Sociology of Religion Commons^™

Partners In Pilgrimage: Transforming The Journey Of Adolescence By Guiding Teenagers Toward Faithful Lives, Redefining Success, And Cultivating Connection To God, Abigail R. Weaver

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Adolescence is a formative period in which young people seek meaning, identity, and belonging while navigating a complex array of cultural, social, and developmental pressures. In suburban American contexts, these pressures are intensified by competitive academic environments, demanding extracurricular commitments, and pervasive societal expectations that equate worth with achievement. Drawing from my experience as a youth minister in suburban United Methodist churches, this dissertation examines how such forces shape the spiritual and personal development of 15- to 18-year-olds and explores the Church’s role in guiding adolescents through this landscape with wisdom and care.

Grounded in the Christian tradition and informed …

Why Are The "Dones" Done? How Can Faith-Based Institutions Provide Spiritual Care For Them? A Qualitative Analysis Of Group Interviews Conducted With Disaffiliated College Students, Falon Opsahl Barton, Rachel Collins

Discernment: Theology and the Practice of Ministry

This research study explores how emerging adults who have disaffiliated from a Christian tradition understand faith, articulate why they are “done” with the church, and want to receive spiritual care. Part one of this article overviewed the existing research on emerging adult spirituality and explored the results of a quantitative survey with college students at a Protestant Christian university. This article explains the qualitative portion of the study, in which the researchers conducted group interviews with college students who identify as being “done” with church. This article then provides an analysis and suggested application of the results of this study. …

Who Are The "Dones" And Why Does It Matter? An Overview Of The Research And A Quantitative Study Of Disaffiliated College Students, Falon Opsahl Barton, Rachel Collins

Discernment: Theology and the Practice of Ministry

Based on the personal and professional experience with college students at a Protestant Christian university, the researchers designed a research study that explores how emerging adults who have disaffiliated from a Christian tradition understand faith, articulate why they are “done” with the church, and want to receive spiritual care. This article is part one of a two-part exploration of the results of this study, which triangulates data points for a deep understanding of emerging adults who are “done” with church. Part one overviews the research on emerging adult spirituality and specifically the trend of religious disaffiliation among 18-29 year olds. …

Faith, Freedom, And Friction: The Intersection Of Intimate Citizenship And Religion In Central And Eastern Europe, Evelina Juchnevičiūtė Ms.

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Intimate citizenship, a dimension of citizenship that emerged from the second wave of feminism, refers to rights related to intimate life, including women’s reproductive rights, same-sex relationships, and other related rights. In Central and Eastern Europe, these rights have been shown to come into conflict with the region’s deeply embedded religious values that have historically shaped societal norms around reproduction, gender, and sexuality. The present study employed a mixed-method systematic literature review, combining bibliometric and thematic analyses, to examine academic literature on the intersection of intimate citizenship and religion in Central and Eastern Europe. The review covered the period 1990-2024 …

The Interplay Of Covid 19, Organized Religion, And Social Media: “How Can I Be The Person I Feel I Need To Be?”, White Dove Bryant Beethoven Keith Short

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Young adults are disaffiliating themselves from organized religion (Hout & Fischer, 2014). This study investigates the impact of social media use on religious identity, teaching, and learning. Social media use is changing young adults as individuals in worldview and perspective, spirituality, religion, and personal lifestyle (Schaeffer, 2019). Messages devised for young adults by Christian ministers for discipleship in teaching and instruction are inharmonious with young adults and their personal views of the world, how to live, and religion (Pew Research Center, 2019). The continued existence of religious teaching, congregant replenishment, and practice of the organized institutional Christian church within society …

Reviving “Cult”: A Qualitative Analysis Of A Female-Led Cultic Sect, Olivia Summers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research analyzes the Word of Faith Fellowship (WOF), a female-led Evangelical church that social scientists have not yet studied. My thesis explores how a female leader operates within a patriarchal space and why WOF owns a Holocaust Museum. I conducted content analysis of the church and museum websites, Google reviews, and visited the museum in person. My research highlights the limitations of current taxonomies of religion in sociology. I address this oversight, argue for the re-introduction of “cult” as an analytical term, and propose a rubric for cult identification. I suggest that WOF is a sectarian cult with similar …

The Liminal Church: Why Navigating Thresholds Between Us Leads To Thriving, Andrew Hale

Doctor of Leadership

Through the discovery, design, and delivery stages of the doctoral project, I centered my work on the following NPO: Churches can thrive when they understand, navigate, and leverage the liminality existing between people, the community, and where God is leading. Despite the myriad of different contexts among local churches, whether polity, worship style, belief statements, and geographical locality, congregations are still composed of people living in relationship to one another and the community around them. Relationships, no matter their nature, are complicated. For the relationships within a local church to thrive, they require intentionality, coaching, effort, openness, and vulnerability. My …

Developing A Shared Ecclesial Identity Utilizing Story-Based Elements With First Baptist Church, Gainesville, Georgia, Jeremy T. Shoulta

Doctor of Ministry Projects

The Body of Christ is challenged to, “be like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind” (Philippians 2:2). How then could a congregation, comprised of individuals harboring diverse cultural worldviews, discover and live into this reality? Through various individual and group exercises, participants sought to determine whether story elements have the power to serve as a true sense-making device within an ecclesial setting. The results indicate that that a majority of participants found the story-based framework beneficial in regards to their personal understanding of the work of First Baptist Church.

