History of Christianity Commons^™

To The Jew First: A Socio-Historical And Biblical-Theological Analysis Of The Pauline Teaching Of `Election' In Light Of Second Temple Jewish Patterns Of Thought, Anthony Thornhill

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Paul's "doctrine" of election has remained a controversial and enigmatic topic for centuries. Few studies, however, have approached Paul's doctrine through the context of Second Temple Judaism. This study examines Paul's view of election through the lens of Second Temple Jewish texts written prior to 70 CE. In doing so, it is argued that the best framework through which to view Paul's discussion of election is through a primarily corporate model of election. While such a model is rooted in Judaism, Paul departs from his Jewish contemporaries in arguing that the locus of election is in God's Messiah, Jesus.

Hangin' With Judas: A Narrative Analysis Of Stephen Adly Guirgis's 'The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot', Constance Falconer

Masters Theses

Stephen Adly Guirgis has created an era-melting play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which explores the timeless debate between divine mercy and free will. A systematic application of Walter R. Fisher's narrative analysis, through form identification and a functional analysis, determined how Guirgis accomplishes persuasion. This qualitative study focused on Guirgis's narrative, using Walter R. Fisher's narrative paradigm as a framework to answer the research question(s): (1) If Guirgis's ideology and created world in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot are foreign and imagined, how is narrative probability and narrative fidelity achieved?; and, (2) How does Guirgis persuade his …

From Evangelistic Preaching To Mentoring: A Model For The Local Church, Seunghyun Yoon

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Throughout Christian history, biblical and historical figures have used strategic invitation methods that focused on the needs of the people who were listening to their evangelistic appeal. This demonstrates that evangelism and the invitation process is relevant to those who respond to the message.

The Politics Of Special Collections And Museum Exhibits: A Civil War Or The War Of Northern Aggression?, Christopher J. Anderson

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This essay examines the political nature of curating special collections and museum exhibits. Exhibits are designed to draw attention to historical or contemporary issues in order for viewers to reflect on the past and to ask questions in the present. The contents of an exhibit also echo the educational backgrounds, interests, and biases of both curator and curatorial team. As a result exhibits are framed ideologically, sociologically, and even theologically in order to give voice to the voiceless and to champion certain positions from history. This essay investigates the contested nature of exhibits by highlighting their basic and complicated spectrums …

Humility, Civility, And Vitality: Papal Leadership At The Turn Of The Seventh Century, Peter Iver Kaufman

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

In 416, Bishop Innocent I of Rome sent a colleague in Gubbio what was to become one of the most important set of liturgical instructions in early Christendom. Innocent composed his remarks on, inter alia, penitential discipline and prescribed gestures during the administration of the Sacraments to deter other bishops and their priests from improvising. He claimed that bishops of Rome, as successors of St. Peter, had the responsibility to authenticate ritual observances and achieve uniformity in Italy and elsewhere. Churches could not be left to alter or surrender valued practices because presiding priests or bishops thought them superfluous or …

Creating A Millennial Generation Contextualized Church Culture, Christopher Deitsch

Masters Theses

The Millennial generation, or Generation Y as some people know them, is the biggest generation in the United States of America history. As they flood schools, universities, and the job market it is easy to see that there are major differences between them and previous generations. Simultaneously, the church in America has hundreds of individual churches each year closing and tens of thousands each year declining; most churches are ceasing to grow. The inability to reach Millennials is one of the reasons for this decline. This thesis purposes to give a snapshot of the Millennial generation, overview a few of …

Muscular Christian Themes In Contemporary American Sport: A Case Study, Andrew R. Meyer

Movement and Being: The Journal of the Christian Society for Kinesiology, Leisure and Sports Studies

Muscular Christianity is often credited as being influential in Western sport ideology but is rarely mentioned in contemporary analysis. This paper identifies instances of muscular Christian ideals, as defined by Thomas Hughes, observable in the contemporary American sport context, addressing the continued religious impact of sport. Muscular Christian themes were identified in various media, including, online videos, magazines, books, and commercials involving American cyclist Lance Armstrong. Two of Hughes’ themes were observable in the media portrayal of Armstrong: a body used for the protection of the weak and a body used for the advancement of all righteous causes. These findings …

The Truth Shall Set You Free: The Bible, The Revolution, And The Debate Over Slavery In The American South, Kevin Simon

Masters Theses

Before the slavery debate pushed a divided American nation to the brink of civil war, the argument divided the family of God. By the time cannon fire erupted at Fort Sumter, Christians had already staked out positions based on sophisticated lines of argument they used to justify or condemn chattel slavery. The generation coming of age during the Civil War era witnessed a debate more intense and contentious than their ancestors had seen, but in terms of the arguments employed, it broke very little fresh ground. Contrary to the assumption that antebellum apologists in the South invented the defense of …

