The mission of this thesis is to study how differing notions of divine transcendence , in the theologies of Clement of Alexandria and James Hal Cone, were read against the prevailing cultural milieus of their historical contexts for the purpose of resisting hegemony. Because God as Wholly Other chooses to share space with planetary creatures through the Incarnation of the Word as well as the glorious indwelling of God's image in humankind, I will put forward a few possible contours for a U.S. Black postcolonial model of divine transcendence. It is in the hopes of opposing reductionist accounts of cultures and individual persons that a postcolonial doctrine of divine transcendence can function as a way to undermine imperial structures and ideologies. This rough sketch may give license for Womanist and Black liberationist theologians to remain in dialogue with early Christianities and as well as the Nicene-Chalcedonian creedal formulas all the while maintaining a commitment to emancipating ourselves from racist ideologies and institutions. It is in the encounter of the Lord who comes from Beyond that humanity is confronted for the purpose of fellowship in the presence of both the divine and human Other.

This dissertation offers the reader, for the first time in any language, an up-to-date and critical introduction and commentary to the second century early Christian text entitled the Acts of Paul and Thecla. The introduction offers an overview of several of the key discussions concerning the text. In particular, the relationship of the ancient Christian novel to the broader ancient novel is explored, specifically considering the text of the Acts of Paul and Thecla as an ancient novel. In addition, other issues such as date, authorship, the Acts of Paul and the New Testament, and other such issues are considered in the Introduction. This is followed by the critical commentary that provides an English translation based off of the earliest Greek, Coptic, and Latin manuscripts of the Acts of Paul and Thecla.

Narratives of nation invoke feelings of longing for community and displacement of identity in the people. Through their narratives, nationalist writers consciously forge a community to configure such displacement out of diverse and contending cultural elements, traditions, and people. In resonance with such narration of nation, the writer(s) of the Gospel of John imagined a community of the disciples that was an alternative to the dominant Roman Empire. The Gospel, as many nationalist discourses under colonialism, is an enabling discourse for the colonized community, and thus, is a decolonizing text. In search of a community, however, the Gospel coercively forged many contending discourses into one, bearing resemblance with a colonizing discourse of the Empire. In doing so, even though the Gospel is a displacement narrative of the colonized, it manifests marginalization and lack of awareness of Other within its own construction of identity. The Gospel of John, therefore, is a de/colonizing text. The Gospel forcefully destabilizes, excludes, and marginalizes the voices of Other in its narratives. These marginal voices are represented by the claims of Ioudaioi and Samaritans that simultaneously enable and contend the Gospel's essentialist articulation of communal identity and boundary. Interpreting a discourse of margins such as the Gospel of John alerts one to the critical notion and reality of the ambivalent marginality that contains both danger and promise. Reading the Gospel of John for decolonization, in that case reading the Bible, therefore, requires a constant critique that destabilizes rigid binary pattern of thought, time, or axis of power by continually asking a question -- who are the receiving ends of this newly forged discourse of power or interpretation.

While adult Korean adoptees suffer from injustice that occurs out of sexism and racism, and that impacts ethnic identity formation destructively, this dissertation argues that expressing human agency through the action of responses to relationship is essential in constructing a healthy ethnic identity. Integrating the thought of Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki and John Shotter, this project maintains that an expression of human agency involves resistance against injustice and participation in new possibilities that take place in each moment in relationship. To live as persons who express human responsibility requires making choices and reconstructing ethnic identities.

Research shows that ethnic minorities access hospice care less often than Caucasians. In part this issue has been attributed to the lack of cultural competence among hospice staff. The purpose of this pastoral theological study is to examine how pastoral caregivers can work more effectively by attending to cultural context of Hispanics in the United States. The project examines the meaning attached to the stories of hope for six Roman Catholic Hispanic hospice patients in the Fort Worth area in order to find out how their belief system about the future has an impact on their anticipatory grief or waiting experience. In order to establish the context, this project introduces the pastoral challenge by identifying the Hispanic population in the United States and the cultural problems they face at the end-of-life. Second, the project describes the pastoral theological method and research design proposed by James and Evelyn Whitehead, who suggest three stages of the theological method (attending, assertion, and action) and three sources of information (experience, tradition and culture). Third, a dialogue between the three sources of information proposed by the Whiteheads and the experience of the participant patients. The written project is organized according to how the patients experience and interpret their stories of hope in three different ways: as fullness of life, as ambiguous-multiple future stories with limited life, and as future stories with no life. This project concludes by suggesting that the use of narrative theory is a helpful approach for pastoral caregivers in order to maintain culturally sensitive conversations with Hispanic patients at the end-of-life while being mindful of how their future stories have an impact on hope during the waiting experience

