This MA thesis will discuss the reception of common, non-scholarly polytheists (pagans) to the persecution of Christians from the early empire until the Great Persecution (303-313, 322-324). Though modern scholars have addressed this issue and asserted that there was a change in attitude, many have not developed this into anything more than a passing statement. When chronologically analyzing the Christian acts, passions, letters, and speeches recounting the deaths of martyrs deemed historically authentic, and accounting for the literary and biblical topoi, we can demonstrate that the position of non-Christians changed. The methodology of this thesis will chronologically assess the martyr acts, passions, speeches, and letters which are historically accurate after literary and biblical topoi are addressed. These sources are available in the appendix. Throughout this analysis, we will see two currents. The primary current will seek to discern the change in pagan reception of anti-Christian persecution, while the second current will draw attention to the Roman concept of religio and superstitio, both important in understanding civic religion which upheld the pax deorum and defined loyalty to the Roman order through material sacrifices and closely connected to one's citizenship. Religio commonly denoted proper ritual practices, while superstitio defined irregular forms of worship which may endanger the state. As we will see, Christians were feared and persecuted because it was believed that their cult would anger the gods and disrupt the cosmological order. The analysis will begin with a discussion centered on the "accusatory" approach to the Christian church during the first two centuries when the Roman state relied on provincial delatores (denounces) to legislate against the cult. During the first two centuries persecution was mostly provincial, sporadic and was not centrally-directed. We will see that provincial mobs were the most violent during the first two centuries. During the third century the actions of the imperial authority changed and began following an "inquisitorial" approach with the accession of Emperors Decius and Valerian, the former enacting an edict of universal sacrifices while the latter undertook the first Empire-wide initiative to crush the Christian community. It is during the third century that the attitude of non-elite pagans may have begun to change. This will be suggested when discussing the martyrdom of Pionius. When discussing the fourth century Great Persecution under the Diocletianic tetrarchy, it will be suggested that the pagan populace may have begun to look upon the small Christian community sympathetically. The thesis will conclude with the victory of Constantine over Licinius and the slow but steady rise of Christianity to prominence, becoming the official religio of the empire with traditional paganism relegated to the status of a superstitio.

This thesis investigates the interdependence of religiosity and a life situation changed by cancer, focusing especially on the coping process. This implies analyses of a number of identified expressions of religiosity regarding prerequisites and functions in the coping process. In order to synthesize the results from the studies, the aim has been operationalized into three comprehensive research questions that were posed to each of the empirical studies of the thesis: 1) What are the functions of the analysed expressions of religiosity during the coping process? 2) What prerequisites for the influence of religiosity on the coping process can be identified?  3) How is religiosity influenced by a life situation changed by cancer? The empirical studies are presented in four separate articles. Each of the studies has its own specific research questions that are related to the comprehensive research questions. The method was qualitative and explorative. The research material was gathered with qualitative interviews of 20 Swedish informants of varying gender, age, congregational affiliation and diagnosis. The informants defined themselves as Christians and practised their Christian faith and had or had had a cancer disease. There is longitudinal data from half of the group. The theoretical framework was based on the coping theories developed by Kenneth Pargament and Ruard Ganzevoort and complemented by, among other things, the object-relations theoretical concept of transitional objects. The results show that most of the analysed expressions of religiosity function as a preserving coping method but some of them also function as a reconstructing coping method. In some cases, the expressions of religiosity also function as methods of attributing control, either to God or to the individual. Two main groups of prerequisites for the expressions of religiosity were identified in conjunction with the coping process: contextual and psychological. The former could in turn be divided into religious and medical contexts; the latter into several different kinds, such as perceptual psychological factors, the need to create and use transitional objects, locus of control, and personality traits. Reconstructing coping methods imply varying degrees of changes in the informants’ religiosity, both regarding the analysed expression of religiosity and other expressions of religiosity. In addition to gaining insights into the interdependence of religion and coping for Christians living with cancer, the study contributes to the development of the psychology of religion coping theory by adding to the theory: 1) suggested specifications to the current concepts of Pargament’s coping theory; 2) the concept coping tool; 3) the distinction between functional and relational regarding the concepts of coping mechanism and coping method; 4) the coping mechanism attributing, and 5) the distinction between unilateral and bilateral deferring coping styles. The results indicate that the coping process can include a creative element in the form of a search for, or creation of, functional coping methods and/or coping tools which enhance the functionality of the coping process.