Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

World Churches Vertical File, Mcgarvey Ice

Center for Restoration Studies Vertical Files Finding Aids

This set of files is especially useful to scholars of the history missions, particularly among Churches of Christ in the twentieth century. Students and researchers interested in applied missiology among Restorationist traditions, Stone-Campbell movements, and Churches of Christ will also find them helpful. For assistance with specific files or items, contact Mac Ice - [email protected], or 325.674.2144.

Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

The late Meiji period (1868-1912) witnessed the birth of various forms of “progressive” and “radical” Buddhism both within and beyond traditional Japanese Buddhist institutions. This paper examines several historical precedents for “Buddhist revolution” in East Asian—and particularly Japanese—peasant rebellions of the early modern period. I argue that these rebellions, or at least the received narratives of such, provided significant “root paradigms” for the thought and practice of early Buddhist socialists and radical Buddhists of early twentieth century Japan. Even if these narratives ended in “failure”—as, indeed, they often did—they can be understood as examples of what James White calls “expressionistic …

"Puritan Hypocrisy" And "Conservative Catholicity" : How Roman Catholic Clergy In The Border States Interpreted The U.S. Civil War., Carl C. Creason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how Roman Catholic clergy in the Border States—Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland—interpreted the United States Civil War. Overall, it argues that prelates and priests from the region viewed the war through a religious lens informed by their Catholic worldview. Influenced by their experiences with anti-Catholicism and nativism as well as the arguments of the Catholic apologist movement, the clergy interpreted the war as a product of the ill-effects of Protestantism in the country. In response, the clergy argued that if more Americans had practiced Catholicism then the war could and would have been avoided. Furthermore, this thesis illustrates …

Opium Eaters: Buddhism As Revolutionary Politics, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

There is no one, single answer to the question: What is or are ‘Buddhist politics’? Rather than seek general historical trends or broad tendencies, in this chapter I explore the meaning and implications of the modern, Western conception of ‘politics’ as understood in relation to key features of Buddhist doctrine. In particular, I pose the question of whether we might fruitfully conceive at least certain interpretations of Buddhism—or perhaps, of Dharma—as politics, rather than ‘religion’ or ‘philosophy.’ I argue that twentieth century progressive Buddhists Seno’o Girō (1889–1961) and B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) were not so much in conflict with …

The Digital Humanities As Cultural Capital: Implications For Biblical And Religious Studies, Caroline T. Schroeder

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

Although the study of the Bible was central to early Humanities Computing efforts, now Biblical Studies and Religious Studies are marginal disciplines in the emerging field known as Digital Humanities (English, History, Library Science, for example, are much more influential in DH.) This paper explores two questions: First, what does it mean for Biblical Studies to be marginal to the Digital Humanities when DH is increasingly seen as the locus of as transformation in the humanities? Second, how can our expertise in Biblical Studies influence and shape Digital Humanities for the better? Digital Humanities, I argue, constitutes a powerful emerging …

Applying The Canonical Text Services Model To The Coptic Scriptorium, Bridget Almas, Caroline T. Schroeder

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

Coptic SCRIPTORIUM is a platform for interdisciplinary and computational research in Coptic texts and linguistics. The purpose of this project was to research and implement a system of stable identification for the texts and linguistic data objects in Coptic SCRIPTORIUM to facilitate their citation and reuse. We began the project with a preferred solution, the Canonical Text Services URN model, which we validated for suitability for the corpus and compared it to other approaches, including HTTP URLs and Handles. The process of applying the CTS model to Coptic SCRIPTORIUM required an in-depth analysis that took into account the domain-specific scholarly …

Raiders Of The Lost Corpus, Caroline T. Schroeder, Amir Zeldes

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

Coptic represents the last phase of the Egyptian language and is pivotal for a wide range of disciplines, such as linguistics, biblical studies, the history of Christianity, Egyptology, and ancient history. It was also essential for "cracking the code" of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Although digital humanities has been hailed as distinctly interdisciplinary, enabling new forms of knowledge by combining multiple forms of disciplinary investigation, technical obtacles exist for creating a resource useful to both linguists and historians, for example. The nature of the language (outside of the Indo-European family) also requires its own approach. This paper will present some of …

Computational Methods For Coptic: Developing And Using Part-Of-Speech Tagging For Digital Scholarship In The Humanities, Caroline T. Schroeder, Amir Zeldes

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

This article motivates and details the first implementation of a freely available part of speech tag set and tagger for Coptic. Coptic is the last phase of the Egyptian language family and a descendant of the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. Unlike classical Greek and Latin, few resources for digital and computational work have existed for ancient Egyptian language and literature until now. We evaluate our tag set in an inter-annotator agreement experiment and examine some of the difficulties in tagging Coptic data. Using an existing digital lexicon and a small training corpus taken from several genres of literary Sahidic Coptic …

