"It may be in the new birth as it is in the first birth." So wrote theologian Jonathan Edwards in his "Miscellanies" note numbered 241, named "Regeneration". The "new birth" that he spoke of was the process of religious conversion whereby God takes away one's sinful nature and instills a new, regenerate nature. The process of the new birth is intricately linked to the "first birth," which refers to physical childbirth. This thesis explores the ways in which eighteenth-century conceptions of childbirth helped to shape the new birth theology of Edwards. While historians have tended to portray Edwards, the revivals that he spawned, and new birth theology as erasing the distinctions of gender, this thesis will argue that Edwardsian evangelicalism actually highlighted the sinfulness of women. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester, 2009. / May 14, 2009. / Natural Philosopher, Theologian, Ova, Nicolas Malebranche, Revivalism, First Great Awakening / Includes bibliographical references. / Amanda Porterfield, Professor Directing Thesis; John Corrigan, Committee Member; Amy Koehlinger, Committee Member.

Jesuit Missionaries and Native Americans lived in the New France region, perpetuated violence against one another, and participated in the healing ritual of baptism. Native Americans shared a nuanced cultural borderland with the Jesuit missionaries and this interaction contextualized the emotional performance of baptism to heal the illnesses of the Indians. An examination of the interaction between Jesuits and Indians in the Great Lakes region, including the Huron, Iroquois, Algonquin and related nations, from 1610 to 1790 challenges the historiographical tendency to treat Native American subjects as more or less rational, autonomous or important than their European counterparts. By analyzing the role of baptism in Jesuit-Indian encounters, historical accounts can better preserve the humanity of Native Americans. Regardless of what other constituent parts the category of human may include, two defining characteristics of humanity are emotion, expressed here in hateful repulsion and the feeling of cross-culture attraction, and will, expressed through agency. Both Jesuits and Indians constructed identities that alienated and demonized the other. Each expressed this hate in both physical and non-direct forms. Both Jesuits and Indians understood baptism as a healing ritual. Each group sought to use the ritual for both physical and spiritual healing. Native Americans and Jesuit missionaries shared a relationship characterized by dependence and repulsion. Through the ritual of baptism and the resulting emergence of the more inclusive Christian identity, Native Americans and Jesuits regulated and accommodated mutual hatred and the desire for healing. In New France, the ritual of baptism functioned to temper the rift of cultural tension between and reveal the humanity of Native Americans and French Jesuits. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2004. / September 17, 2004. / Native American Religion, Indians, Catholicism / Includes bibliographical references. / John Corrigan, Professor Directing Thesis; Amanda Porterfield, Committee Member; Amy Koehlinger, Committee Member.

The dissertation argues that the disablement and "repair" of Job's body in T. Job mark the transformations of his masculine identity over the course of the narrative. In the chapters leading up to his ordeal, Job represents the preeminent male figure in ancient society—an able-bodied king who realizes his masculinity through his mastery over the social world. With the onset of his ordeal, Job's authority quickly evaporates, as Satan destroys the system of brokerage through which Job once demonstrated his public dominance. Satan finally assails Job with a debilitating plague, signaling Job's loss of control over his own physical body; the final demise of his former masculine identity is complete. But the writer does not leave Job emasculated in a paralyzed and diseased body. Rather, Job turns inward to realize his masculinity by enduring the pains of his body through the practice of self-control. So valuable is his new masculine identity, that Job, in ironic fashion, not only resists the efforts of his able-bodied antagonists (i.e. Satan and the four kings) to take control of his docile body, but ultimately shames them in turn. With Job's physical restoration at the narrative's denouement, however, the narrative most clearly promotes its conception of what authentic masculinity entails. While Job can claim to his children that he is a man of endurance (1:3), his restoration both as a benefactor and an able-bodied man indicates that the hegemonic masculine ideal has not been entirely replaced. Rather, this final portrait of Job promotes a hybrid form of masculinity which necessitates mastery over both his soul and others. In so doing, T. Job reinforces to its readership that full-functionality really is a defining feature of authentic masculinity. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2007. / June 8, 2007. / Job, Bible, Disability Studies, Pseudepigrapha, Masculinity / Includes bibliographical references. / John Marincola, Outside Committee Member; Eibert Tigchelaar, Committee Member; David Levenson, Committee Member; Nicole Kelley, Committee Member.

