The purpose of this project was to address the lack of Christian Education for less literate seniors at the Mount Ephraim Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. The objective was to empower seniors to have a greater sense of self-worth by highlighting their abilities and acknowledging the insight that seniors bring to the conversation within the Christian community. The project took place at the Mount Ephraim Baptist Church. Less literate seniors in the congregation were invited to be involved in a Christian Education class that was designed to help seniors envision their goals, identify the barriers that precluded them from reaching their goals, and help them hear the voices of other seniors to give them encouragement as future leaders, despite their lack of formal schooling. The methodology is ethnographic and narrative approach. Working with thirty senior citizens at the church, this project addressed the importance of teaching Christian Education to senior citizens who are less literate and have a desire to know more about the Word of God in a way that will help them know that they are really a part of the faith community. Story-linking and ethnographic methods will be employed. The thirty seniors that the author worked with, 75% of them have a fifth grade education; 10% made it to the 7th or 8th grade; and 15% were unable to attend School every day regularly following the death of a parent and consequently they had to quit school to enter the work force to help support the family. The project included the development of a five-lesson series that addressed how biblical narrative relates to their narrative. The effectiveness of the lesson plan series was evaluated based on increased unity, behavioral attitudes toward each other, and their willingness to share their own stories.

Since its inception in the publication of James Coneâs Black Theology and Black Power in 1969, academic black theology has viewed itself as the contemporary embodiment of the liberationist impulse that gave rise to black churches in the antebellum era. Both black liberation theology and womanism situate themselves firmly within the black church tradition and understand their critiques to be corrective measures calling the church to embrace those beliefs and perspectives that can more faithfully inform a mission of liberation and wholeness for black communities. This dissertation contests this self-understanding of black theology and womanism by arguing that the core theological claims of black churches, being pietist in nature, are incommensurable with the central beliefs of black theology/womanism, which are undergirded by theological liberalism. By applying heuristically Thomas Kuhnâs theories of paradigm shift and incommensurability, this dissertation shows that the emergence of black liberation theology constitutes the creation of the black Liberationist paradigm which represents a radical departure from the Pietist paradigm that has defined the basic theological perspective of black churches throughout their existence.

This thesis will claim that applying the concepts of J.L Austinâs speech act theory to Søren Kierkegaardâs practice of indirect communication will provide insight into the performative aspects of indirect communication and will reveal that its ability to introduce readers to the decisive categories of Christianity depends upon this performative capability. Kierkegaard, through indirect, pseudonymous forms of discourse, introduces ethical and religious categoriesâcategories which are concerned with the subjective relation to Godâinto the aesthetic existence and thought of those living within what he calls Christendom. Because the pseudonyms introduce reflected discourse into an objective form of existence, Kierkegaardâs pseudonymous authorship draws attention to the readerâs relationship to God in a way that direct communication cannot, namely by altering the mode of communication from an objective to a subjective one. Kierkegaard hopes that this will prompt the reader to become aware of her relation to God and then to make a decision concerning it. After explaining the relevant portions of Austinâs and Kierkegaardâs respective projects, I will argue that Kierkegaardâs use of indirect communication can succeed because of the performative nature of indirect communication which enables the pseudonyms to introduce the reader to the subjective categories of Christianity.

This Master's Thesis will re-evaluate the conclusions of the Vatican on the issue of women's ordination, as presented in the documents Inter Insigniores and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, by researching the discoveries of scriptural scholarship on the significance of women in the New Testament ministries. The essential question is, are the two previously mentioned documents authoritative when they exclude women from priesthood on the basis of Scripture? Special emphasis is on the unprejudiced rereading of the status of women in the ministry of Jesus and the early church communities. The research proved that there is no significant evidence in the New Testament to reserve ordained ministries in the Church to men only.

