<p> Ever since an influential study conducted by Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri in the early twentieth century, the Greek <i>Martyrdom</i> of Clement text has been acknowledged as a translation of the original Latin <i> Passio Sancti Clementis</i> text. Yet despite this discovery, very little work has been done to advance the frontier of knowledge on the Latin text itself over the last one hundred years. This work seeks to correct this oversight. </p><p> This work revisits the last Latin critical edition of the <i>Passio </i> text published by F. Diekamp in 1913, two years prior to Cavalieri's study. Given Diekamp's preferential treatment to the Greek <i>Martyrdom </i> as the original, this paper collates additional manuscript witnesses against Diekamp's <i>Passio</i> text, offers some conjectural textual emendations, postulates a stemma diagram of the Latin tradition, and provides an English translation to the improved text.</p><p>

This project uses convention documents to explore the relationship between a progressive religious movement and America’s progressive political party. The Social Gospel Movement rose in the early twentieth century as a response to modern industrial realities. It sought the Kingdom of Heaven on earth through progressive policy and church action. It supported the national progressive party of its era, the Republican Party. As the Democratic Party became America’s national progressive party, following the New Deal era, it failed to integrate the Social Gospel into its midst and has since experienced difficulty mobilizing religious voters and defining the sacred. Contemporary Democrats, religious scholars, and clergymen call on the Democratic Party to connect either with a revitalized Social Gospel or some similar religious tradition. These calls make sense in the context of the competing Republican Party’s successes relating to traditional and conservative Protestant voters. However, through an examination of convention speeches, party platforms, and politician-clergy relations, this project attempts to explain the historical inability of the Democratic Party to connect meaningfully with a religious movement- even one seemingly tailor-made like the Social Gospel Movement.

This study examines the role of the churches of various Christian denominations during the period 1870-1914. It investigates three areas of County Durham. The Borough of South Shields is the main focus of the study and provides evidence of the churches' work in a large urban centre. Two comparative studies are also included: the coal mining villages of the Deerness Valley close to Durham City provide evidence from a newly industrialised area whilst the villages of Upper Teesdale illustrate trends in a more rural area in which the lead mining industry was in significant decline during this period. The approach of the study is comparative throughout. The study concentrates on several aspects of the churches' work. The provision of manpower and buildings are examined as the churches' response to the needs created by social change; there is also an investigation of the effectiveness of evangelical mission as a means of recruiting support for the churches. The study examines the churches' work with and attitude towards children - both inside and outside Sunday school - and with adults in various non liturgical activities. There are also sections on the churches' role in education and social welfare work. The study reflects recent developments in the fields of social and religious history in its examination of the churches' fears of 'decline' during this period and the extent to which such fears were justified. The comparative approach enables urban developments to be compared and contrasted with rural activities and allows the experience of different denominations to be included in the study.

<p>Abstract This dissertation is a project that examines the way Middle English romances explore and build a sense of national English/Christian identity, both in opposition to and in incorporation of the Saracen Other. The major primary texts used in this project are Richard Coer de Lion, Firumbras, Bevis of Hampton, The King of Tars, and Thomas Malory?s Morte Darthur. I examine the way crusade romances grapple with the threat of the Middle East and the contention over the Holy Land and treat these romances, in part, as medieval meditations on how the Holy Land (lost during a string of failed or stalemated Crusades) could be won permanently, through war, consumption, or conversion. The literary cannibalism of Saracens in Richard Coer de Lion, the singular or wholesale religious conversions facilitated by female characters, and the figure of Malory?s Palomides all shed light on the medieval English politics of identity: specifically, what it means to be a good Englishman, a good knight, and a good Christian. Drawing on the works of Homi Bhabha, Geraldine Heng, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, and Siobhain Bly Calkin, this project fits into the overall conversation that contemplates medieval texts through the lens of postcolonial theory to locate early ideas of empire.

