Gospel singing is a musically sophisticated and culturally influential vocal performance style. Yet, its pedagogy is often expressed through the lens of formal/classical training or a Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) umbrella for all non-classical styles. This is problematic because classical training does not produce gospel singing, and most CCM styles are derivatives of the black vernacular singing practices that are foundational to gospel music. It follows that Gospel singing should be foundational to the study of CCM styles. However, in the absence of formal vocal training, little is known about how gospel singers actually develop and maintain healthy gospel singing voices. The purpose of this study is to explore with 12 professional gospel singers, their perceptions of how they have developed and maintain a vibrant and successful gospel singing voice and what role, if any, formal voice training played in that development. The exploration revealed that professional gospel singers are often not only formally trained, but gospel is a key part of their formal training. Their gospel upbringing taught them key cultural practices that both align with and expand the conversation around traditional, CCM, and the growing Gospel voice pedagogy. Their stories offer a different perspective about how gospel singers learn and how they should be taught.

This study belongs to one of the categories of hermeneutical issues - the New Testament use of the Old Testament. The writer assumes that Luke uses Malachi’s motifs, especially “Malachi’s eschatological figures’ arrival” motif in Malachi 3 and 4. Malachi’s eschatological figures are the messenger of the Lord (Mal. 3:1)/Elijah (Mal. 4:5-6). Ha Adon is the messenger of the covenant (Mal. 3:1). The writer identifies Ha Adon with the messenger of the covenant. Ha Adon is the “One who comes in the name of the Lord” in Luke. The writer attempts to prove that Luke was greatly influenced by “Malachi’s eschatological arrival” motif. According to the writer’s view, the literary and thematic structure of the Gospel of Luke reflects Malachi’s motif: temple emphasis, the infancy narratives including John’s and Jesus’ births, and the beginnings of John’s and Jesus’ ministries. John’s preaching is reminiscent of Malachi’s oracle. The Lord’s messenger and Ha Adon/the messenger of the Lord are identified as John the Baptist and Jesus respectively, and their missions are fulfilled in Luke. John the Baptist is seen as Malachi’s eschatological Elijah in Luke. The prophecy of Ha Adon’s sudden coming to His temple is fulfilled in Jesus’ three visits to the temple in Luke. The Travel Narrative in Luke echoes “the Way of the Lord” idea in Malachi; “the Way of the Lord” motif has thematically a long history in the Old Testament. “The Way of the Lord” concept in Exodus and Isaiah is reused in Malachi, and is theologically expanded in its meaning in Luke. This study shows that Luke alludes to or reflects Malachi’s themes in addition to “Malachi’s eschatological figures’ arrival” motif. The Gospel of Luke can be seen in the perspective of “the Way of the Lord” motif: the preparation of the Lord’s Way (1:1- 4:13); the presentation of the Lord’s Way (4:14-19:46), and the perfection of the Lord’s Way (19:47-24:53). There are simple allusions to Malachi, and thematic and literary parallels between Malachi and Luke: for example--“the Day of the Lord” theme and “the sending of messengers” motif. “Malachi’s eschatological figures’ arrival” motif is clearly shown in Luke. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

The Master's thesis Prayer in the Luke's Parables first deals with the definition of the parable itself: how the modern narratology understands it, how was this literary form used in the Old Testament and in the New Testament connotations. Further, it discusses the Gospel of Luke as a separate literary unit with an editorial plan regarding especially parables, and also describes the circumstances of its inception, the recipients, contemporary realities, etc. The next part outlines the basic teachings on prayer in the Church Documents. Then the thesis separately analyses both the grammar and the interpretation of three particularly important Luke's parables concerning prayer (L 11,513; L 18,18; 18, L 18,914). Their common contribution to Jesus' teachings on prayer is summarized in the conclusion.

The Diploma thesis "Women in Jesus' public ministry in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 8:1- 3; 10:38-42; 23:49)" analyzes 3 selected extracts from the Gospel of St. Lukas specifically focusing on women. Those accompanied Jesus, Marie and Martha and the women under the cross at the time of his crucifixion. The selected texts have been analyzed individually but also in relationship to their context in the whole Gospel of St. Lukas. Lukas writes about women more often than other Evangelists. His view is in this way completely remarkable and progresive for this time, he describes women more positively than their male counterparts. Lukas progressivness is demonstrated in small segments of his writing which exemplifies his undrestanding of the role of women in Grecian, Roman or Jewish societies. Selected extracts from the Gospel of Lukas each, in thier own way, show the important role of women in Jesus' public activity. Among Jesus' followers, as has been recorded by Lukas, women belonged to this group they listened to his words, supported him and accompanied him on his way to the cross. Lukas tries to explain the meaning which God intended for women in the history of the path to Salvation.