How do chaplains and pastoral counselors form their identities as "pastoral" caregivers in challenging clinical contexts such as institutional, interdisciplinary, postmodern, inter-cultural, and multi-faith work environments? Previous studies on pastoral identity have focused on an individual interiority of pastoral practitioners and have emphasized mainly the caregivers' perceptions and practices from a developmental and training perspective. Grounded in an empirical study of active pastoral care providers, this project presents pastoral identity as a relational and interactional property, socially constructed among pastoral care partners, culture, and God. Findings of the empirical study support contemporary theological and social psychological discourses: identity is embedded in and embodied by relationships. Empirical data from my study suggest that pastoral caregivers construct their pastoral identity in the midst of interacting with their clients and that, within this interaction, both caregivers and seekers find their renewed identities. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, social interactors (here caregivers and care-seekers), as self-reflexive agents, do social acts (bringing problems and seeking to find a solution) by interpreting each other's symbolic meanings of the acts (care-giving and receiving). In these social interactions, caregivers and seekers see themselves in the others and find their identities through their relationships with the others. Moreover, a theological perspective of <i>perichoresis</i>--usually known as a trinitarian concept that explains both the oneness and the diversity of the Trinity--sheds light on such interactional and constructive identity that embraces both self and community within pastoral care-giving. Informed by a recent social psychological approach to identity, this project explores the possibility for an interactional, intersubjective, and constructive paradigm of pastoral identity. Adapting to and working to change contemporary cultural contexts and structural powers, pastoral caregivers construct their identities interactionally with care-seekers by interweaving God's providential calling and clients' specific callings for help. Such constructions result in an embracing of multiple pastoral identities, including spiritual representatives, fellow humans, pastors, and divine partakers. The data that form the basis of this study consist of 20 interviews and 63 surveys of chaplains and pastoral counselors and reflective memos of the collected information. The strategies of grounded theory provided the methods for collecting and analyzing the data. Furthermore, the theological perspective of <italic>perichoresis</italic> helps us look at pastoral care-giving as agentive self-enhancing and other-containing communion that caregivers and seekers form in their relationships and that allows the care partners to construct their unique identities. Accordingly, this dissertation redefines pastoral identity as a property of interaction among the caregiver, care-seekers, context, and God--a pastoral identity the interactions and relationships continuously transform.

This project proposes that focusing on hospitality that emphasizes LGBTQ perspectives within Open & Affirming churches will enable those congregations to more adequately engage LGBTQ people to whom it extends welcome. The research applies a spirituality of hospitality model to ecclesiology, attempting to bridge disconnections between hetero and queer people sharing one congregational setting. From 11 interviews with LGBTQ people in the Austin and Bryan-College Station areas and priestly listening by an ONA church, this project draws practical, visionary, and ongoing conclusions about how ONA congregations move from merely welcoming LGBTQ people to being affirming and hospitable toward LGBTQ people.

On June 28, 2009, mere minutes after the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, police in Fort Worth raided a local gay bar know as the Rainbow Lounge. When one of the patrons was critically injured that night, the anger that erupted among the LGBT communities raced through the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, eventually reaching around the nation. In the climate that followed the police raid, a new voice emerged among the protestors: that of the prophetic. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to provide an historical account of events at the Rainbow Lounge on the night of June 28, 2009 and the following months, and (2) to examine the inherently queer nature of the prophetic tradition by considering the words and actions of individuals and institutions, both queer and straight, in the aftermath of the raid of the Rainbow Lounge. Composed of four primary sections, this paper begins with an introductory account of events at the Rainbow Lounge immediately prior to and during the police action. The second part engages in a consideration of what it means to be "prophetic," with the idea that the prophetic is inherently queer being explored in the third segment. In the final section, supporting examples of the words and deeds of ministers and theologians following the raid are considered.

The historiography of Peyotism lacks an adequate explanation of contested efforts to preserve a Native American cultural identity. There is a need for an alternate paradigm to view the Peyotists as possessing cultural agency to contest the efforts to prohibit the use of Peyote. An examination of the larger historical context of the period offers insight into a contestation by Native American Peyotists against the dominant culture, ironically with the use of the rhetoric of the dominant culture. In response to the opposition of the Peyote practive and religion from the dominant culture, the incorporation of the Native American Church of Oklahoma exemplified a pan-Indian discursive contestation by adopting rhetoric from the dominant culture, including the terms "Native American," "church," and "sacrament," and using them as a foil of resistance.

Developing hermeneutical models that critically inform the discussion of immigration by perceiving immigration through the vantage point of human identity, agency, and relationality could be important for promoting a balanced approach to the public discussion on immigration. A pastoral theology of the immigrant and the community as a public theology was utilized to delineate more ethical and inclusive values and practices in the relationship between local and immigrant populations. The lived experience of Korean immigrants was researched and examined in the study. The research data came from the life stories of Korean immigrants via case studies, in-depth interviews, and a survey of biographical materials, historical documents, and works of literature regarding Korean immigrants in the U.S. The findings from the collected data were brought into conversation with other sources in theology and social sciences to create a pastoral theology of the immigrant and the community. Victor Turner's theory of liminality and the concept of marginality found in two Korean American theologians, Jung Young Lee and Sang Hyun Lee, were brought into an interdisciplinary conversation with the Korean concept of human interrelatedness in Cheong to elaborate and clarify the human in the Korean immigrant. The study also examined the feminist theologian Letty M. Russell's ideas of partnership and hospitality in exploring the concept of a responsible neighbor. A constructive proposal in theological anthropology that viewed mobility, fluidity of identity, and acceptance of the other as life-forming, life-enriching, and life-sharing principles for a God-intended design of human existence was provided. Various cultural sources informing immigration and the Christian tradition of receiving the stranger including Jesus' spirituality of hospitality were framed by the hermeneutic of co-authoring between the immigrant and the local as ethically and relationally responsible neighbors and "blessed guests." Pastoral care practices that could ameliorate the immigrant's pain through advocacy and empowerment were suggested. The church as a social and religious institution was challenged to rediscover the biblical mandate of Jubilee, become an active protector of the immigrant, and a willing mediator of intercultural encounters. Key Words: Immigration, Immigrant, Korean American, Hospitality, Partnership, Relational Ethics, Cheong, Co-Authoring, Pastoral Theology, Theological Anthropology