This study describes the religious content of the Ciceronian corpus and reappraises Cicero’s religious stance. Chapter 1 develops a working definition of religion in terms of interested supernatural agents, briefly situating it within the historiography of religion. Support for this definition from scholars in a range of academic disciplines is demonstrated. It is then engaged in Chapter 2 as a tool with which to locate and classify religious material in the Ciceronian corpus, approaching the texts genre by genre and indicating certain difficulties encountered when seeking to divide the religious from the non-religious. Religion in Cicero now defined, Chapter 3 considers the limitations in scope and methodology of previous research on the topic, arguing that these limitations call for a new approach but also suggest how it should proceed. The corpus must be considered as a whole, with twin objectives: to describe and account for conflicting religious viewpoints within and between individual works, and to establish whether a coherent authorial religious position exists. Cicero generally presents religion as beneficial to society, but never expressly sets out to elucidate the reasoning behind this recurrent proposition or collects in one place those beliefs and practices that are repeatedly advocated. Chapter 4 combines disparate Ciceronian material to show how social utility is thought to accrue and how it is predicated upon a surprisingly large and specific body of religious doctrine. This doctrine amounts to a dominant religious ideology; its operation in practice and its substantial resemblance to Roman orthodoxy are illustrated in Chapter 5, a case study on Cicero’s use of religious rhetoric in connection with the Catilinarian conspiracy. Chapter 6 details the similarities and many conflicts between the dominant religious ideology and the religious viewpoints of the Stoics, Epicureans and Philonian Academics as each school is portrayed by Cicero. Finally, Chapter 7 argues that a coherent authorial attitude to religion is present, which maps closely onto the dominant religious ideology and is characterized by a consistent and spirited endorsement of traditional Roman religion in full awareness of competing rational arguments from Greek philosophy. Some possible explanations for this attitude conclude the study. / The Classics

<p> The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the question: What would constitute an effective strategy for training and developing holistic small group leaders, specifically at Renaissance Community Church? To begin the process of answering this question the author identified four specific steps that were necessary to assist in the development of holistic small group leaders at RCC. </p><p> Prior to the project design, the author, working with Dr. Bobby Hill of Hill Consulting, and using the NCD assessment tools, discovered that small groups were the minimum factor. It was at that point that RCC began transitioning from a church with small groups to a church of small groups. </p><p> This led to the first step of the ministry project, which involved recruiting twelve potential leaders and administering a pre-test designed to gauge the participant&rsquo;s current level of understanding and confidence to explain the following concepts: understanding God&rsquo;s purpose for small groups, understanding a leader&rsquo;s personal development, understanding and developing new leaders, understanding the dynamics of spiritual development, leading small group meetings, comprehending group progress, understanding the role of a shepherd, and with these competencies impact their world. </p><p> For the second step, using a <i>Modeling/Turbo</i> group model, the author developed an eight-week small group setting using the <i> Leading Life-Changing with Small Groups</i> as the leadership curriculum for the twelve participants. The author then used a post-test to measure the participants&rsquo; development in their abilities to explain and implement the material. </p><p> The third step consisted of the <i>turbo launch</i> in which the participants led six groups for eight weeks using the material <i> ReGroup: Training Groups to be Groups,</i> specifically designed by the author in order for the participants to implement their new skills. </p><p> This eight-week process ended with the fourth step, an exit interview with questions (see Appendix F) designed to measure the qualitative efficacy of the <i>Leading Life-Changing with Small Groups</i> training program. The participants&rsquo; showed signs of significant increase in both the understanding of the material during the eight week modeling/turbo group.</p>

abstract: ABSTRACT Over 700 Navy Chaplains served with Marine Corps units in Vietnam between 1962 and 1972. With an average age of 37, these chaplains were often twice the age of the young men with whom they served. More than half were veterans of World War II and/or the Korean Conflict. All were volunteers. The pathways these clergymen took to Vietnam varied dramatically not only with the Marines they served, but with one another. Once in Vietnam their experiences depended largely upon when, where, and with whom they served. When the last among them returned home in 1972 the Corps they represented and the American religious landscape of which they were a part had changed. This study examines the experiences of Navy chaplains in three phases of the American conflict in Vietnam: the assisting and defending phase, 1962-1965; the intense combat phase, 1966-1968; and the post-Tet drawdown phase, 1969-1972. Through glimpses of the experiences of multiple chaplains and in-depth biographical sketches of six in particular the study elucidates their experiences, their understandings of chaplaincy, and the impact of their service in Vietnam on the rest of their lives. This work argues that the motto the Chaplains School adopted in 1943, “Cooperation without Compromise,” proved relevant for clergy in a time when Protestant-Catholic-Jew were the defining categories of American religious experience. By the early 1970s, however, many Navy chaplains could no longer cooperate with one another without compromising their theological perspective. This reality reflected America’s shifting religious landscape and changes within the Chaplains Corps. Thus, many chaplains who served in Vietnam may well have viewed that time as bringing to a close a golden age of service within the Navy’s Chaplains Corps. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2015

