A House Divided: The Structure Of Political Polarization Analyzed, Jeffrey Dudiak

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Conspiracy Theories And Religion: Christian Nationalism And The Rise Of North American Populism, Carmen Celestini

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Leadership And Emergent Faith Communities In Canada: A Phenomenological Study, Anne Anderson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this study is to explore how participants within emergent faith communities in Canada experience leadership. Through a phenomenological approach, members from five emergent faith communities across Canada have been interviewed in a semi-structured format. Emerging themes of transformational leadership, community along with belonging, and possible future areas of research will be discussed.

Exploring Graduated Court Diversion Clients' Experience Of Psychotherapy In Their Community Reintegration, Daniel Oduro Sem

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Court Diversion Program (CDP) seeks to reduce the criminalization and reoffending among people living with mental illness to ensure their community reintegration (Schneider, 2010). The complex nature of achieving this goal calls for a comprehensive strategy, which requires a collaborative effort of legal, health care, and allied professionals including psychotherapists. However, because most CDP clients frequently receive medication treatment, not much is known about how CDP clients find psychotherapy services even though psychotherapy is effective for addressing mental illnesses and offending behaviors (Feingold & Fox, 2018; Feucht & Holt, 2016), To gain more insight into the issue, this study applied …

Living Through Covid, Looking Beyond Covid: The Political View, John Milloy

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Connections: Church In Community, Shirl Christian

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Halfway To Everywhere: What Churches Can Learn About Community Vibrancy From Its Professional & Entrepreneurial Women, Catherine L. Holland

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Welcoming And Belonging: Voice, Acceptance And Purpose, Kevin Driver

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Exploring Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy In Clinical Practice, Tim Rieck

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

ABSTRACT

Key Words: religion, spirituality, sacred, intervention, spiritual intervention, soul

Over the past twenty years, spirituality and religion have gained increased attention in the field of psychotherapy. In the research of psychotherapy, psychology, and social work, there is recognition that spirituality and religion can contribute to positive outcomes when people are faced with various challenges and distresses in life.

The main challenges are tied into determining how to move the research beyond the fact that spirituality has importance in psychotherapy to exploring how spirituality is integrated in psychotherapy. There are numerous questions to explore regarding the application of spirituality into …

Second Generation Christian Korean Canadians: Exploring Their Lived Experiences Of Mental Health Issues And Services, Kyoung Jung Kim

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Abstract

This study explores the lived experiences of second-generation Christian Korean Canadian young adults with mental health issues (MHI) and their use of health services (MHS). In addition, this study asked this cohort to discuss their beliefs about the views their parents held about MHI and MHS. All research participants were born and raised in Canada by Korean born immigrant parents. This study was descriptive, phenomenological, and qualitative in nature; it consisted of in-depth interviews with six male and six female participants. In their experience with MHI, seven participants experienced fear and sadness (depression and anxiety) and three of them …

Complex Thinking: The Science And Spiritual Nature Of Therapeutic, Pedagogical, And Supervisory Relationships, Daniel Rzondzinski

Consensus

This article explores the similarities and differences between the therapeutic, pedagogical and supervisory relationship in the context of complex thinking and emphasizes the importance of spirituality as a central dimension of human beings. It will explain why human beings are multidimensional, have many social locations and develop complex relationships such as therapeutic, pedagogical and supervisory relationships. It will pay close attention to their structural components (complex adaptive systems; power differential; assimilation-accommodation processes; transference-countertransference; therapeutic alliance-learning alliance; and spirituality). Finally, it will reflect on the importance of the spiritual dimension, which was rejected by classical science. It explains why we consider …

Canadian Muslim Voting Guide: Federal Election 2019, Jasmin Zine, Fatima Chakroun, Shifa Abbas

Sociology Faculty Publications

This guide assigns a grade to each federal political party Leader's response to identified key issues of importance to the interests of Canadian Muslims and the wider geopolitical concerns that affect Muslims globally. The criteria used to determine these grades has been based on whether a party leader's particular political standpoints and/or policy initiatives are positive or detrimental to the interests of Canadian Muslims and the wider geopolitical concerns that affect Muslims globally.

