic media network that promotes devotional remembering. Emilia’s story about Our Lady of Csíksomlyó had revealed the strain of …

In Pursuit Of Healing And Memories: Cross-Border Ukrainian Pilgrimage To A Polish Shrine, Iuliia Buyskykh

Journal of Global Catholicism

I present an analysis of Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Orthodox pilgrimages to Kalwaria Pacławska in south-east Poland near the Polish-Ukrainian border. Before World War II, there were two pilgrimage sites in Kalwaria Pacławska, one Roman Catholic and the other Greek Catholic. Today, Ukrainian pilgrimage is quite a diverse phenomenon, consisting of people of both Ukrainian and Polish origin, and the three Christian denominations. The approach to pilgrimage as a palimpsest can broaden the research perspective of mobile religiosities and reconsider the interactions between religious motivations, sacred sites, memories, experiences, and storytelling through space and time. In my research case, …

"This Is A Glimpse Of Paradise": Encountering Lourdes Through Serial And Multisited Pilgrimage, Michael Agnew

Journal of Global Catholicism

Based on fieldwork conducted with pilgrims traveling from England to the Marian apparition shrine of Lourdes, this article will focus on the experience of serial pilgrims, those who have made the journey to Lourdes repeatedly for several years. Serial pilgrimages to Lourdes are often a family affair, spanning multiple generations, and become compulsive for those who undertake them. Yet the stories of several Lourdes pilgrims reveal that they do not feel this compulsive need to go to Lourdes alone. Many frequently navigate the European circuit of Marian pilgrimage shrines, including Walsingham in England, Knock in Ireland, Fatima in Portugal, and …

Editors' Introduction, Marc Roscoe Loustau, Kate Deconinck

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

On The Productivity Of Pilgrimage Palimpsests: Traces And Translocations In An Expanding Field, Simon Coleman

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

A Praxis Of Oral Homiletics: Preaching From The Heart, Weiwen Tu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Christian preaching has been a central and significant custom to the practitioners of biblically confessional and creedal communities in worship, evangelization, and discipleship. Yet modern preachers confront two challenges presented by the New Homiletic and the media environment. Undue favor toward narrative-based form, audience-oriented eventfulness at the expense of biblical authority, and shifting media that alter the preacher’s identity and incapacitate the preacher’s orality have led to a dissonant handling of form and content and thus a profound decline in the quality of the Christian pulpit.

This project grows out of an attempt to integrate an Augustinian hermeneutic and homiletic, …

An Exploration Of The Context And Ecclesiastical Investigations Of The Virgin's Reported Appearance In Knock, Ireland In 1879, Erin Meikle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On August 21, 1879, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, and the Lamb of God reportedly appeared in Knock, Ireland. Ecclesiastical authorities of the Roman Catholic Church investigated this reported apparition in 1879 and again in 1936. The first chapter of this paper explores the processes by which the Church investigates alleged apparitions and considers different models for conceptualizing the Church. The second chapter unpacks the context of two nineteenth century French apparitions. The third chapter explores the Knock apparition and the immediate historical context surrounding the apparition. The analyses in the first two chapters serve …

Theology Of Arcavatara And The Eucharist: A Comparative Study, James Adeoye

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The diversity in the world today is undeniable and quite imposing. The claim to uniqueness and universality of faith in each religious system cannot be sustained without factoring the implications and impacts of this claim on the well-being of humanity and reality hermeneutics. The postmodern world favors pluralism and encourages mutual respect for particular opinion, praxis, faith, theology and all forms of epistemology as they exist in the individual culture, religion and society. With this in mind, this work is a comparative analysis of the notion of avatars in Vaishnavism, a religious sect in Hinduism and the concept of the …

Reshaping The Theology And Praxis Of Inculturation Through Interreligious Dialogue Between The Catholic Church And African Traditional Religion In Igboland, Nigeria, Cajetan Anyanwu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prior to the advent of Christianity in Igboland, the people practiced Igbo Traditional Religion. They believed in a Supreme Being (Chukwu/Chineke) who has other smaller deities as messengers including Ala/Ani the most powerful deity on earth. They revered their ancestors, who, they believe, still relate to and communicate with the living. Thus, the concept of God as ultimate reality is a dynamic existential aspect of Igbo world-view. Categorically speaking, it was short-sighted for the European missionaries to claim that Igbo people had no knowledge of God or lacked religion before the introduction of Christianity in Igboland in the …

Unpresentable Members: The Theology And Radical Phenomenology Of The Sexual Flesh, Justin Pearl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Unpresentable Members begins with a wager: that a proper account of the flesh and its sexual character may not only prove philosophically fertile within its own limited domain, but may also provide insight into the theological question of the proper role and place of gender and sexual difference within communities, particularly Christian religious communities. In this regard, this dissertation has two distinct goals: one phenomenological and one theological. Phenomenologically, it offers an account of the manifestation of concrete sexual determinations not only as they objectively appear across the “body-object” (Körper, le corps) but with equal importance as …

Can Churches Change A Neighborhood? A Census Tract, Multilevel Analysis Of Churches And Neighborhood Change, David E. Kresta

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the role of local churches in neighborhood change, analyzing the relationship between Christian churches and changes in household median incomes from 1990 to 2010 in the census tract in which each church is located. Based on a nationally representative sample of churches from 2006 and 2012, the study uses hierarchical linear modeling and statistical matching techniques to analyze how key church characteristics such as social service involvement, social capital generation, residential patterns of attendees, and demographic composition are related to changes in neighborhoods. Two primary research questions were addressed: 1) How have patterns of church location changed …