The Reformation Of Preaching: Transformations Of Worship Soundscapes In Early Modern Germany And Switzerland, Barbara Pitkin

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The evangelical sermon was the Protestant Reformation’s central ritual event and the catalyst for a host of other changes, ranging from the abolition of the Mass to acts of violent iconoclasm. In promoting the sermon, reformers in Germany and Switzerland were in continuity with trends in medieval preaching, but at the same time the new centrality given to the preached word fundamentally altered the worship experience, particularly the aural experience. The present investigation traces the contours of the preaching landscape in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, outlines the innovations in sermonizing in Reformation Switzerland and Germany, and, by …

Against Celsus: Piety In Context, Dustin Janssen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Celsus’s and Origen’s differing understandings of what it means to be “pious” (ὅσιος). Celsus conceived of tradition as the norm for determining piety. On the other hand, Origen maintained that the true norm was found in the Logos and Wisdom of God—i.e., Jesus. This dichotomy of understanding is consistent with the backdrop of the religious revolution happening in the Roman world during the early centuries CE proposed by scholars like Guy Stroumsa.

While this thesis does not aim to prove or fully expound on the religious revolution, it will use the shift in religious thought as a …

The Beautiful Mystery: Examining Jonathan Edwards’ View Of Marriage, Russell J. Allen

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

In contemporary evangelical circles, Jonathan Edwards has gained wide popularity for his theological writings and vital role in the First Great Awakening. However, despite these often romanticized views, Edwards nonetheless stood in the midst of an eighteenth century society that began to develop new norms for sexual practice and new legal guidelines to support them. In order to combat what he saw to be a decaying moral culture, Edwards took a strong stance on marital issues, often to the displeasure of his congregation. What lay behind these convictions was a deep theological understanding of the sanctity of marriage. These views, …

Review: Ōtani Ei'ichi, Kindai Bukkyō To Iu Shiza: Sensō, Ajia, Shakaishugi (The Perspective Of Modern Buddhism: War, Asia, Socialism) (Perikansha, 2012)., James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Late Medieval Mediterranean Apocalypticism: Joachimist Ideas In Ramon Llull’S Crusade Treatises, Michael Sanders

The Hilltop Review

The thirteenth century witnessed dramatic changes that transformed the medieval world and remain important today. The violent changes caused by the War of the Sicilian Vespers and Spiritual Franciscan movement popularized the apocalyptic ideas of the twelfth-century Italian abbot, Joachim of Fiore. The abbot's historical paradigms of biblical history influenced many southern Europeans, including the medieval mystic, missionary, and philosopher Ramon Llull (c. 1232-1316). Llull dedicated his life to converting the world to Catholic Christianity using a variety of means, including evangelical missions, Neoplatonic philosophy, and crusades. Llull's crusade treatises, the Tractatus de modo convertendi infideles (1292), Liber de fine …

The Celtic Way: Order, Creativity, And The Holy Spirit In The Celtic Monastic Movement, Fiona Leitch

Senior Honors Theses

The Celtic monastic movement lasted hundreds of years and is responsible for much of the spread of Christianity to the West. Much of the movement’s success can be attributed to the Celtic Christians’ understanding of the importance of the role of creative culture and order as well as an openness and responsiveness to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is these three things working in tandem that influenced the success of the Celtic monastic movement. Although the movement ended a thousand years ago, it can offer guidance and wisdom for carrying out ministry today. A case study of Cuirim …

Jewish Games For Learning: Renewing Heritage Traditions In The Digital Age, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Rather than a discontinuity from traditional modes of learning, new explorations of digital and strategic games in Jewish learning are markedly continuous with ancient practices. An explication of the close connections between traditional modes of Jewish learning, interpretive practice, and gaming culture can help to explain how Jews of the Digital Age can adopt and are adapting modern Games for Learning practices for contemporary purposes. The chapter opens by contextualizing a notion of Jewish Games and the field of Games for Learning. Next, the chapter explains the connections between game systems and Jewish traditions. It closes with a case study …

Menorah Review (No. 82, Winter/Spring, 2015)

Menorah Review

Books in Brief -- Conservative Judaism at a Crossroads? -- Franz and Edith Rosenzweig: Hero and Heroine -- Have You Heard This One? -- Judaism in Israel -- Moreshet: Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides -- My Friend and I -- They Will Revere His Glory in the East (Isaiah 59:19) -- Zachor

Menorah Review (No. 83, Summer/Fall, 2015)

Menorah Review

L’hitraot... -- A Model of Courage -- Books in Brief -- Compassion and Truth Meet (Psalm 85.11) -- Four Poems -- From the Classics -- Judaism and a Heliocentric Universe -- Two Essays by Peter Haas -- Zachor