For The Wild: Ritual And Commitment In Radical Eco-Activism By Sarah M. Pike, Alda Balthrop-Lewis

The Goose

Review of Sarah M. Pike's For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism

Social Media And Othering: Philosophy, Algorithms, And The Essence Of Being Human, Mark Ehlebracht

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Beneficial Mourning By Inmates Who Have Lost A Significant Person, James Bradley Shoemaker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Incarceration is already replete with loss before someone of significance to an inmate dies. The prison environment challenges every aspect of grieving, and failing to effectively mourn pathologizes grief, reduces quality of living, and results in behaviours that cause recidivism. It is a poignant interaction between this researcher in his role as a chaplain and a particular inmate that provides the impetus for this study. This study begins with a qualitative meta-synthesis that examined 10 qualitative articles and dissertations published over the last 30 years to explore how some inmates manage to effectively grieve the loss of a significant person. …

Shame In The Presence Or Absence Of God In Stephen Ministry, Richard Tamas

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This hermeneutical phenomenological study explores the lived experience of shame in relation to the presence or absence of God in the caregiving process of Stephen Ministry. Stephen Ministers are trained Christian caregivers who walk side-by-side with those who are struggling in a congregation. Stephen Ministers are trained by Stephen Leaders who have completed the Stephen Ministry Leadership training program. A concern for an assurance of quality of care led to the research question: what is the lived experience of unacknowledged or unprocessed shame in the presence or absence of God experienced by Stephen Ministers who offer Christian care? The foundations …

A Phenomenological, Arts-Based Study Of Art Therapists’ Self-Reflective Practice, Laurie Ponsford-Hill

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This phenomenological, arts-based study examined the experiences of 15 art therapists using five-minute, full-bodied self-portraiture with 55 minutes of self-reflective journaling once a week for four weeks at the end of each work week. The therapists determined the location for this practice. Subsequently, the four artworks, as a serial, were explored with each participant in a one-hour telephone or Skype interview to understand their lived experience through art, and its signs, and symbols. This process enabled the therapists to act as witness to their respective self/selves, deepening their insights and connections about self. The transcribed audio-taped interviews were manually coded …

Beyond Muslim Xenophobia And Contemporary Parochialism: Aga Khan Iv, The Ismā‘Īlīs, And The Making Of A Cosmopolitan Ethic, Sahir Dewji

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Aga Khan IV is the forty-ninth hereditary Imām of the Shī‘a Nizārī Ismā‘īlī Muslims (or ‘Ismā‘īlīs’ for short). As a Muslim leader, Aga Khan IV addresses salient issues concerning humankind in the contemporary world and expresses the challenges of living under such conditions through his public speeches and the institutions of the Ismā‘īlī Imāmate. His discourse is informed by the inseparability of dīn (faith) and dunyā(world), which is viewed as being a central function to the office of Imāmate. Aga Khan IV adopts a context-rich approach that addresses modernity by integrating commitments to theology with religio-cultural ethics, a formulation …

Narratives Of Baby Boomers: Envisioning Late Life Spiritual Resources, Jane A. Kuepfer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

ABSTRACT:

In this narrative inquiry, first-wave baby boomers (six males and six females born between 1946 and 1955) reflected on their lives and envisioned living into old age. While literature has focused on trends in baby boomer spirituality, issues of aging, and spiritual needs and tasks among elders, this study listened for “spiritual resources.” Initially defined broadly as that which has sustained a person throughout their life and will sustain them in the future, spiritual resources came to be understood as those things, both internal and external, that address deep human need for such spiritual values as love, hope, peace, …

Immigration, Integration And Ingestion: The Role Of Food And Drink In Transnational Experience For North African Muslim Immigrants In Paris And Montréal, Rachel D. Brown

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation is motivated by two research questions: (1) how can food act as a means of reimagining, recreating, reaffirming, and expressing, sometimes complicated and contested identities for minority religious immigrant communities in highly secular contexts? (2) What impact does the context of reception, particularly the host society’s unique and complex history and interaction with colonialism, immigration, secularism, and nationalism, have on these identity negotiations? To examine these questions, I conducted a comparative ethnographic study of the foodways of North African Muslim immigrants in Paris, France, and Montréal, Canada, in 2012-13.