No scholarship yet exists on Erin Gee’s extensive Mouthpieces catalogue, aside from her own program notes and non-academic reviews of her work. My dissertation endeavors to remedy this gap through analyses of two formative works by Gee, Mouthpiece I (1999/2000) for solo voice and SLEEP (2008), an opera in 12 scenes for two voices, choir, and mixed ensemble. This dissertation is the offspring of two seemingly disparate theoretical influences: Pierre Schaeffer’s Traité des objets musicaux and Marion A. Guck’s definition of analysis as interpretation. In Chapter 1, I introduce Schaeffer’s reduction to the objet sonore as an analytical methodology, then interrogate the pros and cons of this method through the lens of feminist and post-humanist scholarship as well as sound studies focusing on vocal physiology. Chapter 2 considers the historical legacy of experimental non-semantic vocality in the United States, and considers how Afrodiasporic vocal techniques in jazz and gospel weave their way into Eurodiasporic experimentalism generally and Gee’s music in particular. I also ask why these hugely prevalent genres in both commercial and academic music circles fail to be included in standard scholarly narratives of non-semantic vocality in the United States. In Chapter 3, I propose an idiosyncratic typology and typomorphology for Mouthpiece I as an analytical framework for understanding the building blocks of Gee’s music more generally. I than take a broader look at the relationship between form and materials in SLEEP to consider how Gee intertwines semantic and non-semantic vocality to replace the operatic norms of high drama and individual virtuosity with an intimate, collective sonic ecology that presents both human and non-human on stage at the same time.

This project traces the development of Christian nonviolence in the United States from the outbreak of World War I until just after World War II by focusing on one Christian pacifist organization. The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), organized in 1915 in opposition to World War I, embraced the left wing of the prewar social gospel and fused its radical vision for social reconstruction with their opposition to war. Over the next thirty years, Christian pacifists associated with the Fellowship applied their energies not only to ending international war but also to promoting reconciliation between employers and workers in the struggle for labor justice and ending racial discrimination. During this period, advocates of nonviolence struggled to define a practical means for applying the principles of Christian pacifism. In contrast to older histories of the interwar period, this study shows that pacifism, a central concern for liberal Protestants during that period, shaped the broader American tradition of dissent. It also rejects the notion that the Christian "realists," led by Reinhold Niebuhr, offered the only comprehensive Christian social ethic between the wars. Finally, this dissertation shows how Christian pacifists in the interwar period embraced and adapted the principles Gandhian nonviolence to the American scene. Members of the Fellowship founded the Congress of Racial Equality in Chicago in 1942 and developed methods of nonviolent direct action that were adopted by advocates for racial equality during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

This dissertation examines temporal frames in the Gospel of John and the Johannine letters and traces the ways that these texts and those who received them constructed and employed temporality to shape belief in Christ. Building on existing scholarship on Johannine literature and temporality, I situate these writers and their readers within their contemporary Greek, Roman, and Jewish social and rhetorical contexts, exploring the use of temporal markers, calendrical calculations, and claims about the past, present, and future in ancient discourses of self-definition. The Gospel of John uses an account of Jesus’s life and deeds to assert the God of Israel’s exclusive prerogative to create, control, and dominate not only time but also earthly authorities. The writer(s) of the Gospel place the Logos “in the beginning,” situate events within Jewish temporal frames, and align Jesus’s resurrection with solar time to portray Jesus as a sovereign, divine agent. The Johannine letters also employ temporality, but differently. The letters link the past with the present to establish an identity for the audience by assuring them of their genealogical and temporal bonds with Jesus. The letters seek to distance perceived opponents, who are labeled “Antichrist,” by describing them as agents of the devil who sinned “from the beginning.” A later group of Christ believers known as the “Quartodecimans” received and adopted Johannine temporality for their own purposes. Celebrating Easter in full coordination with the Passover, for example, Melito of Sardis envisioned God’s salvific work in a continuity that directly linked salvation from the Exodus to Jesus’s death and resurrection. Melito employed temporality to create a mobile and porous boundary between Christ believers and other groups and to claim the theological superiority of his own group. This analysis of Johannine literature indicates that ancient writers widely employed claims about temporality to distinguish their perceived audiences from other groups. These writers sought to persuade the followers of Christ to adopt particular temporal outlooks and to ascribe them to concomitant theological assertions. They thus established their exclusive authority to interpret Jesus’s life and deeds and defame false teachings.

