Comparative Methodologies and Theories Commons^™

The Museumification Of Rumi’S Tomb: Deconstructing Sacred Space At The Mevlana Museum, Rose Aslan

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Tourists and pilgrims from across Turkey and around the world flock to the tomb of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), one of the greatest poets and Sufi masters in Islam. Since 1925, the Turkish government has relentlessly struggled to control Islamic influences in society and to channel people’s devotion to the memory of Kemal Ataturk (d. 1938) and his secular ideology. This article argues that by restructuring the layout and presentation of the tomb complex of Rumi, and putting the sacred space through the process of museumification, the Turkish state has attempted to regulate the place in order to control …

A New Generation Of Buddhist: The Views And Practice Of Tibetan Youth , Carey Reich

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Buddhist practices of the Tibetan youth between eighteen and thirty years old living and studying in McleodGanj, Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India, and the nearby areas were examined through a series of 20 interviews and literature research. This research was inspired by previous field work done in Leh, Ladakh, India, carried out by the author, where the youth from Buddhist families rejected ritual in favor of a purely philosophical practice. It was found in Dharamsala that the definition of Buddhism given by the youth was different than the traditional one and that given by members of a monastic institution. Rather …

Common Sense Theology: An Analysis Of T. L. Carter's Interpretation Of Romans 13:1-7, Joshua Alley

Senior Honors Theses

Common sense theology has been a part of American theology since the time of the Revolution when Evangelicals incorporated ideals from the Scottish didactic Enlightenment into their thought. This paper deals with the work of one particular author, T. L. Carter, and his interpretation and exegetical work on Romans 13:1-7. It deals with the two major presuppositions of his common sense theology, namely that interpretations of any passage of Scripture will adhere to common sense and will result in a value-based ethic. Following this is an analysis of both the strengths and weaknesses of Carter's methodology.

Cloud Atlas’ Queer Tiki Kitsch: Polynesians, Settler Colonialism, And Sci-Fi Film, Gabriel S. Estrada

Journal of Religion & Film

Polynesian theories of film reception, visual sovereignty, feminisms, and worldview offer critical insights into The Wachowskis' and Tykwer's 2012 film Cloud Atlas. From Indigenous and Native feminist film perspectives, Cloud Atlas offers a sci-fi future deeply entrenched in the queer tiki kitsch of settler colonialism as situated within a comparative context of other queer Indigenous film. As an example of heteropatriarchal settler colonialism, the Cloud Atlas plot supports the heterosexual triumphs of cross-racial couples and sublimates the possibilities of transgender reincarnation. Although Cloud Atlas attempts to critique Christian slavery and defend a secular abolitionist stance in the 1848 South Pacific, …

Nurturing Play-Makers & Active Investigative Agents: Schwartz Tag, Good Video Games And Futures Of Jewish Learning, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

How can an experiential approach to education, in combination with a games-based orientation, help us reach often-elusive educational goals? In many ways the study of games and game design bring us back to tenets of education that we have long known, including the benefits of self-directed learning and project-based work. Games-based design and learning may provide a way to shift the discussion from “What should an educated Jew know?” to “How does a learner develop a taste for Jewish learning and living?”

Emerging From The Shadows: Civil War, Human Rights, And Peacebuilding Among Peasants And Indigenous Peoples In Colombia And Peru In The Late 20th And Early 21st Centuries, Charles A. Flowerday

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Peacebuilding in Colombia and Peru following their late-20^th and early 21^st century civil wars is a challenging proposition. In this study, it becomes necessary as indigenous peoples and peasants resist domination by extractive industries and governments in their thrall. Whether they protest nonviolently or rebel in arms, they are targeted for human-rights violations, especially murder, disappearance and displacement. The armed actors, state, insurgency, paramilitaries or drug traffickers, destroy civic institutions (local or regional government) and the civil (nonprofit) sector and replace them with their own authoritarian versions. Therefore, peacebuilding has emphasized rebuilding civic institutions, civil society and local …

Essay: “Category Formation And ‘Eastern Traditions’”, James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

Essay: “Category Formation and ‘Eastern Traditions’”