Spiritual Struggle And Gregory Of Nyssa’S Theory Of Perpetual Ascent: An Orthodox Christian Virtue Ethic, Stephen M. Meawad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project utilizes virtue ethics as an especially suitable lens by which to develop an Orthodox Christian ethical model generally. At the same time, virtue ethics carries with it some complexities that are in turn mitigated by the particulars of this Orthodox model—spiritual struggle and perpetual progress, or epektasis. Spiritual struggle in this project, which ultimately shifts the emphasis from virtue’s acquisition to its pursuit, is defined as the exertion of effort in all conceivable dimensions—physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual—with intent to attain a semblance of, knowledge of, and intimacy with Jesus Christ in community, for God …

Why The Words We Use To Describe Faith Matter: A Review Of Learning To Speak God From Scratch, Kayt E. Frisch

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"God has gifted us with language—both to communicate with each other and (more importantly) to communicate with us through the written sacred texts."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­the book Learning to Speak God from Scratch from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/why-the-words-we-use-to-describe-faith-matter-a-review-of-learning-to-speak-god-from-scratch/

From Bird-Woman To Mermaid: The Shifting Image Of The Medieval Siren, Claire Cannell

Student Research Symposium

During the Middle Ages, the siren transforms from its classical status as grotesque bird-woman into an alluring mermaid. A female monster, the siren represents what is considered monstrous in women. I plan to examine the unstable image of the siren in order to better understand the religious and social status of the medieval European woman. The siren is contextualized among contemporary secular images of female sexuality and the writings of religious authorities such as Leander of Seville, who wrote that all women were either nuns or sirens. I plan to analyze the implications of the nun-siren binary created by Leander …

The Singular Voice Of Being [Table Of Contents], Andrew Lazella

Philosophy & Theory

The Singular Voice of Being reconsiders John Duns Scotus’s well-covered theory of the univocity of being in light of his less explored discussions of ultimate difference. Ultimate difference is a notion introduced by Aristotle and known by the Aristotelian tradition, but one that, the book argues, Scotus radically retrofits to buttress his doctrine of univocity. Ultimate difference for Aristotle meant the last difference in a line of specific differences whereby all the preceding differences would be united into a single substance rather than remain a heapish multiplicity. LaZella argues that Scotus both broadens and deepens the term such that, in …

World Premiere Performance Of Quintet No.2 By N. Roth, Dermot Dunne

Concert Programmes

Nick Roth's second quintet was commissioned by the Sligo International Chamber Music Festival to be premiered by Dermot Dunne, accordion and the Vogler string quartet. The work draws on many aspects of the muezzin call to prayer in the Islamic faith including the various different modes (or maqaams) used in the call to prayer throughout the day. The work is a synthesis of the ISlamic call to prayer with contemporary composition techniques

Catholic Deaf Community Newsletter, Holy Week 2019

Catholic Deaf Community Newsletter

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Portland, OR

Catholic Deaf Community Newsletter Finding Aid

St. Francis Of Assisi Catholic Church And Center For The Deaf Sunday Bulletin, May 5, 2019

Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church and Center for the Deaf Sunday Bulletin

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Landover Hills, MD

St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church and Center for the Deaf Sunday Bulletin Finding Aid

St. Francis Borgia Deaf Center Church Bulletin, May 5, 2019

Saint Francis Borgia Deaf Center Church Bulletin

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Chicago, IL

Saint Francis Brogia Deaf Center Church Bulletin Finding Aid

Easter 3 Series C 2019, Phillip L. Brandt

Sunday's Sermon

This PDF comments on the Propers for the Third Sunday of Easter, Series C and offers ideas for proclamation and preaching.

The Manuscript Copy Of Sfera In The Morgan Library, Dana Hart

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the literary origins of the fifteenth century text Sfera, a rhyming Italian treatise by Gregorio Dati, and considers the patronage, creation, and function of the manuscript copy in the Morgan Library and Museum, focusing on the illustrated maps and cities.

Doing From Being: Creating Organizational Integrity Through Mindful Self-Leadership, Adam Stonebraker

Mindfulness Studies Theses

Mindfulness in the workplace is a subject that has seen significant growth in recent years. Mindfulness, which is rooted in ancient contemplative practice, has gained much traction among Western audiences over the last few decades. The application of Mindfulness practices is prevalent now in workplaces, where its efficacy has been well-documented, and impact has included the reduction of employee stress, increased productivity, and enhancement of one’s well-being.

The principles of mindfulness can be applied across disparate workplace settings and in nearly any situation to help bolster employees’ presence and focus in the day-to-day and retain them in the place of …

The Magnificat: A Reflection, Kaitlyn Kruger

Obsculta

A personal reflection on Mary’s Magnificat, the author connects her experiences working in a missionary community in Haiti with the words “my spirit rejoices.”

What Can Buddhist Artistic Traditions Learn From Christian Iconography, Jotipālo Bhikkhu

Obsculta

The three images included come from the author’s year-long residency at the Collegeville Institute.

Ideas To Disrupt: A Theology Of Ministry, Cindy Gonzalez

Obsculta

A theology for ministry grounded on the call towards Woman Wisdom found in the Old Testament. Wisdom, in accordance to the book of Proverbs, leads the faithful closer to God. This theology of ministry makes a case for how only Wisdom may lead the faithful towards recognition of the need for radical inclusion in a world where social injustice continues to prevail.

A Homily On The Parable Of The Persistent Widow, Patrick Martin

Obsculta

No abstract provided.

Obsculta Mission And Vision, Obsculta Editors

Obsculta

No abstract provided.

1,000 Years Later: What Can We Learn From Saint Peter Damian’S Liber Gomorrhianus?, Robert Craven

Obsculta

No abstract provided.