The results presented here show that food is often …

Queerly Faithful: A Queer-Poet Community Autoethnography On Identity And Belonging In Christian Faith Communities, Eric Van Giessen

Social Justice and Community Engagement

In a cultural climate characterized by increasing polarization and hostility towards difference, the lives and bodies of those standing at the intersection of religious and marginal sexual identities are actively shaped by and reshaping our social and cultural landscape. Cultural narratives that conflate religion with oppression and pit religion against ‘progressive’ political movements create artificial divisions that undermine the efforts of LGBTQI+ people of faith to effect change in their communities by pressuring them to compartmentalize—or closet— their spiritual or sexual selves. These constructions also reinforce discourses that claim there are no queer people in faith communities and no people …

As If A Raven By Yvonne Blomer, Kelly Shepherd

The Goose

A review of As if a Raven by Yvonne Blomer.

Religious Perspectives Being Marginalized In Canada, John Milloy

Consensus

This article was a lecture delivered at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Waterloo, Ontario Canada, April 8, 2015 at a reception welcoming John Milloy as Co-Director of the Centre for Public Ethics and Assistant Professor of Public Ethics at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary as well as the inaugural Practitioner in Residence in the Department of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The Christian Farmers Federation Of Ontario: Integrating Christian Principles With The Practicality Of Farming, Suzanne M. Armstrong

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis examines the Christian identity and characteristics of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO), a general farm organization active in the diverse agricultural sector of Ontario, Canada. It highlights the intersection of religion and farming that emerged from interviews and participant observation within this group. The thesis probes what it means for them to be responsible Christian farmers in contemporary agriculture. Christian and secular scholars from three key areas of scholarship—Dutch immigration to Canada, agriculture of the middle or family farming, and Christian stewardship—help to contextualize their responses.

The CFFO was founded as a Dutch neo-Calvinist organization within …

The Reinvention Of The Canadian Armed Forces Chaplaincy And The Limits Of Religious Pluralism, Michael T. Peterson Rev. Dr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The Reinvention of the Canadian Armed Forces Chaplaincy offers an analysis of how an historically Christian religious organization, one prominently sited within an important Canadian institution, adapted to pluralism. This research is the first to examine Canada’s military chaplaincy since Benham Rennick’s (2011) more broadly focused study of the role of religion in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). My study is the first to focus specifically on the chaplaincy and on the ways in which it has sought to develop and maintain a pluralist identity. I trace the process by which a legacy Christian institution developed a self-image as a …

Canadian Christian Nationalism?: The Religiosity And Politics Of The Christian Heritage Party Of Canada, Leah A D Mckeen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In this dissertation I examines the worldview and concerns held by members of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada (CHP) as a means of understanding Canada’s Christian Right. I present a perspective of Canada’s Christian Right that challenges assumptions made about this religio-political ideology by showing how the political choices made by members of the CHP make sense within the members’ context. The CHP is a federal political party, first registered in 1986, that markets itself as “Canada’s only pro-life party.” Although the party was initially developed by a group of conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics, the majority of its …

From Pastoral Care And Counselling To Spiritual Care And Psychotherapy: A Growing Web, Thomas St. James O'Connor

Consensus

No abstract provided.

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

The Partisan

No abstract provided.

A Holistic Aboriginal Framework For Individual Healing, Gus Hill

Lyle S. Hallman Social Work Faculty Publications

This paper offers up an holistic Indigenous model of individual healing that utilizes medicine wheel teachings to break down the four aspects (spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental) of individual wellness. Teachings about each direction are presented followed by practice techniques for each aspect of the individual self. It is bookended by an introduction to the historical trauma faced by Indigenous peoples in Canada, and a conclusion that draws implications for healing.

The Experience Of Elderly Koreans' Han And Its Implication For Spiritual Care: In The Canadian Context, Jong Park

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Han is an indigenous Korean concept signifying a depth of internalized human suffering, caused primarily by a long history of socio, economic and political oppression. Han can also be understood as the deep psychological wounds of the Korean people. This study focuses on the Han experiences of elderly Korean immigrants living in Canada. The main purpose of the research is to provide a better spiritual care for such seniors who live as a marginal population. For a holistic understanding of their Han, the literature review examines Han-related history, religion and psychology, and explores Han experiences in the family …