Islamic Feminism: A Discourse Of Gender Justice And Equality, Breanna Ribeiro

Senior Theses

This paper examines Islamic feminism using structural methodology and the phenomenological approach to examine the component of Muslim feminists' activism that utilizes ijtihad and tafsir to reinterpret patriarchal rhetoric and highlight Islamic discourses that validate gender equality. These scholars and activists critically analyze Islamic theology by employing hermeneutics in order to produce Islamic exegeses that affirm social justice, gender equality, and liberation. Religion plays a critical role in building collective cultural identities; therefore, examining sacred texts' representation and prescription of gender roles and mores generates an understanding of the gender order in the community of believers, while simultaneously exposing contextual …

Does Religion Have A Role In Criminal Sentencing?, Jack B. Weinstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

For Praying Out Loud: An Exploration Of Religious Traditions & Their Prayer Practices, Leona George-Davidson

Senior Theses

Religions and their prayer practices are an integral part of the history of our world and are an important source of community and individual spiritual development. Religions serve as a community resource for compassion and empathy toward others, an organizing force for community wellness and solidarity, and a safe haven to explore one’s own spiritual journey and purpose in life. There are emotional, moral, logical, and spiritual aspects to all religious traditions and when we have an understanding of not only that which we believe and practice, but also an understanding of that which others believe and practice, we can …

A Case Analysis Of The Foundational Ministry Principles Of Rev. Jerry Falwell From 1956-1966, Iain Lyttle

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This research examines principles employed by Dr. Jerry Lamond Falwell between 1956 and 1966 and the early developmental stages of his church, Thomas Road Baptist Church (TRBC). The foundation built during these formative years facilitated precipitous growth within the church plant for decades, allowing TRBC to become one of America’s most prominent megachurches and to found Liberty University, the world’s largest evangelical university. As church plants are more likely to fail than to succeed, this research aimed to investigate key characteristics of a church planter who was highly successful, which can be replicated. Using primarily twenty-three interviews of TRBC congregants …

Roosevelt, Boy Scouts, And The Formation Of Muscular Christian Character, Gordon J. Christen

Religious Studies Honors Projects

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many prominent Christians and political leaders saw a degenerative influence in industrializing America. For them, urban culture had eroded gender roles, personal strength, and moral fiber. So-called “Muscular Christians” prescribed physical exertion and wilderness experience to cure these ills. I argue that these values were embodied in idealized characters such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jesus, and the Boy Scout to give a form to cultural remedies. In the process, they became the terms upon which proper Americanism, and proper Christianity, were constructed.

La Gloire Ou La Croix: The Fiangonana Loterana Malagasy, Independent Churches, And Nouvelles Fois In Antsirabe, Alexander Koch

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The histories and characteristics of five different Christian churches within Antsirabe, the FLM, FPLM, FLMAK, MRE, and Shine, reveal telling examples of how Malagasy Christians negotiate their religious lives within the personal, local, and national contexts. Although a two-dimensional representation does not do justice to the intricacies of each church’s individual situation, all five generally fall onto the spectrums of “historic” to “modern,” “traditional” to “innovative,” and “national” to “local,” with the FLM in the former classification, and nouvelles fois in the latter, and the independent churches falling somewhere in between. Analyzed across seven comparative and two investigative categories, three …

A Mixed Bag: The Inter-Religious Marriage Experience In Bali, Chelsea Bhajan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper aims to investigate how marriage customs as well as the perception of religion and its role in daily and family life changes within the context of religious plurality. This study specifically focuses on the experience of interreligious marriages on the island of Bali in Indonesia. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken in both Bahasa Indonesia and English in north and south Bali and minimally in east Bali. Twenty-one respondents were garnered in seventeen interview sessions. Findings showed a variety of means of dealing with this plurality, including choosing to follow only one faith, practising aspects of several faiths together and …

Establishing A Revitalizing Strategy For Church Planters: An Analysis Of Church Planting Trends Of The 21st Century Within The Published Works During The Past Thirteen Years (2001-2013) In America, Ji Woon Choi