The Church And Ethnopolitical Conflict In Kenya: 1982-2013, David Tarus

The Journal of Social Encounters

The chapter examines the role of the church in addressing the problem of ethnopolitical conflict in Kenya from 1982 to 2013. Though ethnocentrism within the Kenyan Christian community goes beyond the years cited to the colonial period and the immediate years following independence, the intensity of the problem after 1982 calls for special attention. The single event that marks political change in Kenya is the 1982 attempted coup. Although this was not successful, the coup heightened opposition against Moi’s rule and thus, 1982 marks the beginning of the recent history of Kenya, a history in which three phases may be …

Examining The Cross-Cultural Competence Of United States Christian Missionaries Engaged In Developing Indigenous Leaders: A Mixed Methods Study, Craig W. Goodman

Dissertations

For the past two millennia, missionaries have crossed from one culture to another to bring the Christian message to all cultures of the world. Questions about the effectiveness of these mission efforts have been asked and researched by many; however, one key question remains unanswered: what personal attributes help a person to be more competent at crossing cultures as they interact with people from other cultures? Although cross-cultural competence has been studied in a variety of fields over the past 50 years, the models and assessments used have never been applied to Christian missionaries.

To address this deficiency, this parallel …

Johnson V. M'Intosh: Christianity, Genocide, And The Dispossession Of Indigenous Peoples, Cynthia J. Boshell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Using hermeneutical methodology, this paper examines some of the legal fictions that form the foundation of Federal Indian Law. The text of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1823 Johnson v. M’Intosh opinion is evaluated through the lens of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to determine the extent to which the Supreme Court incorporated genocidal principles into United States common law. The genealogy of M’Intosh is examined to identify influences that are not fully apparent on the face of the case. International jurisprudential interpretations of the legal definition of genocide are summarized and used as …

Gender Ideology, Gender Consciousness, And Identity Among Conservative Baptist Women: An Intersectional Perspective, Marina I. Rivera Ramos

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In this qualitative study, I interviewed 13 women from two separate conservative Baptist congregations in Central Florida, one English-speaking and the other Hispanic. The purpose of this research was to explore the ways in which conservative Baptist women develop their identity as women, the gender ideologies they espouse, their experiences in ministry, and the possibility that they can achieve gender consciousness without aligning with feminist principles. In addition, my research employs an intersectional perspective to demonstrate differences in the experiences of white women and women of color in the church. This study consisted of semi-structured interviews with women from both …

Seventh-Day Adventists And ‘Race’ Relations In The U.S.: The Case Of Black-White Structural Segregation, Cleran Hollancid

Dissertations

A worldwide Christian denomination of some eighteen million in global membership, and with a presence in over 200 countries and territories (i.e., in just about every country on the globe), the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church is one with a distinctive arrangement in the U.S., insofar as it concerns its racial segregation practice. The SDA Church professes and preaches unity in the pulpit, as in all members being equal and one in the faith, yet the actual practice says otherwise. Such is the case since it is officially segregated along black-white lines.

The segregation arrangement, essentially a black-white schism, falls …

Millennials: The Unreached In Our Midst. A Practical Theology Of Reaching Millennials Through Organic Church Principles And Repurposing The Church, Janelle Anderson

Master of Arts in Ministerial Leadership (MAML)

There is an unreached people group in your community--you interact with them on a consistent basis, but they are beyond the reach of the Church right now. The Church has missed her opportunity to reach and disciple Millennials as children and is now struggling to connect with them at all. The first step to reaching this people group is understanding them. This thesis presents the three major longings of generalized Millennial culture, in hopes of highlighting ways to interlace individual lives with faith and Christian community. Each of the three cries of this generation has varied implications for the world, …

Towards Heterogeneous Faith Communities: Understanding Transitional Processes In Seventh-Day Adventist Churches In South Africa, Alan Parker, Ph.D.

Faculty Works

This dissertation examines racial transition toward heterogeneity in three Seventh-day Adventist congregations in South Africa. This dissertation aims to uncover social factors involved in this change as well as to set forth a theological direction with application to the local faith community.

The first section examines recent studies and literature on multiracial congregations, indicating a possible breakdown between theory and practice. Using insights from Kuhn, Gadamer, Habermas, and Geertz, a critical correlational approach is proposed using narrative, community-based praxis, dialectical thinking, and eschatological vision. The theological methods of Groome and Browning are combined to suggest a four-phase approach to practical …

The Multidimensional Concept Of Religiosity And Its Application To The Construction Of Mormon Religiosity Scales, Jeff Black

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Until the 1960's, the concept of religiosity in sociology was very underdeveloped. Although many earlier social scientists were interested in religion, the concept of religiosity was conceptually and theoretically unsophisticated. Religiosity or religiousness was most often determined by church attendance or sometimes simply church membership. In the last two decades, much has been done to rectify this condition.

A Survey Of The Snake-Handling Cult Of West Virginia, Kenneth Paul Ambrose

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

For over half a century the snake-handling cult has been active in the United States, especially in the Appalachian area. There has been little scientific information published about this cult. The two major works were mainly confined to a single church in Durham, North Carolina, and a single church in Scrabble Creek, West Virginia. This investigator studied four churches in West Virginia, and one in Durham, North Carolina, for two and a half years to gain a deeper understanding of these people and their religious behavior.