The three papers in this dissertation are conceptualized around the topic of urban music education. At the foundation of each paper lies an aim to analyze music teachers’ engagement with students in urban settings. What connects these three projects is the exploration of voices and perspectives that can strengthen our understanding of music teacher education to meet the unique needs of students in urban settings and address complexities within urban contexts. First, I examine my own journey leaving a predominantly White institution (PWI) twenty years ago to enter urban settings and teach music where I found myself unequipped in musical and nonmusical ways. I describe my journey toward musical and cultural competency over many years as I worked to learn to teach and engage with music that I had not been prepared to teach, in classrooms of students with whom I did not share a cultural background. As an impetus from that journey of both musical and cultural understanding, the second paper represents a deep exploration of Black Gospel music teaching as defined by three experts. Once again, while the study’s findings may offer musical insights in Black Gospel music, the greater lessons are the cultural components that inform Black music. In the last project, I study two urban school music programs that engaged community arts partners and music educators who learned musical and nonmusical lessons about the liberatory praxis of Black music. Emerging themes across these three projects reflect a need for rigorous and vibrant music teacher education reform that resonantly and responsively meet the needs of students in urban settings. In all three projects, participants (a) cited a need for music teacher education to move beyond content and include the intersection of race and teaching music; (b) discussed the centering of Western Art Musics (WAMs) in the academy; (c) encountered adolescent, high school age beginners in their music classes requiring a need for approachable, accessible, relevant tools to make music outside of traditional Choir, Orchestra, Band models; (d) found liberatory Black musical forms including Hip Hop, song-writing, Drumline, loop-based composition through digital audio workstations (DAWs), and Black Gospel music served beginners successfully; and (e) engaged or participated as culture bearers and/or experts on teaching unfamiliar Black musical forms and culturally competent communication across diverse groups. Given the themes across these three papers, I argue that critical reflection on the academy and music teacher preparation is necessary to enact reform that works against stagnancy and exclusion and moves toward inclusive musics and teaching for liberation available in Black music. I interrogate the three papers through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a theoretical framework through which I view, interpret, reflect, and find greater meaning to inform the preparation to teach music teaching and learning in urban settings. Visible across findings in all papers are examples of foundational tenets of CRT, whiteness as property and the permanence of racism, as participants felt unprepared to teach music outside of Eurocentric musical practices and cited the need for music teacher education to include the intersection of race and teaching. To make conclusions and suggest possibilities for reform in music education, I frame findings through the connection of two additional CRT tenets: interest convergence and counterstorytelling. Given the realities suggested in the first CRT tenets, I relied on the CRT theory of interest convergence to make recommendations for reform to music education. Theorizing that meaningful change is impossible without including interests of the dominant group, I propose “All God's Children Got a Song” as a call for interest convergence wherein systems and actors in music education work harder to include the 80% of students who currently do not participate in music. In naming areas for change, I suggest the use of counterstorytelling as a way to frame possibility for changing the narrative in music education in four areas that were common findings across papers: (a) to promote music education as approachable, age appropriate, and accessible for adolescent beginners, possible through curricula including but not limited to open, participatory, liberatory, and “family”-oriented forms of Black music including Hip Hop, song-writing, Drumline and loop-based composition using music technology, Black Gospel music, and choir; (b) to reimagine the concept of music literacy wherein students experience viewing music without navigating a written page; (c) to foster community capital whereby partnerships emerge with culture bearers who model and provide musical and cultural models of unfamiliar ways of making music alongside cultural and musical competence in communicating across diverse groups; and (d) to develop and implement comprehensive preservice education for future urban music educators that builds racial literacy skills to support content and pedagogy. Keywords: Urban Music Education, Gospel Music, Community / Music Education

Objectives The purpose of this study was to describe 30 people’s testimonies of their journeys from drug addiction to drug withdrawal in Taiwan. World Drug Report estimates the number of opioid users at 53 million, up 56 % from previous estimates, and that opioids are responsible for two thirds of the 585,000 people who died as a result of drug use in 2017. Methods This was a qualitative research design. The sample inclusion criteria: 1. Participants had drug abused experiences. 2. Participants received Christian Gospel Drug Withdraw Program. 3. Participants did their testimonies in the Good TV True Blog. There were 30 participants’ testimonies related to their drug withdrawn by gospel interventions during 2012-2020. These stories were posted on the Good TV channel in Chinese language in Taiwan that were written down by the author and translated from Chinese to English. The main themes were generated in this study. Results There were 24 male (80%) and 6 Female (20%) in this study. The mean age was 50.93 (SD = 10.47) (Range = 26-65). The major themes were (1) Using illegal drugs: Lack of knowledge and temptations (2) Drug addiction: An endless pain circle (3) Turning points: Love and Hope (4) Drug withdraw: Overcome the Temptations and Holy Spirit (5) Outcome: Faith and New Life. These 30 participants drug withdrew successfully, became Christians and started their new lives as well as helped other people quit drug and any other addiction. Discussion These are powerful testimonies to support that the gospel drug withdrawal programs and church activities are effective to help people drug withdrawal. These programs can be used in the Mental Health Nursing professions. Early education related to the negative impact of illegal drugs in the school is very important to prevent people’s drug addiction.

New Testament text critics are fueled by a search for origins. But in the absence of an autograph, questions of origins are complicated at best. The fruit of that search for origins has resulted in the creation of hypothetical, eclectic texts—texts which have left us translating and interpreting the Bible in a form that no community in human history has before. Far from being failed projects, however, these eclectic versions aptly represent the problem of the One and the many, a problem not easily solved: When faced with hermeneutic duties, can we effectively speak of New Testament texts without speaking of their thousands of various and actual instantiations in the world? The answer, of course, is both yes and no; but the timid no has typically taken a back seat to the boisterous yes. This thesis develops a new literary historical hermeneutic based on the Categories of C. S. Peirce, a philosophical approach that will demonstrate the need for both an ideal (the yes) and a concrete (the no) approach to New Testament criticism. After this need has been demonstrated, the Gospel of John will then be under examination, both in its ideal and in one of its more concrete forms: P66, a second century Greek papyrus manuscript of the Gospel. The nature of the interpretive communities that have made use of the Gospel will also be considered.