This study presents an insider’s view concerning the significant influence of American fundamentalism at Prairie Bible Institute (Three Hills, Alberta, Canada) during the tenure of the school’s co-founder and primary leader, Leslie Earl Maxwell. During much of the period covering 1922-1980, PBI rivaled well-known American schools such as Moody Bible Institute, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) and Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina, in size. These schools were also highly efficient in producing hundreds of missionaries and Christian workers to serve the fundamentalist cause in North America and around the world. As a belated response to Dr. John Stackhouse, Jr.’s portrayal of PBI in his 1993 book, Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction to Its Character, this thesis offers clarification and modification to Stackhouse’s work regarding how PBI during the Maxwell era should be viewed by students of church history. It is argued here that the ubiquitous influence of the United States of America on Canadian life is clearly visible in the nature of the Christian fundamentalism that prevailed at PBI under Maxwell’s leadership. The work thereby lends a certain amount of credibility to the suggestions made by some scholars that PBI during Maxwell’s career might legitimately be considered an outpost of American fundamentalism. Employing primarily a quantitative assessment of the evidence in combination with personal anecdotes and a few basic statistics, the thesis reveals that Maxwell’s personality and rhetoric were consistently more militant than Stackhouse allows. PBI’s affinity for many of the distinctives of American fundamentalist theology and culture are also documented. Such an approach serves the additional purpose of enabling the writer to call into question the utility of considering militancy the defining characteristic of twentieth-century evangelicalism when considered from a post-9/11 perspective. It also enables a challenge of Stackhouse’s assumption that what he identifies as “sectish” Canadian evangelicalism is ultimately as substantially different from American fundamentalism as the Canadian scholar infers. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Church History)

This study presents an insider’s view concerning the significant influence of American fundamentalism at Prairie Bible Institute (Three Hills, Alberta, Canada) during the tenure of the school’s co-founder and primary leader, Leslie Earl Maxwell. During much of the period covering 1922-1980, PBI rivaled well-known American schools such as Moody Bible Institute, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) and Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina, in size. These schools were also highly efficient in producing hundreds of missionaries and Christian workers to serve the fundamentalist cause in North America and around the world. As a belated response to Dr. John Stackhouse, Jr.’s portrayal of PBI in his 1993 book, Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction to Its Character, this thesis offers clarification and modification to Stackhouse’s work regarding how PBI during the Maxwell era should be viewed by students of church history. It is argued here that the ubiquitous influence of the United States of America on Canadian life is clearly visible in the nature of the Christian fundamentalism that prevailed at PBI under Maxwell’s leadership. The work thereby lends a certain amount of credibility to the suggestions made by some scholars that PBI during Maxwell’s career might legitimately be considered an outpost of American fundamentalism. Employing primarily a quantitative assessment of the evidence in combination with personal anecdotes and a few basic statistics, the thesis reveals that Maxwell’s personality and rhetoric were consistently more militant than Stackhouse allows. PBI’s affinity for many of the distinctives of American fundamentalist theology and culture are also documented. Such an approach serves the additional purpose of enabling the writer to call into question the utility of considering militancy the defining characteristic of twentieth-century evangelicalism when considered from a post-9/11 perspective. It also enables a challenge of Stackhouse’s assumption that what he identifies as “sectish” Canadian evangelicalism is ultimately as substantially different from American fundamentalism as the Canadian scholar infers. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Church History)

This thesis will explore and discuss the religion and rituals (ancestral cult) of Afro-Caribbean societies, people of African and indigenous heritage. This thesis will also seek to answer the question of extent to which Americans have become tolerant of other people's culture and what influence, if any, have transmitted from the Afro-Caribbean people to other North American societies. The religion and rituals of four Afro-Caribbean groups will be discussed in this study.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Comparative Religion, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-64) and discography (p. 65).

In 1855 Parley P. Pratt, a Mormon missionary and member of the Quorum of the Twelve, published Key to the Science of Theology. It was the culmination of over twenty years of intellectual engagement with the young religious movement of Mormonism. The book was also the first attempt by any Mormon at writing a comprehensive summary of the religion's theological ideas. Pratt covered topics ranging from the origins of theology in ancient Judaism, the apostasy of early Christianity, the restoration of correct theology with nineteenth century Mormonism, dreams, polygamy, and communication with beings on other planets. For nearly fifty years after its publication, Key to the Science of Theology was one of the most widely circulated books within the Mormon community, serving as a model of doctrinal orthodoxy. This thesis aims to understand Pratt's book and his theological ideas, broadly, in their historical context. Primary sources related to Pratt and his contemporaries, including other works by Pratt, Mormon missionary tracts, newspaper clippings, and theological writings by competing religions, help place Pratt's ideas within the larger framework of American religious and intellectual thought of the early to mid-nineteenth century. Pratt drew from non-Mormon sources to help explain the Church's teachings, at times appropriating ideas and rhetoric from elsewhere to bolster his claims about the superiority and universality of the Mormon message. The first chapter of this thesis gives a biographical sketch of Pratt. It introduces key concepts in Mormon belief and how Pratt conceived them. Furthermore, the chapter offers a philosophical take on Pratt's life as one motivated by an apocalyptic worldview. Chapter two draws upon Pratt's apocalyptic conscience to examine his eschatological ideas including a strain of early Mormon thought regarding theocracy. Pratt envisioned a world-wide theocracy coming at the millennium. Mormons, Jews, and Native Americans as ancient Israelites would all share in a world-wide order built around twin centers of power in the historical Jerusalem and a New Jerusalem to be established in North America. Chapter three looks at Pratt's cosmology and argues that his views of the universe, including other planets and beings, were influenced and framed by contemporary Spiritualism as a means of combatting the threat of Mormons leaving the Church for Spiritualist practices. The epilogue looks at changes made to the text of Key to the Science of Theology in 1915 by Church leader Charles Penrose. It places the text's republication within an ongoing battle between older Church leaders like Penrose and younger leaders such as John Widtsoe over what would constitute Mormon orthodoxy during the modernizing phase of the Church in the early twentieth century. Issues like evolution and polygamy took the forefront over eschatological and cosmological concerns.