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / In Portugal and in Spain, for a very long time a belief was cultivated about the Jews, that when being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, at the beginning of the Modern Age, hid in certain places treasures to be rescued in posterity. Despite this account being cloaked in an atmosphere of mystery and distorted by imagination, in the hope that many nurture of finding riches in gold and jewels, there is evidence that these hidden riches consisted of censored books since, fleeing to other christian countries, they couldn’t take it with them. So in 1992, to corroborate this account, when in the modest Spanish village of Barracota a house was being remodeled, a “kept treasure”, hid by screens in a space between walls, was found. It was a heterogeneous set of 10 prints, a manuscript and a nômina. From those surprising finding its unveiled by extremeño Professor Fernando Serrano Mangas, that the set of clandestine books was hidden around 1557 by Crypto-jew Doctor Francisco Peñaranda. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to illustrate, starting from the analysis of the works “Alborayque” and “A muito devota oração da emparedada”, the mystic crypto-jewish universe and its paths in the 16th century’s contour. Working in this perspective according to the evidentiary method, proposed by Carlo Ginzburg, to highlight fundamental elements from the world vision of this minority that was the object of persecution by the Modern Inquisition. / Durante muito tempo, em Portugal e na Espanha, se cultivou a crença de que os judeus ao serem expulsos da Península Ibérica, no início da Idade Moderna, esconderam tesouros em determinados locais para serem resgatados na posteridade. Apesar desse relato está envolto em um clima de mistérios e também ser distorcido pela imaginação popular, na esperança que muitos acariciam de encontrar riquezas em joias e metais preciosos, existem indícios de que essas riquezas encobertas eram constituídas por livros censurados uma vez que, em sua fuga para outros países cristãos, eles não poderiam levá-los consigo. Assim, para corroborar com esse relato, em 1992 quando era realizada a reforma de uma secular residência na pacata vila de Barcarrota, na Espanha, foi encontrado um “tesouro oculto” escondido por tapumes num espaço vazio existente entre as paredes. Tratava-se de um conjunto heterogêneo de dez impressos, um manuscrito e uma nômina. A partir dessa surpreendente descoberta é desvelado, pelo historiador e professor extremeño Fernando Serrano Mangas, que esse conjunto de livros clandestinos foi ocultado pelo médico criptojudeu Francisco de Peñaranda, por volta de 1557. Portanto, essa dissertação procura ilustrar, a partir da análise das obras “Alborayque” e “A muito devota oração da emparedada”, o universo místico criptojudaico e seus meandros no contorno do século XVI. Nessa perspectiva, trabalhamos segundo o método indiciário, proposto por Carlo Ginzburg, para destacar elementos fundamentais da cosmovisão dessa minoria que foi objeto de perseguição pela Inquisição Moderna. / São Cristóvão, SE

Since the fate of the Syrian/Assyrian minority that has fled Turkey has not received much attention in research, this thesis is made to recognize the group and their experiences as refugees, Christians, and citizens in their old and new countries of Turkey and Sweden. When talking about dual citizenship, in terms of previous research, researchers often argue about how migrants prefer to keep their former citizenship when moving to another country. According to scholars and policymakers, dual citizenship is a benefit since it, for instance, helps immigrants to naturalize into their country of settlement. However, this is not always the case. By interviewing nine Syrians/Assyrians from Turkey, who either hold dual citizenship (Swedish and Turkish citizenship) or only Swedish citizenship (former Turkish citizens), this thesis will focus on how the minority thinks, feels, reasons, and argues about dual citizenship. Because of a history filled with oppression, discrimination, violence, and death (the Syrian/Assyrian genocide in 1915) in Turkey, many Syrians/Assyrians did not want to keep the bond to their country of origin when migrating to Sweden. In the sense of security and safety, belonging, naturalization and integration, and loyalty, this study will focus on what dual citizenship means for the Syrian/Assyrian participants who came to Sweden in the 1970s and if they make use of the possibility to hold more than one citizenship. The main finding is that the minority feels safe and at home in Sweden and not in Turkey. Because of their lack of protection and rights as Christians in their country of origin, Sweden is, as they call it, their new home. Even if some of them hold dual citizenship, while others only have Swedish citizenship, the majority of the Syrian/Assyrian people do not feel any sense of attachment, feeling, or loyalty toward Turkey today. However, there are exceptions. By holding dual citizenship, those Syrians/Assyrians who misses the food, the climate, or the culture can visit their country of origin, whenever they want to, as citizens.