Leo The Great On The Supremacy Of The Bishop Of Rome, Denis Kaiser

Faculty Publications

Pope Leo the Great built his rationale for the supreme authority of the bishop of Rome on an existing tradition, yet with his additions he developed a theoretical rationale for later papal claims to absolute and supreme power in the ecclesiastical and secular realms. Previous bishops and church leaders had laid increasing stress on the unique role of the Apostle Peter as the founder of the Roman churches and episcopacy, the significance of the Roman bishop as Peter’s successor, and the apostolic significance of the city and episcopacy of Rome. Yet Leo’s rationale for the absolute control and power of …

Peter Abelard’S Theology Of Atonement: A Multifaceted Approach And Reevaluation, Denis Kaiser

Faculty Publications

As a person trained primarily in philosophy, Peter Abelard employed an intense questioning mentality in fleshing out his theological ideas.  His extreme debating style of totally deconstructing theological positions and then afterward including some of those same aspects into his own views made it easy for his religio-political enemies to take apparently heterodox statements and declare these as representative of Abelard’s entire atonement theology.  However, many of his theological beliefs are supported in the New Testament and were already held by the church fathers.  He frequently affirmed Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice as the ransom to redeem man.  He rejected various contemporary …

[Book Review Of] American Protestant Theology: A Historical Sketch, By Luigi Giussani, Denis Kaiser

Faculty Publications

Many scholars in the field of American religious and theological history may never have heard the name of Luigi Giussani (1922-2005) because he spent most of his life in his home country Italy, his proficiency in English was limited to reading literacy, and the majority of his writings were not concerned with American religious history anyway. Giussani was a Catholic priest, theologian, high school teacher, professor, and founder of the international movement Comunione e Liberazione. He was closely acquainted with Pope John Paul II and the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. His influence on Italian and European religious life and culture …

Inspiring Piety: The Influence Of Caravaggio’S Paintings In Santa Maria Del Popolo, Cara Coleman

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This article looks at the way Italian Baroque painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio broke from the artistic conventions of the Renaissance and Mannerist styles in his religious paintings to create an entirely new style that reflected the needs of the post-Tridentine Catholic Church. Caravaggio pushed painting throughout Europe in a new direction, away from the idealization of the Renaissance and the artistic extremes of Mannerism, by popularizing realism in art. Caravaggio’s unique style is examined through comparisons of his paintings, The Conversion of Paul, c.1601 and The Martyrdom of Saint Peter, c.1601 in the Roman basilica, Santa Maria del Popolo …

From Topos To Utopia: Critical Buddhism, Globalization, And Ideology Criticism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Merging The Principles Of Occultism And Anarchism, Kevin Todd Mclaren

History

"Merging the Principles of Occultism and Anarchism" is an attempt to pinpoint the correlations between occult and/or esoteric belief systems and political anarchist philosophy. The paper analyzes the works, belief systems and philosophies of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Aleister Crowley and extracts the underlying anarchist principles that are embedded within them. This established connection to anarchism through occultism is reinforced by referencing various anarchist works, particularly the works of William Godwin.

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.

The German Peasants’ War: The Intersection Of Theology And Society, Zachary Tyree

Senior Honors Theses

This paper examines the way that Reformation theology, particularly that espoused by Martin Luther, impacted German society. Sixteenth-century German society was very hierarchical in nature, with the Roman Catholic Church at the top, followed by the nobility, and finally the peasants, who suffered economic and political plight. Luther’s break from the Church in 1517 and the subsequent years brought tension to society. Developments extending from that break challenged the social hierarchy. One of the major social consequences of the Protestant Reformation, which was rooted in Luther’s theology, was the Peasants’ War. Luther criticized the peasants for the uprising, based on …

Introduction To Against Harmony: Radical Buddhism In Thought And Practice, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Zen And The Art Of Treason: Radical Buddhism In Meiji Era (1868–1912) Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. At the same time, there was a stream of ‘resistance’ among a few Buddhist figures, both priests and laity. These instances of progressive and ‘radical Buddhism’ had roots in late Edo-period peasant revolts, the lingering discourse of early Meiji period liberalism, trends within Buddhist reform and modernisation and the emergence in the first decade of the twentieth century of radical political thought, including various forms of socialism and anarchism. This …

Money, Religion, And Tyranny: God And The Demonic In Luther's Antifragile Theology, Guillermo C. Hansen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Menorah Review (No. 81, Summer/Fall, 2014)

Menorah Review

Books in Brief: New and Notable -- candelabra gold -- Education: Yeshivah style -- Moreshet: From the Sources -- Mysteries of the Books of Job: From Elihu to Elie Wiesel -- Two Nations Are In Your Womb (Gen 25:23) -- When Rhetoric Dominates The Message -- Zachor