This dissertation will translate and comment upon one of Theodoret's previously untranslated works, Commentary on Jonah. Theodoret of Cyrrhus, a key player in the political and theological controversies between Alexandria and Antioch in the fifth-century CE, produced massive amounts of literature. Although his exegetical works are concise, they reflect a plethora of traditions. After providing a complete translation of Commentary on Jonah with critical notes, the subsequent portions of this dissertation will address how Theodoret works as a compiler of exegetical traditions. Each chapter will compare Theodoret's understanding of Jonah with other Christian and Jewish exegetical works which contain traditions about Jonah, in the effort to isolate Theodoret's original contributions and create a portfolio of his sources. The Christian authors who will be compared with Theodoret are Theodore of Mopsuestia, Cyril of Alexandria, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Ephrem the Syrian, and Hesychius of Jerusalem. The Jewish works for comparison with Theodoret include the Mishnah, the Jerusalem Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud, midrashim, Pseudo-Philo's Homily on Jonah, and Targum Jonathan. As the conclusion of this dissertation will show, Theodoret refers to two individuals as a source more than others, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria. This pattern of compilation is significant, especially when understood within the context of the christological controversy. It appears that Theodoret may be using his exegetical works, such as Commentary on Jonah, to moderate the opposing sides represented by Theodore and Cyril. By responding to the overly literal approach of Theodore and incorporating some of the style and vocabulary of Cyril, Theodoret rehabilitates his own image in the eyes of Alexandria. The conclusion of this dissertation will also present Theodoret's original contributions to the understanding of Jonah which he weaves in with his source material. Although he has described himself as a gnat, lowly in comparison to the apostolic bees which have written before him, Theodoret's work deserves attention. His ability to assemble the materials of his predecessors into a clear and concise commentary, with the purpose of rehabilitating himself in the turmoil of ecclesiastical controversy, earns him a place among the apostolic bees he revered. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2006. / June 20, 2006. / Greek Church Fathers, Jonah, Biblical Interpretation, Theodoret, Greek / Includes bibliographical references. / David Levenson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, Outside Committee Member; Nicole Kelley, Committee Member.

This thesis is a discourse analysis of the Race Relations Sabbath Messages, issued annually by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, from 1954-1970. Chapter 1, through a historiography of American Reform Judaism and related works on American Jewish history, argues for the need to study denominations of Judaism in terms of theology and social factors, primarily culture and race. With an understanding of American Jewish identity as one of being in tension with the mainstream society, seeking security in America though not complete assimilation, the function of Reform Jewish theology and interface of theology and social constraints become clear. Using this definition of American Jewish identity, Chapters 2 and 3 then serve as an example of how to treat religious rhetoric in its social context. Chapter 2 characterizes the period from 1954 to 1959 as one of universalism and civil religion due to the discrimination and segregation associated with urbanization. Reform Jews used an inclusive theology to argue for African-American civil rights. Based on the dignity of all individuals, Reform Jews sought to use universalist theology to point to the insignificance of group identity and therefore the need to create legislation that protected whites and blacks equally in order for Americans to establish a just society. Then Chapter 3 argues that, after Jewish integration into suburban neighborhoods and mainstream society, Reform Jews turned to particularism for their self-understanding. The universalism of the 1950's had allowed them to establish that group identity could not be used for the purpose of discrimination, but the need for Reform Jews to distinguish themselves from their Christian neighbors led them to develop a particularism in which group identity could be used in such a way that the distinct histories of each group offered a unique contribution to American society. African Americans and Jews, as well as other minorities, deserved to be integrated into American society because they each had something to offer. In particular, Reform Jews offered a special contribution to America because of their insight into suffering and achieving freedom. Because of their Jewish history, Reform Jews could instruct Americans how to establish the most enlightened society. A theocentric, liturgical theology fostered Reform Jews' civil-rights arguments in the 1960's because it gave them special access to the lessons available in Jewish history. This periodization shows that the particularism typically associated with the late 1960's after the Six-Day War can be located as a gradual development beginning in 1960. American social factors, as well as Jewish concerns, thus influenced Reform Jewish identity, theology and rhetoric. Furthermore, particularism should not be classified as a rejection of effort to integrate African Americans into American society; Reform Jewish particularism was developed in such a way specifically tailored to continue to argue for African-American civil-rights in response to the shifting American culture. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2007. / March 27, 2007. / Reform, Judaism, Race, Relations, Sabbath, Universalism, Particularism, Urbanization, Suburbanization, Civil, Religion / Includes bibliographical references. / John Corrigan, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Martin Kavka, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; David Levenson, Committee Member.