L’apparition de l’image du Mongol dans les peintures italiennes est un phénomène particulier et marginal aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Notre thèse s’interroge et analyse comment les artistes représentent cette nouvelle image de l’autre, si étrangère et siimpensable, et considère la formation et la transformation des images dans différents contextes. L’image du Mongol s’inscrit dans l’histoire transculturelle qui correspond à la période de la Pax Mongolica s’étendant entre 1250 et 1350. Après la conquête mongole, l’Empire mongol construisit une période de paix dans le vaste territoire de l’Eurasie. L’autorité mongole fit un grand effort pour faciliter les routes commerciales, elle construisit un réseau de routes qui permit aux marchands, ambassadeurs et missionnaires de circuler facilement entre l’Europe et l’Asie. A partir de ce moment, les figures mongoles, comme image d’altérité, pénètrent, d’une manière anachronique, dans les narrations évangéliques, comme l’Adoration des mages, la Crucifixion, la Pentecôte et la Résurrection. Elles ne jouent pas toujours un rôle péjoratif, mais changent leur image selon les contextes et les moments : elles ont été représentées comme Gog et Magog à la fin des temps, soldat partageant la tunique du Christ, spectateur et témoin devant le martyr et la Crucifixion, et rois orientaux adorant l’enfant Jésus. Tout cela constitue, dans une certaine mesure, une image oscillatoire qui crée une tension entre la terreur et l’espoir. Notre thèse tente de penser cette complexité du contexte dans la représentation de la figure mongole et dans ce processus, de démontrer comment l’image donne, à son tour, une visibilité des mentalités de la fin du Moyen Âge. / The appearance of Mongol images in Italian paintings is a particular and marginal phenomenon in the late 13th and 14th centuries. My thesis examines and analyses how artists represent this new image of the Other, so foreign and so unthinkable, and considers the formation and transformation of images in different contexts. The Mongol image inscribed in a transcultural history corresponds to the period of the Pax Mongolica between 1250 and 1350. After the Mongol conquest, the Mongol Empire built a period of peace in the vast territory of the Eurasia. The Mongolian authority made a great effort to facilitate the trade routes, and built a network of roads that allowed merchants, ambassadors and missionaries to circulate easily between Europe and Asia. From this moment, the Mongol image, as an image of otherness, penetrates into evangelical narrations in an anachronistic way, such as the Adoration of the Magi, the Crucifixion, Pentecost and the Resurrection. The role of Mongol is not univocally negative. It changes according to the moments and contexts: they were represented as Gog and Magog at the end of time; as soldier dividing the tunic of Christ; as spectator and witness watching the crucifixion or martyrdom scenes; as oriental kings worshiping the newborn Christ-child. All of this constitute, to some extent, an oscillating image that creates a tension between terror and hope. My thesis aims to consider the complexity of the context in the representation of the Mongol image and to demonstrate how, in this process, the image gives, in turn, a visibility of the mentalities of the end of the Middle Ages.

