New Religious Movements Commons^™

Records Of The Institute On Religion And Democracy Presidential Papers Of Diane Knippers Arc2016-001 - Finding Aid, Ats Special Collections And Archives

Finding Aids

No abstract provided.

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Sr. Hannah: Handling Change, Jakob Weiss

Ask a Sister: Interview Wisdom from Catholic Women Religious

Sister Hannah is a woman religious I interviewed recently about her life and experiences. Our interview focused primarily on her thoughts about modern-day changes in the Catholic Church.

Building A Spiritual Home: Religious Engagement Of Former Vincentian Volunteers, Scott Kelley, Patricia Wittberg

Mission and Ministry Publications

Recent academic and popular literature has postulated a “story of diminishment” when speaking of the religious practice of young adults in the United States.  The current paper looks at the impact of volunteer service on the likelihood that young adults will remain connected to organized religion through an analysis of two studies of young adults between the ages of 18 and 35 who had previously participated in volunteer programs that were sponsored by various Catholic organizations in the Vincentian tradition. The first study, conducted between February and May of 2014 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) …

Mother Goddesses And Subversive Witches: Competing Narratives Of Gender Essentialism, Heteronormativity, Feminism, And Queerness In Wiccan Theology And Ritual, Carly B. Floyd

Honors Projects

Wicca has typically been viewed as an empowering alternative to institutionalized and patriarchal religions, and women especially have been drawn to this religion because of its inclusion of women as goddesses and priestesses. It is also seen as a sex-positive religion, and many LGBTQ+ people embrace Wicca due to its lack of concepts such as sin and shame, especially around sex and sexuality. This research, however, troubles the claim that Wicca is a feminist, woman-friendly, queer-friendly religion. While women are celebrated and valued, I argue that women’s positive portrayal as mothers, nurturers, emotional, and intuitive portrays women’s nature in a …

Prince Rogers Nelson: From "Dirty Mind" To Devout Jehovah's Witness, Cassandra Chaney Phd

Faculty Publications

Prince Rogers Nelson (born: June 7, 1958) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was a musical innovator and known for his eclectic work, flamboyant stage presence, extravagant dress and makeup, and wide vocal range. When he passed unexpectedly on April 21, 2016, he had built an immensely successful career that spanned over 30 years. Although Prince is widely known for his highly sexual behavior, we know less about his spiritual beliefs as well as how these beliefs influenced his public persona and private life. Through the lens of social identity theory, this manuscript will examine …

Review Of Praying And Preying: Christianity In Indigenous Amazonia By Aparecida Vilaça, Aleksandar Boskovic

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

What Is Magic To The Laveyan-Satanist Ideal Type?: A Content-Analysis Of The Satanic Bible’S Descriptions Of Magic, Carter E. Timon

Anthropology Summer Fellows

In 1966 Anton Szandor LaVey founded the Church of Satan (CoS) in California, and by 1969 published The Satanic Bible (1969). While many believe that the use of magic has declined in the Western world, LaVeyan Satanism according to The Satanic Bible actively includes magic while embracing rationalist philosophy. Satanism is an understudied New Religious Movement (NRM) and little is understood about its core tenets and practices. This paper uses content analysis of The Satanic Bible to understand how LaVey originally presents the workings of Satanic magic to his Western audience. Conclusions refer to the import of magic to the …

"The Family" & Faith: The Theology Of Power, Erika Phillipo

Senior Theses

The Family & Faith: The Theology of Power hopes to shed light on the relationship between American politics, American history, and the Christian Fundamentalist group known as The Family. This paper uses the book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet as its main source. By connecting the relationship between this mega-group with American politics and politicians, the theme of power arises and refuses to go away. Thus, the focus goes beyond simply just political influence and history and instead results ultimately with how the group gains and maintains their power within the …

Our Master’S Legacy: Belief And Ritual In Mission De L’Esprit Saint, Dale Joseph Rose

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis is a folkloristic examination of the religious beliefs and rituals associated with members of a religious movement known as Mission De L’Ésprit Saint. Mission De L’Ésprit Saint is a Quebecois religious denomination which believes that their founder was the physical incarnation of the Holy Spirit, and the movement strives to continue the teachings which were laid down during his lifetime. The major components of Mission theology and history, as well as an introductory consideration of their cosmology and worldview will be the major focus of this document, as well as a consideration of the role that Folklore has …