Engaging with the many questions surrounding the proper relationship between religion and politics in a liberal democratic state, this dissertation focuses on the contribution that can be made by rethinking the tradition of liberal political thought. I explore the political vision of John Locke, which I argue grounds the possibility of incorporating religious forms of reasoning into the public sphere of democratic discourse. Distinguishing my comprehensive interpretation of Lockean liberalism from the views of significant twentieth- and twenty-first-century thinkers--whom I describe as either Rawlsian liberals, new traditionalists, non-liberal democrats, or non-Lockean liberal democrats--I discuss three conditions that are present in Locke, which make possible a form of democratic political participation that promotes the use of religious reasons in civil discourse. First, through his mature position on religious toleration, Locke constructs a civic environment in which citizens have the liberty to hold a diversity of religious beliefs and to make these beliefs public in religious practice. Second, according to Locke's views on moral epistemology, religious belief that is grounded in revelation can be entitled to supplement practical reason in order to give individuals fuller and clearer knowledge of, and motivation for obedience to, the moral law. Because Locke views political philosophy as a subset of moral philosophy, I extend the argument to conclude that Locke creates a role for the use of religious beliefs in one's determination of political matters. Third, I contend that Locke views religious communities as serving an expressive, political function by mediating individuals' interests to the larger sphere of public discourse. In this way, religious communities can be described as vehicles for citizenship. This claim for the political role of religious institutions moves beyond a mere allowance of religious reasoning in the public sphere to a specification of concrete ways in which this participation is to occur. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2011. / September 19, 2011. / Democratic Discourse, Jeffrey Stout, John Locke, Liberal Political Thought, Religious Forms of Reasoning, Sheldon Wolin / Includes bibliographical references. / John Kelsay, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Ruse, University Representative; Sumner B. Twiss, Committee Member; Martin Kavka, Committee Member; Sarah Irving, Committee Member.

This thesis examines the history of antebellum West Point, tracing connections between the religious atmosphere of the Academy and the political ideology which it inculcated into cadets. A central claim of this essay is that the Revival of 1826 cemented a distinctly religious rhetoric as the operating ideology of West Point. This ideology held that the defense and maintenance of the sovereignty of the United States was to be cadets' primary objective. Cadets were taught that defending American sovereignty constituted a divine mandate incumbent upon them as students of West Point. Finally, a key goal of this essay has been to ground "civil religion" in sources particular to this essay in the hope of reworking the concept for broader use in American religious history. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2011. / August 31, 2011. / Charles P. McIlvaine, Civil Religion, Civil War, Revival, Sylvanus Thayer, West Point / Includes bibliographical references. / Amanda Porterfield, Professor Directing Thesis; John Corrigan, Committee Member; Amy Koehlinger, Committee Member.

Recent demographic trends such as high divorce rates and increased life expectancy will likely lead to an increase in the number of divorced and widowed older adults in the future. Compared to married adults, divorced and widowed adults may rely more on adult children for support due to the absence of a spouse. Divorced and widowed adults have a higher likelihood of being institutionalized in late life, so it is important to understand the factors that influence adult children's provision of support to these parents. Other trends such as higher costs of living and nonmarital births suggest that adult children may also be relying on support from their parents for longer periods. Evidence shows that religiosity influences exchanges of support in continuously married and divorced families, but the link between religiosity and support has not been examined for divorced and widowed families. Data from 1,162 parent-adult child dyads from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households were used to examine the role of religiosity in the support that adult children exchange with divorced and widowed parents using a family life course perspective and any sex differences in these exchanges. Measures of religiosity included adult children's religious affiliation, adult children's and parents' public religiosity, congruence in public religiosity between adult children and parents, and changes in adult children's religiosity. Social support consisted of emotional and instrumental support from the adult child's perspective. Overall, religiosity influenced adult children's provision of support more than their receipt, but religiosity accounted for little of the variance in provision and receipt of support after the control variables were considered. Being Catholic was associated with providing more support, and Catholics provided more support to divorced parents than did conservative Protestants. The influence of other religious affiliations on provision of support differed for sons and daughters but not by parents' marital status. Adult children with higher levels of public religiosity gave more support to parents than did those with lower levels of public religiosity, particularly in widowed families. Parents' public religiosity and congruence in public religiosity were unrelated to exchanges of support. Consistently high church attendance was not associated with providing more support, but it was associated with receiving more support compared to consistently low attendance. Additionally, the influence of increased church attendance on receipt of support depended on parents' marital status and adult children's sex. Future research in this area should examine other measures of religiosity and social support. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Family and Child Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2011. / April 4, 2011. / Religion, Social Support, Divorce, Widowhood, Intergenerational Relations, Adult Children, Religiosity / Includes bibliographical references. / B. Kay Pasley, Professor Directing Dissertation; Anne Barrett, University Representative; Ann Mullis, Committee Member.