This thesis considers the nature of the debate surrounding toleration for Roman Catholics in England and Ireland as it was carried out in print in the later seventeenth century. It aims to prove that religious argumentation was central to the discourse of toleration in the period immediately preceding and succeeding the Glorious Revolution (1685-1700) and that concerns for the health and welfare of the Church-State were grounded in interpretations of religious and secular authority as they were encountered in the Roman Catholic tradition. More specifically, arguments against toleration of Roman Catholicism were founded on the perceived dual corruptions of the Roman Catholic faith, which were corrupt theological authority (spiritual corruption) and ecclesiastical or episcopal fraud or artifice (secular corruption). These purported failings and their implications for toleration as a religious as well as a civil measure are traced through the conceptual categories of cults, codes, and religious culture, which feature as major themes in contention within contemporary pamphlet literature. Ultimately, this discourse found Roman Catholicism illegitimate in its theology and its leadership and as such recommended the complete excision of Roman Catholicism from the English state.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge has long been considered one of the most important literary figures from English Romanticism. In recent years, he has increasingly been recognized as an important figure for philosophy and theology as well. Using a model of religious identity that looks beyond formal belief and practice to include a constellation of âculturalâ features as well, one can locate Coleridgeâs religious affiliation in the landscape of religious movements and identities in late 18th and early 19th century Britain. When one looks to Coleridgeâs doctrinal and theological emphases, one sees the elevated importance of original sin, the human need for divine grace through justification by faith alone, the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, and a moderate view of divine election. Looking to the broader elements of his âreligious culture,â one finds in Coleridgeâs work modes of piety, literary genres, a view of the church, an understanding of Baptism, and polemical opponents that were also common to second generation, moderate Anglican Evangelicals. The explicit theology and doctrine found in Coleridgeâs published and unpublished writings, as well as the markers of his religious cultural identity, demonstrate that he very likely became some form of moderate Anglican Evangelical by the time he died.

This work explores the transformation and eventual demotion of the goddess in ancient Ireland through the evolution of patriarchal mythos and as a consequence of economic factors, socio-political and religious manifestations, as well as agricultural developments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between leading theories of social, cultural and religious change in prehistory and early history and the historical process of the demotion of the Irish goddess figure, the Mor-rioghan. The Mor-rioghan is the subject of exploration as her militarization and subsequent incarnation as a bean si have resulted in her near dissolution. The decline of the goddess's status will be explained as inevitable in the face of the evolving hierarchies of androcentric theologies.

This Master's thesis explores the hypothesis that Elian Gonzalez functions as a religious and ideological symbol for Cuban-Americans similarly to La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. Both La Caridad and Eliin are contested symbols among most Cuban and Cuban-American individuals, meaning both groups appropriate them toward their religious and ideological ends. The Virgin aids in the formulation of a collective identity for members of the Cuban exile community. Her shrine in Miami bridges the spatial and temporal gap between the exile community and the homeland of Cuba and represents the exile's hope for a return to a free Cuba. Elian functions as a metaphor of the Cuban exile experience, and thus a multi-leveled, transnational, religious and ideological symbol. In order to assess this, theoretical and journalistic materials are used, along with personal interviews and participant observation. This methodology is used to determine the function Elian serves for this community.

This thesis attempted to explain society's worldview of Santeria and its practice of animal sacrifice, and the breakdown between the federal and local government after a 1993 Supreme Court ruling affirming their right to engage in this sacred ritual. Santeria practitioners are harassed and prosecuted for exercising their right to practice animal sacrifice. The research was intended to present the cosmology of the Lukumi tradition, the intellectual framework explored, a review of Freedom of Religion and the case of Lukumi v. Hialeah, and finally the media's role in shaping the worldview of Santeria that have perpetuated this breakdown. The thesis consisted of 87 research items, a community survey, interviews, a Santeria divination, and review of case law, books,newspaper and online journals. These findings demonstrated that freedom of religion is not so free in the U.S., and exists only to the extent the media and municipal laws choose to allow.

The study of the Afro-Cuban Lukumí, the descendants of the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria, and their religious practices, has long been of interest to anthropologists and religious studies scholars alike. Unfortunately, Western scholarship has too often relied on the juxtaposition between our rational and their irrational belief systems, explaining away, or acutely ignoring, emic interpretations of religious practice, severely limiting the kind of knowledge produced about these religious phenomena. My study focuses on three distinct processes of divination and their accompanying ceremonies and ritual ledgers, examining how these shape dynamic and formative pedagogies in the Lukumí initiate’s life. Through self-ethnography, and by engaging key theorists, I explore the ways in which the body, as site of religious experience, through divination and initiation, interacts with and is informed by communitas, understood as the very spirit of the community in action.