Occupy Judaism: Religion, Digital Media, And The Public Sphere, Ayala Fader, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides an analysis of Occupy Judaism, an explicitly religious expression of Jewish protest, which occurred simultaneously with Occupy Wall Street, the direct-democracy movement of 2011. Occupy Judaism, like Occupy Wall Street, took place both in physical spaces of protest in New York City and digitally, through mobilizing and circulating debate. The article focuses on the words and actions of Daniel Sieradski, the public face and one of the key founders of Occupy Judaism, supplemented by the experiences of others in Occupy Judaism, Occupy Wall Street, and Occupy Faith (a Protestant clergy-led initiative). We investigate what qualified as religion …

Confirmation Of Prophecy By Proxy: Audience Anticipation And Reception Of The 2014 Movie Left Behind And Its Relevance To The Dispensational Premillennialist Worldview, Andrew R. Burns

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Media has the potential to legitimize or spread a belief system to the general public. The 2014 movie Left Behind is an example of a deliberate attempt at promoting the belief system referred to as dispensational premillennialism (DPM), or belief in the imminent rapture of Christians. Producers of Left Behind (2014) sought to promote DPM to the general public, hoping for a mass conversion. Online discussion and interviews were gathered and interpreted qualitatively. Content analysis of audience anticipation and reception show believers were as concerned with the conversion of the general public via this movie than the movie itself. Differences …

In The Absence Of Peace, Emma R. Okell

SURGE

Today, the Monday after the attack, all of the flags were at half mast. Everything continued as normal, as if nothing had happened. Yet there was an intensity in the air. I didn’t notice the increased police, but it was easy to feel the increased security. [excerpt]

Are Religion And Environmentalism Complements Or Substitutes?: A Club-Based Approach, Feler Bose, Timothy M. Komarek

Economics Faculty Publications

In this article, we analyze the causal link between membership in environmental groups and active participation and membership in religious groups. We use a club-based model and employ OLS and spatial econometrics with controls to test for whether membership and participation in a religious group is a substitute or complement for membership in environmental groups. Instrumental variables estimation was used as a robustness check. We found that religious participation and religious membership in evangelical groups are a substitute for environmental membership. Much of the work on environmental concerns has focused on answers to survey questions, not on membership. We used …

The Imam And The Pastor: Attempts At Peace In Nigeria Using Interfaith Dialogue, Jinelle Piereder

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

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 …

Rhetorical Ripples: The Church Of The Subgenius, Kenneth Burke & Comic, Symbolic Tinkering, Lee A. Carleton

Theses and Dissertations

Humor has long been an effective way to engage difficult sociopolitical topics in a way that avoids polemical confrontation and provides opportunity for pleasure, catharsis and self-knowledge. In the context of today’s polarized politics and protest, creative satirical performance that deploys “symbolic tinkering” can provide a “comic frame of reference” that, according to Kenneth Burke, more effectively conveys its message while providing reflexive insight. The satirical Church of the SubGenius naturally practices this rhetorical frame in their multimedia creations. Using the lens of Burke’s Attitudes Toward History, this essay is an analysis of SubGenius rhetoric with a focus on …

Peace Education And Its Discontents: An Evaluation Of Youth, Violence, And School-Based Peace Programs In Northern Uganda, Jayanni Webster

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

This research paper discusses current efforts and programs designed to address the issues of peace and conflict resolution, post-war recovery and education in northern Uganda. Through the collection of stories of life after war, I examine the experiences of children and youth and pilot peace education programs in secondary and primary schools. Northern Uganda was the site of a brutal civil war waged between the rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and the government’s Uganda People’s Defense Force. The war resulted in the mass abduction of children and the forced displacement of the northern population into internally displaced persons’ camps. …

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 …

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, …

Atheist Scripts In A Nation Of Religiosity: Identity Politics Within The Atheist Movement, Jacqueline Frost

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the use of identity politics within the atheist movement at both the national and individual levels. I conducted a content analysis of two national atheist groups and three best-selling atheist authors in order to assess the use of atheist identity politics at the national level. I then conducted 15 in-depth interviews with a sample of atheists in Portland, Oregon about their atheist identity and their reactions to and identification with national atheist movement strategies. Findings suggest that national atheist organizations and atheist authors are using a strategy of identity politics that encourage atheists to "come out" as …

Did Secularism Fail? The Rise Of Religion In Turkish Politics, Zeynep Taydas, Yasemin Akbaba, Minion K.C. Morrison