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Church planting is the most valuable method to spread the Gospel, and God wants to see His churches everywhere. Nevertheless, many church planters have produced strikingly different results; depression or growth. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and research about current church planting trends within the published works during the past thirteen years (2001-2013) in the United States and to suggest a healthy church planting and growth model for local church planters in America and the World. After the analysis of the current trends in the 21st century, the particular statistical evidences and theological views about this study …

¿Pérdida O Persistencia? La Cultura Andina Y Los Efectos De La Influencia Evangélica En Las Dos Comunidades Indígenas Peruanas De Patacancha Y Rumira Sondormayo., Hannah Eby

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Español: Este estudio se realiza como un Proyecto de Estudio Independiente del programa de estudiar fuera de SIT Perú: Pueblos indígenas y la globalización. Por un método etnográfico compuesto de entrevistas y observaciones de la vida religiosa de las dos comunidades rurales indígenas de Patacancha y Rumira Sondormayo, esta investigación explora la cuestión actual de la influencia evangélica cristiana en la cultura católico-andina. En las décadas recientes, la religión evangélica ha incrementado mucho en el Perú, la conversión creciendo rápidamente en las comunidades indígenas andinas. Según la teoría de la emergencia y la persistencia nacido de una conferencia del año …

Discerning Segment Boundaries Within John 1:19-4:54, Joseph R. Dongell

The Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies

Bible commentators have traditionally supplied hierarchical outlines for the books they interpret under the assumption that texts are semantically structured, and that valid interpretation flows in part from accurately discerning textual structure. The disciplines of narrative criticism and discourse analysis have significantly advanced our understanding of textual structure, and have crossed paths by way of mutual influence with the IBS movement, which has given sustained attention to formalizing the study of textual structure. Against this backdrop, John 1:19-4:54 invites closer scrutiny in terms of the logic of its composition. The nearly universal agreement that 1:1-18 forms a clear literary unit, …

Advances In Documentation, Digital Curation, Virtual Exhibition, And A Test Of 3d Geometric Morhpometrics: A Case Study Of The Vanderpool Vessels From The Ancestral Caddo Territory, Robert Z. Selden Jr., Timothy K. Perttula, Michael J. O'Brien

CRHR: Archaeology

Three-dimensional (3D) digital scanning of archaeological materials is typically used as a tool for artifact documentation. With the permission of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, 3D documentation of Caddo funerary vessels from the Vanderpool site (41SM77) was conducted with the initial goal of ensuring that these data would be publicly available for future research long after the vessels were repatriated. A digital infrastructure was created to archive and disseminate the resultant 3D datasets, ensuring that they would be accessible by both researchers and the general public (CRHR 2014a). However, 3D imagery can be used for much more than documentation. To …

Thinking With Nostra Aetate: From The New Pluralism To Comparative Theology, Mathew N. Schmalz

Religious Studies Faculty Scholarship

A consideration of the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate specifically in relation to comparative theology and theologies of religious pluralism. The article discusses two noted Catholic theologians: Paul Griffiths and Francis X. Clooney. The article also considers Pope Francis and the implications of his washing the feet of non-Christians. The article was published in Asian Horizons, a peer reviewed journal published by Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram in Bangalore, India

Reading A Protoevangelium In The Context Of Genesis, David Pettus

Eruditio Ardescens

This article proposes that the case for a ‘messianic’ reading of Gen. 3:15 is cumulative. No single individual argument is decisive and it is virtually impossible to sustain a robust protevangelium interpretation of this text within the context of Gen. 3 alone. However, as already pointed out in the introduction, isolating Gen. 3 from its literary/historical context in the book of Genesis does not lead to a fruitful resolution of its meaning but at best creates a hypothetical reconstructed meaning behind the text which becomes difficult to sustain in light of the interpretation of the 'seed' in the entire book. …

Historical Movements And The Theology Behind The Pluralism Project At Harvard University, Scott Macleod

Masters Theses

The focus of this paper is to address religious pluralism as a belief along with examining multiple factors that have been a catalyst for the Pluralism Project at Harvard University to become part of American culture. The theology behind and ideology of the Pluralism Project will be examined along with the writings of Diana Eck, founder of the Pluralism Project. Outwardly, The Pluralism Project and the works of Eck give the impression of an impartial attempt to educate people on the growing religious diversity found within America. However, it will be shown that the Pluralism Project and the efforts of …