"Every country has religious minorities. Any study of religious minorities and the protections afforded to them must also examine the significance of minorities per se. Minorities have no internationally accepted definition. Definitions are either broad and with little specificity or narrow and exclusive. Generally, two trends with regard to minority rights can be observed. On the one hand, in many countries, a comprehensive system of the legal protection of minorities has been introduced. Here the biggest problems stem from the difference between formal and informal rights. On the other hand, a number of countries have not legally committed themselves to the protection of minorities; ranging from inadequate safeguards to non-recognition of the minority. National minorities have received broad, although not well-differentiated, reporting in the international media and attention in international organisations and its impact on the discourse on religious rights have been minimal. However, minority religious rights have featured less significantly on the public agenda. The implications of the status of national minorities and religious groups are that many minorities believe that the majority group generally receive privileged status in state structures, while the minorities are viewed with suspicion. The issue of religious representation and safeguards arose within the Constitution of the Republic of Kenya ("Kenyan Constitution") where there is a recently concluded Constitutional Review Commission that had the Christian majority object to the "excessive protection" being granted to the Muslim minority. There was a huge debate as to the extent of inclusion of Sharia in the resultant draft constitution as well as the protection of fundamental principles of human rights and Islam. The question thus arises, should one apply Sharia or enshrine it in the constitution of a country, or will this involve overprotection that may lead to long-term exploitation of the law by the minority. The Arab Republic of Egypt ("Egypt") and the Republic of Kenya ("Kenya") have been chosen as case studies as they are interesting reflections of the development of states in Africa: Kenya with a Muslim minority maintaining a hold on the application of Islamic law where there is a Christian majority, while in Egypt the Copt and Shia Muslim populations are trying to assimilate into the state. Sharia is of imporance both to Kenya and Egypt. In Egypt the entire legal system is premised on the constitutional provision that Sharia is the principle source of law, thus some religious minorities in Egypt look for ways to maintain their identity and circumvent the application of Sharia provisions. Kenya, with a Muslim religious minority, is grappling with the concept of Sharia and how far it should apply to Muslims in a country. Thus these two countries have an inverse mirror image problem of each other as between the two major world religouns, Christianity and Islam. ... Chapter one sets out the content of the research, identifies the problem and applies the methodology. Chapter two discusses the international and regional law on religious minorities with a regional emphasis on African and the Arab region. Chapter three discusses the Islamic law on religious minorities, both Muslim minorities in non-Muslim states and non-Muslim minorities in Muslim states. Chapter four will focus on case studies comparing the protection accorded to the Muslims in Kenya with the Copts in Egypt, and analysing the extent to which Kenya and Egpyt have complied with international and regional law. Chapter five will set out recommendations and conclusions." -- Introduction. / Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Naz Modirzadeh at the Department of Political Sciences, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The American University in Cairo, Egypt / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2004. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

The researcher examined a relatively unexplored and limited territory dealing with higher education organizational pluralism pertaining to particalized substance abuse programs in private sectarian institutions of higher learning with student populations of under five thousand. The conceptual framework, which was a recapitulation of Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal's (1984) "multifaceted lens," applied to the human resource framework, the structural framework, the symbolic/cultural framework and the political framework in the administration of these selected substance abuse programs. The frames under which the respective substance abuse programs operate were identified by utilizing a semi-structured interview protocol. The study found usage of management frames by substance abuse program administrators to be in agreement with Bolman and Deal's "four frames theory," with the preferred management style consistent across the frames. The administrators of the substance abuse programs prefer the human resource frame almost categorically. Each institution places a strong emphasis on recruitment of an ideal type of student, modeled after a very clear and concise institutional mission statement. The pervasive theme of the mission message seeks potential Christian leaders only. Almost exclusively, the institutions studied do not tolerate substances of any sort. The administrators interviewed were knowledgeable about the various organizational frames and expressed concerns regarding the symbolic/cultural framework. With the exception of one institution, administrators of programs believe that the Christian ethic practiced throughout their institutions is the most significant factor preventing their institutions from utilizing the political frame during times of dwindling economic resources, thus remaining congruent with the institutional mission. The institutions studied were not complex in management structure and provide relatively unambiguous environments. The students and personnel have free access to administrators of substance abuse programs, who utilize prayer and the Christian ethic as important tools in intervention. This qualitative approach captured the essence of the organizational dimensions of these substance abuse programs in the selected private sectarian institutions of higher studies in Texas.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In this study, ideological criticism combined with use of muted group theory are employed to analyze four Quiverfull mothering blogs in order to unveil the models of mothering and maternal messages that emerge from the discourse. The Quiverfull, comprised of fundamentalist Christians who advocate prolific birth rates and strict traditional gender norms, propose a very narrowly defined view of motherhood. Therefore, the goal of this study is to analyze how Quiverfull mothers choose to construct and maintain their own rhetorical vision of motherhood through mommy blogs, in an effort to understand if Quiverfull mothers also struggle to “get it right” like so many other contemporary mothers, faced with cultural contradictions. The findings unveil that Quiverfull mothers struggle with many of the same ideological pressures that mainstream mothers endure such as being almost entirely responsible for childrearing, wanting to find time for themselves amidst society’s demands that children become a mother’s “everything,” and negotiating their role as mothers in the public sphere. However, Quiverfull mothers’ primary difference from mainstream mothers is through their relationship with God. They relinquish all control to God’s will, challenging the notion that good mothers must always be in control. Additionally, Quiverfull mothers distance themselves from feminist ideology by promulgating the need for male authority and criticizing all pro-choice sentiment. Moreover, through the exploration of these online artifacts, this study acknowledges the ideological differences between mothering groups, yet exposes that both mainstream and Quiverfull mothers find success as a mother almost unattainable. As a result, this study proposes that mommy blogs have the rhetorical ability to challenge mothering models that destine many mothers to “fail,” imbue value into motherhood, and unite women of competing and polarized ideologies as a way to question the “timeless truth” of what constitutes good mothering.