Political Science Faculty Publications

Religious movements have long been challenging the modernist and secularist ideas around the world. Within the last decade or so, pro-religious parties made significant electoral advances in various countries, including India, Sudan, Algeria, and the Palestinian territories. In this article, we focus on the rise of the pro-religious Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi- AKP) to power in the 2002 elections in Turkey. Using the Turkish experience with political Islam, we evaluate the explanatory value of Mark Juergensmeyer's rise of religious nationalism theory, with a special emphasis on the "failed secularism" argument. Our analysis indicates that the …

Introduction To America's Four Gods: What We Say About God And What That Says About Us, Paul Froese, Christoper Bader

Sociology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Despite all the hype surrounding the "New Atheism," the United States remains one of the most religious nations on Earth. In fact, 95% of Americans believe in God--a level of agreement rarely seen in American life. The greatest divisions in America are not between atheists and believers, or even between people of different faiths. What divides us, this groundbreaking book shows, is how we conceive of God and the role He plays in our daily lives.

America's Four Gods draws on the most wide-ranging, comprehensive, and illuminating survey of American's religious beliefs ever conducted to offer a systematic exploration of …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 83, No. 7, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

Terrorism, Millenarianism, And Death: A Study Of Hezbollah And Aum Shinrikyo, Steven Nicholls

Theses : Honours

The relationship ·between death and the millennium is not an area of scholarship that has received adequate attention. Millenarian groups desire the creation of a paradise in the temporal world. The world is seen as corrupt and evil without hope of reform. This viewpoint leads millenarians to conclude that the temporal world must be completely destroyed and created a new, eliminating the corrupt and providing a utopia where the faithful can exist in peace. Hezbollah and Aum Shinrikyo are two terrorist groups which share this worldview, and believe that they can hasten the millennium by eliminating their enemies. This thesis …

Key Leadership Roles In The 9/11 Terrorist Attack, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Personality assessment of three al-Qaida leaders in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States – Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mohamed Atta – provides evidence for a rudimentary model of the leadership roles required for a global-reach terrorist operation: (1) a narcissistic, charismatic leader devoid of core values beyond personal self-interest, adept at exploiting others in pursuit of his grandiose ambitions (e.g., bin Laden); (2) a strategic-thinking “true believer” without constraints of conscience regarding the level of violence he is willing to employ in his single-minded pursuit of mission (e.g., al-Zawahiri); and (3) unobtrusive, disciplined operatives …

“Bin Laden’S Brain”: The Abrasively Negativistic Personality Of Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Aubrey Immelman, Kathryn Kuhlmann

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network at the time of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States and allegedly chief strategist for al-Qaida operations and personal physician to Osama bin Laden.

Al-Zawahiri’s primary personality patterns were found to be Contentious/oppositional and Dominant/controlling, with secondary features of the Dauntless/dissenting and Ambitious/self-serving patterns.

The amalgam of Contentious (negativistic, or passive-aggressive) and Dominant (aggressive, or sadistic) patterns in al-Zawahiri’s profile suggests the presence of the “abrasive negativist” syndrome. For these personalities, minor frictions easily …

The Personality Profile Of Al-Qaida Leader Osama Bin Laden, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of Osama bin Laden, founder and leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States.

Bin Laden’s primary personality patterns were found to be Ambitious/exploitative and Dauntless/dissenting, with a secondary Distrusting/suspicious orientation, and subsidiary Dominant/controlling and Conscientious/dutiful features.

Ambitious individuals are bold, competitive, and self-assured; they easily assume leadership roles, expect others to recognize their special qualities, and often act as though entitled. Dauntless individuals are bold, courageous, and tough; minimally constrained by the norms of society; routinely engage …

The Personality Profile Of September 11 Hijack Ringleader Mohamed Atta, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of a posthumous, indirect assessment of the personality of Mohamed Atta, apparent ringleader in the September 11, 2001 terror attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, from the conceptual perspective of Theodore Millon.

Information concerning Mohamed Atta was collected from media reports in the one-month period following the attack and synthesized into a personality profile using the second edition of the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with Axis II of DSM-IV.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the …

“Normal Church Can’T Take Us”: Re-Creating A Pentecostal Identity Among The Men And Women Of Victory Outreach, Arlene M. Sánchez Walsh

Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology

This article examines the re-creation of Pentecostal identity among the men and women of a drug rehabilitation ministry called Victory Outreach. It considers how that identity changes when members reinforce traditional gender roles commonly found in Latino culture, while defining Pentecostalism as a religious salve to soothe social ills. The author considers how Victory Outreach members work from a theological pedagogy that affirms the image of their church as marginalized, and proclaims educational attainment as a force for empowerment.