Christian communities in the first four centuries struggled to construct and maintain a sense of social identity in a time when there were no stable descriptions for Christianity or Judaism. Competing social identities emerged among Jewish and Christian groups as various authors worked to construct and maintain communal boundaries regarding acceptable (and, simultaneously, unacceptable) beliefs and practices. While some Christian groups rejected certain traditions, other groups found reasons to adopt them. These choices contributed to a community's borders; they constitute what makes "us" different from "them." The recent work of Daniel Boyarin and Judith Lieu illustrates how literary analysis reveals the way texts contribute to the construction of social identity. An author (re)presents the community's values and beliefs, whether real or idealized, not only to establish an identity but also to maintain that identity. An investigation of early Christian texts regarding their attitudes toward the Mosaic law, then, provides a window into the process of identity formation. This dissertation is an examination of a peculiar scriptural hermeneutic that claims that certain biblical mandates found in the scriptures are false. Any beliefs or regulations contained in the supposed false portions of scripture can be rejected on the grounds that they are not part of God's eternal laws. The distinction between the authentic and the false passages has been revealed by Jesus Christ and passed down to his most faithful followers. The false scripture argument is found, to my knowledge, exclusively within Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, the Didascalia Apostolorum, and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. Ptolemy's Letter to Flora teaches that the law has been instituted by three sources – none of which is the High God. Instead, Moses, the Jewish elders, and the demiurge are responsible for the law contained in the scriptures. Christ, an emissary of the High God, is sent to validate those laws that reflect the nature of the High God. On the other hand, the Didascalia Apostolorum claims that all of the scriptures were instituted by God. However, only the Decalogue constitutes the eternal laws of God delivered to Moses. The other laws were established by God through Moses as a punishment upon the Jews as a result of the golden calf incident. These secondary laws have been abrogated since the arrival of Christ. In the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, the false passages of scripture have been instituted by Satan and his forces in order discern the faithful from the wicked, the latter of which follow the regulations found in the false passages. Like the Didascalia, the Homilies claims that Christ, the true prophet, has arrived to discern the true passages from the false ones. Although there are overlapping tenets, each text presents a unique explanation of the origin and catalogue of the false sections of scripture. The variation in the false scripture argument reflects each author's distinctive effort to construct communal boundaries in the face of social competition. The competition can stem from the attraction to the ways of Judaism or a defense against the beliefs of other Christian groups, such as the Marcionites. The false scripture argument functions as a rhetorical tool designed to demarcate the author and his community as the true followers of God since they alone possess knowledge of, as well as the means to distinguish, the false passages of scripture. The false scripture argument shapes the community's religious life by barring members from dangerous practices while at the same time validating the traditions accepted by the author and his community. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer semester, 2007. / June 7, 2007. / Golden Calf, False Passages, False Scripture, Christian Identity, Deuterosis / Includes bibliographical references. / Nicole Kelley, Professor Directing Dissertation; John Marincola, Outside Committee Member; David Levenson, Committee Member.

In this project I call for a reconsideration of Feuerbach's place in philosophy and the study of religion. His name is recognizable in these fields usually as a marginal or "bridge" figure, facilitating a shift from one thinker to the next. I suggest that the automatic association of Feuerbach with Left Hegelianism and/or psychological interpretations of religion obscure the greater insights of his model of religious consciousness. Feuerbach's desire to revise the anti-natural and speculative tendencies of both philosophy and theology was at the cornerstone of his fundamental project. This effort was first directed towards Hegelian idealism, but grew into a larger critique of Christianity and religious consciousness in general. His criticism of religion is not due to a specific condemnation of the divine, but the extent to which it is born out of speculative presuppositions. This indicates the presence of an important theme in Feuerbach's work outside of Hegel and I argue that naturalism filled this role. Interestingly, this also demonstrates a link between the seemingly disparate goals of Feuerbach's humanism and Luther's theology. Luther's observations of religious consciousness provided a vision of naturalism and passivity in his description of the human being's experience of existing before God. Feuerbach also saw in this a profound paradox regarding the relationship between God and human being. His reflections provide the contemporary theorist with ways to reconcile many of the problematic aspects of the rationalist-dualist model that pervades Western philosophy, particularly in the effort to reconsider the foundations of religious self-identity in the post-metaphysical age. Ultimately this places his project in dialogue more appropriately with contemporary studies in pragmatism and phenomenology rather than Hegelian or Freudian thought. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2009. / July 15, 2009. / Ethics, Pragmatism, Phenomenology, Naturalism, Luther, Hegel, Feuerbach, Philosophy of Religion, Freud, Anthropomorphism / Includes bibliographical references. / John Kelsay, Professor Directing Dissertation; Daniel Maier-Katkin, Outside Committee Member; Martin Kavka, Committee Member; Sumner B. Twiss, Committee Member; Amanda Porterfield, Committee Member.