[pt] Vida e obra dos objetos: uma investigação sobre as potências da materialidade a partir do Sermão do Espírito Santo, de Antônio Vieira apoia-se, funda-mentalmente, na polissemia dos termos vida e objeto para examinar certas situações interacionais em que objetos (entendidos modernamente como inanimados) são investidos de vida, isto é, de qualidades e comportamentos em geral atribuídos a sujeitos (seres que se movem, agem e possuem um ponto de vista próprio). A dissertação propõe apreender o fenômeno da vida dos objetos através de três caminhos que se entrecruzam. O primeiro consiste em observar manifestações dessa vida na circunstância mais imediatamente presente, contemporânea ao pesquisador, num registro cotidiano e doméstico dentro do qual o próprio ato de escrita da dissertação se desenrola. O segundo e principal caminho conduz aos séculos XVI e XVII: sob a intercessão privilegiada do Sermão do Espírito Santo, do padre Antônio Vieira, e tomando como pano de fundo as tensões culturais implicadas na colonização das Américas e na catequização das populações nativas, realiza-se uma comparação pontual entre concepções ameríndias e concepções eurocristãs da vida dos objetos. O terceiro caminho é uma especulação sobre a possibilidade de falar em uma vida do texto, e, para tanto, busca-se aplicar ao domínio estrito das palavras alguns pressupostos contidos em teorias recentes acerca da agência de objetos materiais. Somando estes esforços aos esforços crítico-reflexivos de outros pesquisadores, a dissertação espera apresentar uma rica diversidade de traços subjetivos encarnados pelos objetos, diversidade que espelha diferentes maneiras de viver. / [en] Life and work of objects: an investigation on the powers of materiality based on the Sermon on the Holy Spirit, by Antonio Vieira rely fundamentally on the polysemy of the terms life and object to examine some interactional situations in which objects (modernly understood as inanimate) are invested with life, that is, with qualities and behaviours attributed in general to subjects (beings which move, act and have their own point of view). The dissertation proposes to apprehend the life of objects phenomenon through three paths which are intertwined. The first one consists in observing the manifestations of this kind of life in the most immediately present circumstance, contemporary to the researcher, in a daily and domestic register inside of which the very act of writing the dissertation happens. The second and main path leads to the 16th and 17th centuries: with the privileged intercession of the Sermon on the Holy Spirit, by priest Antonio Vieira, and also by taking as a background the cultural tensions involved in the colonization of the Americas and in the catechization of native populations, a punctual comparison is made between Amerindian conceptions and Euro-Christian conceptions of the life of objects. The third path is a speculation about the possibility of speaking of a life of the text, and for this purpose some assumptions contained in recent theories about the agency of material objects are applied to the strict domain of the words. By joining this efforts to the critical-reflexive efforts of other researchers, the dissertation expects to show a rich diversity of subjective features embodied by objects, a diversity that reflects different ways of living.

Negative attitudes towards atheists are hardly a new trend in our society. However, given the pervasiveness of the prejudices and the lack of foundation for them, it seems warranted to explore the underlying elements of these attitudes. Identifying these constitutive elements may help pick apart the different contributing factors and perhaps mitigate or at least understand them in the future. The present study was designed to identify which myths or stereotypes about atheists are most influential in these attitudes. A Lexical Decision Task was utilized to identify which words related to popular stereotypes are most related to the label atheists. The labels Atheists, Christians, and Students were compared to positive words, negatives words, words or interests, neutral words, and non-word strings. Analyses revealed no significant differences among the participants' reaction times in these various comparisons, regardless of religion, level of belief in god, level of spirituality, or being acquainted with atheists. Possible explanations for these results are discussed in this thesis.