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 …

"Not A Hand Bound; Not A Voice Hushed": Ordination And Foundational Adventist Understandings Of Women In Ministry, Ginger Hanks Harwood, Beverly Beem

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

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Distinct Differences, Kendrick Roberson

Global Tides

When analyzing Christianity, it is important to note the manifold changes in methods of worship that can be attributed to a racial demographic and its accompanying culture. Within these different methods of worship, between both denominations and cultures, adherence to the Bible should be the focal point of every church’s preaching. With the mindset of “Sola Scriptura,” this reflective paper will not only analyze The Malibu Gathering, but will also touch on the overarching principles of the Protestant subset and determine whether today’s Protestant churches are meeting this standard.

The Spirit Of The Lord And Obedience To God's Law : An Exegetical, Intertextual, And Theological Study Of Ezekiel 36:27, James Waita Mutua

Dissertations

Problem

In Ezek 36:27, God foretells that he will put his Spirit within his people and he will “do” so that Israel will obey his laws. Ezekiel 36:27 indicates a close relationship between the Spirit of God and Israel in observing the statutes and judgments of God in the Babylonian exile among the nations and after the exile. In this text, every major phrase and clause has varied interpretations or calls for further investigation. Not only do scholars have different interpretations of the verse, but also the English Bible versions vary in their translations. This leads to the following questions: …

Judgment Motifs In The Messages To The Seven Churches, Kim Papaioannou, Edward Moyo

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society

No abstract provided.

I Am Sartre, Lauren Butler

Theses and Dissertations

A week after explaining to my sister that the agnostic sticker on the back of my car, which read "question everything," didn't mean I hated God, she walked into the front door and sat down on the futon sofa with a look on her face that meant she knew where the conversation was going. Her dogs were rambunctious and her husband soon fled out the back door and towards the shop. I asked her, "Is it you that keeps covering up my agnostic sticker?" She smiled with her eyes first and then smirked so I could tell what her answer …

(De)Psychologizing Shangri-La: Recognizing And Reconsidering C.G. Jung's Role In The Construction Of Tibetan Buddhism In The Western Imagination, Alec M. Terrana

Pomona Senior Theses

Popular literature on Tibetan Buddhism often overemphasizes the psychological dimension of the religion's beliefs and practices. This misrepresentative portrayal is largely traceable to the writings of the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. By employing distinctly psychological terminology and interpretive strategies in his analyses of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and mandala symbolism, Jung helped to establish precedents that were adopted in subsequent analyses of the religion. Imposing a psychological lens on Tibetan Buddhism obscures other essential elements of the tradition, such as cosmology, physiology, and ritualism, thereby silencing the voices of Tibetans in analyses of their own practices. Jung's imposition of …

The Sin Against The Holy Spirit In The Writings Of G. C. Berkouwer And E. G. White: A Comparative Study And Ethical Implications, Michael Davey Pearson

Dissertations

While compatibilists claim that divine sovereignty either elects individuals to salvation or inevitably consigns them to damnation without the involvement of human response, non-compatibilism claims that divine love requires both human choice along with a behavioral response. This dissertation examines these respective dilemmas in the context of the sin against the Holy Spirit with the purpose of ascertaining how these views impact the sovereignty and character of God and the resulting ethical implications. Compatibilism is examined through the writings and theology of G. C. Berkouwer, while non-compatibilism is appraised through the writings and thought of Ellen G. White.

This dissertation …

Seeking A Comprehensive Worldview: The Religious Seeker In The Modern World, Michael Gregory

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Anecdotally, the casual observer of anthropological phenomenon may be led to believe that every human is basically the same. Indeed, many may assume that groups of people possess identical beliefs, religions, and expressions that hardly vary across different cultures and generations. Throughout the plethora of different cultures and the countless varieties of religious expression and experience it may seem that all of humanity is merely following the same lifestyles and worldviews as their parents and ancestors with very little change save for the gradual evolution in society. A religious studies scholar, or any scholar of the humanities, however, may notice …