Insights From Charles Spurgeon's Preaching For A Changing Culture, John Lewis

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This project has been done in order to increase the amount of literature available that demonstrates how to preach to a 21st century culture and to enlighten preachers to the timeless truths that transcend from the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon. A close evaluation of Charles Spurgeon's biblical preaching reveals a model for pastors to emulate in a post-modern context in the local church. Spurgeon was a master communicator and a survey of his mid to late 1800's preaching reveals those areas of his ministry that are still useful in the New Millennium. By reviewing Spurgeon's sermons and writings, …

Kingdom Consequences: Socio-Political Dimensions Of Evangelistic Preaching, Kenneth Kinton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examines biblical, historical, and theoretcial trends in evangelistic preaching. This has been accomplished using biblical evidence, as well as insights from theologians and scholars within the realm of society, politics, and Christianity. The study provides a suggested methodology of sermon preparation for communicating to the modern Church.

Covenant Nation: The Politics Of Grace In Early American Literature, Justin M. Scott-Coe

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The argument of this dissertation is that a critical reading of the concept of "covenant" in early American writings is instrumental to understanding the paradoxes in the American political concepts of freedom and equality. Following Slavoj Zizek's theoretical approach to theology, I trace the covenant concept in early American literature from the theological expressions and disputes in Puritan Massachusetts through Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of Will and the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing how the covenant theology of colonial New England dispersed into more "secular" forms of what may be called an American political theology. The first chapter provides an …

Practicing What They Preach? Lynching And Religion In The American South 1890 - 1929, Amy Kate Bailey, Karen A. Snedker

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

This project employs a moral solidarity framework to explore the relationship between organized religion and lynching in the American South. The authors ask whether a county’s religious composition affected its rate of lynching, net of demographic and economic controls. The authors find evidence for the solidarity thesis, using three religious metrics. First, their findings show that counties with greater religious diversity experienced more lynching, supporting the notion that a pluralistic religious marketplace with competing religious denominations weakened the bonds of a cohesive moral community and might have enhanced white racial solidarity. Second, counties in which a larger share of the …

Christian Realism And Augustinian (?) Liberalism, Peter Iver Kaufman

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

Surely there is enough kindling lying about in the Bible and in subsequent moral theology to fire up love for neighbors and compassion for countless “friends” in foreign parts--and in crisis. And, surely, the momentum of love’s labor for the just redistribution of resources, fueled by activists’ appeals for solidarity, should be sustained by stressing that we are creatures made for affection, not for aggression. Yet experience, plus the history of the Christian traditions, taught Reinhold Niebuhr, who memorably reminded Christian realists, how often love was “defeated,” how a “strategy of brotherhood . . . degenerates from mutuality to a …

Christian Cooperation And Ministry Effectiveness: Insights And Applications From Empirical Research In Group Processes, David R. Dunaetz

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

“Co-operation and the Promotion of Unity” was one the major themes addressed at Edinburgh 1910. The goal was increased cooperation among Christian organizations that would lead to greater ministry effectiveness. Five group processes are presented in light of empirical studies demonstrating their ability to increase group performance: 1) Trust (reciprocal beliefs that the one party will promote the well being of another; 2) Constructive conflict (objective consideration and evaluation of various ways of accomplishing a common goal); 3) Decision commitment (beliefs held by all parties concerning the importance of following through on group decisions); 4) Accountability (the expectation that a …

H. M. Chauke Research Of African Hlengwe People, Happyson William Matsilele Chauke, Tillerman Houser

ATS Digital Resources

This is a collection of historical and cultural research works about the vaHlengwe people of Zimbabwe, created by Happyson Chauke before his untimely death by a hit and run driver in 2009. It was compiled by his friend Tillman Houser, who spent 35 years as a missionary to Zimbabwe under the Free Methodist Church. The bulk of the collection is comprised of the book entitled: "The miracle of Lundi Mission: lest we forget."

Social Insurance, Commitment, And The Origin Of Law: Interest Bans In Early Christianity, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Despite the historical importance of ideology-based, economically inhibitive laws, we know little about the economic factors underlying their origin. This paper accounts for the historical emergence of one such law: the Christian ban on taking interest--a doctrine that shaped the evolution of numerous financial contracts and related organizational forms. A game-theoretic analysis and historical evidence suggest that the Church's commitment to providing social insurance for its poorest constituents encouraged risky borrowing, which the Church attempted to limit by banning interest. The analysis highlights the applicability of the rational choice framework to seemingly irrational actions and laws, the role of nonmonetary …

The Roman Catholic Church: A Transnational Challenge To State Sovereignity?, Ashley Regina Hudson

Archived Theses and Dissertations

[abstract not provided]

A Wolf Amongst The Sheep: A Sociological Approach To Understanding The German Church Struggle, Kevin L. Dingess