My study was prompted by a hostile reaction to S. Foster Damon' s claim that Blake read the Bhagavad-Gita. I am intimately familiar with that work, intellectually, spiritually, in translation, and in the original Sanskrit. This reaction led me to question the validity of recent Blake criticism. My research concentrated on a verse letter to John Flaxman in which Blake names his most inspirational sources: Milton, Shakespeare, Isaiah, Ezra, Boehme, and Paracelsus. I draw heavily on historians, such as E. P. Thompson, Nigel Smith, and A. L. Morton, and recent critics, such as Robin Aubrey, John Mee, Mark Trevor Smith, and of course David Erdman, to refute what I consider wrong-headed assumptions in Blake criticism. The net effect of my preliminary study validates to a large extent Northrop Frye's, and to a lesser extent, Harold Bloom's, reading of Blake. Still, whether the above critics or others seem to be right or wrong, none takes into account the concept that Blake is not an intellectual, but a preacher. He is proselytizing. Understanding his theological stance is so fundamental to understanding Blake that I remain mystified that scholars have insisted on an aesthetic motive for his work. Aesthetics may be the means, but the end is theology. My study shows how Blake's theology is visionary, sophisticated and cogent and, perhaps more significantly, widely shared, especially among the working classes.

This dissertation examines the non-literary and non-aesthetic reasons underlying the bias in favor of realism in the formation of the traditional literary canon of nineteenth-century British fiction. Since English literature first became a recognized academic discipline in Great Britain in the 1870s and '80s, the study of fiction has been (with few exceptions) a study of realistic fiction. College survey courses in the period usually teach W. M. Thackeray through Thomas Hardy, but almost never make excursions into the fantasy fiction of Victorians like George MacDonald or Charles Kingsley. My thesis is that this exclusion can best be explained by examining the role of the Anglican Church as well as that of Non-Conformist or Dissenting evangelical sects in the educational institutions of nineteenth-century Britain in the first half of the century, and by examining the function that the academic study of English literature played in British imperialist ideology in the latter part of the century. Both Church and Empire needed a canon of realism to promote their own brand of conservative ideology, although each tended to define realism differently. Victorian fantasy writers often targeted Church doctrine or imperial dogma for especially satirical treatment, thus insuring their own exclusion from the universities which were run by the Church and operated to supply patriotic administrators to the Empire. My study examines in detail the ecclesiastical and political context of educational philosophy and how this context affected reading curriculum and ultimately, the canon. My study also examines in detail the lives and historical situations of five Victorian fantasy writers: John Ruskin, George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Henry Rider Haggard, and Rudyard Kipling. Ruskin, MacDonald and Kingsley used fantasy as a means of attacking various branches of organized Christianity. Haggard and Kipling used fantasy as a means of attacking various aspects of popular imperial rhetoric. Throughout the dissertation, I situate the writers' novels within their historical contexts to show why fantasy fiction has traditionally been ignored or denigrated by academic critics.

This dissertation examines the wooden wayside shrines of Lithuania and the unique role they played in the religious, social and political history of Lithuania from the end of World War II to the 1990s. Two manifestations of performance are discussed: (1) the development of the wayside shrine tradition in the territory of Lithuania itself, and (2) the radicalization of the tradition among émigré artists rebuilding a sense of community in the West. With the annexation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union following World War II, the Communist government aggressively repressed but never completely eradicated the religiously-based wayside shrine tradition. Beginning in the 1970s, the Folk Art Society in Lithuania vigorously generated a renaissance in the folk heritage. Society members turned to the arts and crafts tradition and created over thirty, large-scale ensembles of woodcarvings throughout the countryside. As part of a struggle to assert Lithuanian cultural identity, the ubiquitous wayside shrines composed of roofed poles with chapels containing free-standing religious figures evolved into totemic carvings, which combine religious and secular figures fully engaged on the trunk of the totem pole. In North America, the Lithuanian diaspora recreated the shrines predominantly in miniature form, often using a greater variety of materials and tools. In this radicalized form they became the symbol of the Lithuanian community's identity in all aspects of its visual culture. The dissertation is organized into three sections: (1) an examination of the historical tradition, 1850–1940; (2) an analysis of the metamorphosis of the tradition in Lithuania, 1940–1990; (3) a comparative analysis of production in North America. Extensive fieldwork and interviews in Lithuania and North America, and research in previously unexplored archives inform the dissertation. Prior scholarship on the wayside shrine tradition has remained largely descriptive. This study seeks a broader cultural analysis, including the North American production which has not been documented until now. The contribution of this dissertation is to synthesize the significance of this art form by applying a variety of scholarly disciplines: art history, religion, anthropology, history, material culture, and immigration studies.