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Researchers pursuing the Kirchenkampf, Church Struggle, have persistently concentrated on anti-Semitism to explicate why the Protestant Churches failed at stopping the Holocaust. Former studies indicate that the Protestant Churches were ineffective at limiting the Nazi regime Essentially, this failure was accredited to the following: anti-Semitism (both past and modern), post-war resentment, common enemies or shared values between the regime and the Protestant Churches (including, Communists, Bolsheviks, Jews, and the secularism/liberalism of the Weimar Republic), and a strongly ingrained nationalism. Despite the facts that the validity of this past research has been supported numerous times over, this research observes features of …

Resources On The Historical Study Of Jesus, Dennis Ingolfsland

The Christian Librarian

Jesus of Nazareth has been the center of significant media attention in recent years. Even before Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," Jesus had been the focus of featu re articles in Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. Jesus was also the subject of television documentaries by PBS, A&E, T LC, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and even a fu ll length prime time special by ABC News. Most presentations focus on Jesus as a man of history. In fact, the last 20 yea rs have been part of what scholars are now calling the "Third …

The Evangelical Movement In Ecuador, Steve Grosz

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

A Match Made In Heaven: How Singles And The Church Can Live Happily Ever After, Wendy Widder

Alumni Book Gallery

Singles and the church may seem to go together like a grilled steak at a vegetarian party but God has a radically different plan . . . one where everyone truly belongs in the family of God.

Redeeming The City: Exploring The Relationship Between Church And Metropolis, Meredith Ramsay

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author calls attention to a neglected force in urban political life by highlighting how positivism undermined scholarly interest in cultural forces, particularly religion. She shows that although community organizing was formerly led by leftist radicals, today it is led by the church. Five factors contribute to the leading role of congregations in grassroots organizing and urban revitalization. Analysis and interpretation of these factors led the author to conclude that secularization and urban restructuring have left only the church with a sufficient moral and institutional presence in distressed urban neighborhoods to spearhead a return to more direct participatory forms of …

Unity - But At What Cost?, Gerhard Pfandl

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society

No abstract provided.

Chinese Congregations Of Ontario In The Context Of The History Of Pastoral Care Practice, Chun-An Wang

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This is a study of Chinese congregations of Ontario in the context of the history of pastoral care. According to a historical review, there are three major practice paradigms of pastoral care in the Western church. The classical pastoral paradigm emphasizes a Christian message. The clinical paradigm emphasizes personality and relationships. The communal- contextual paradigm tries to cover a wholistic goal namely, message, person, and context. In the nineteenth century, the Chinese church integrated the classical paradigm into contemporary culture. A micro-ethnographic survey of the Chinese churches of Ontario has revealed that the pastors still practise care ministry in a …

The Church And Negro Progress, George E. Haynes

Trotter Review

The marked progress of the Negro in America in which the church has been a factor has been of three general types. The first is intra-group advancement in such phases of life as education and wealth. The second is inter-group adjustments between the Negro population and the white population in such matters as economic relationships, citizenship rights and privileges, interracial contacts and fellowship. There is a third type of progress which touches both the internal and external life of the Negro group such as the cultural contributions of Negroes which have gradually been incorporated into our common life. There are, …

Religious Institutions And Black Political Activism, Frederick C. Harris

Trotter Review

During the modern Civil Rights Movement religious institutions provided critical organizational resources for protest mobilization. As Aldon Morris' extensive study of the southern Civil Rights Movement noted, the Black Church served as the "organizational hub of Black life," providing the resources that fostered—along with other indigenous groups and institutions—collective protest against a system of white domination in the South.

Jerusalem 3000: Three Millennia Of History, Osher Map Library

Osher Map Library Exhibition Catalogs

Jerusalem 3000: Three Millennia of History. April 17, 1996 to October 5, 1996

Sacred to Jews, Christians, and Moslems, the city has inspired a prodigious outpouring of prose and poetry, artistic renderings, and, of course, maps. This exhibition offers a selection of maps and views to celebrate the 3000th anniversary of Jerusalem's establishment as the capital of King David's unified Kingdom of Israel.

Jerusalem - Three Millennia Of History (Exhibit Guide), Osher Map Library

Osher Map Library Miscellaneous Publications

Jerusalem Three Millennia of History. Exhibit Guide to Jerusalem 3000: Three Millennia of History.

April 17, 1996 to October 5, 1996

Sacred to Jews, Christians, and Moslems, the city has inspired a prodigious outpouring of prose and poetry, artistic renderings, and, of course, maps. This exhibition offers a selection of maps and views to celebrate the 3000th anniversary of Jerusalem's establishment as the capital of King David's unified Kingdom of Israel.

The Controversial Saints: Representations Of Cyril And Methodius In Modern Slavic History: Chronology And Theses, Petko Ivanov

Slavic Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Zaire: The Positive Role Of Religion In Nation Building, James N. Mackinlay

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.