This qualitative study explored the perceptions of evangelical freshmen students attending the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Texas at Dallas during the spring semester of 2006 in the context of student alienation. The purpose of this study was to explore the possibility that evangelicals attending secular universities were perceiving alienation through their interactions with their universities. It was hypothesized that the modern university, having evolved into its present naturalistic worldview condition, might prove alienating to evangelicals from a worldview standpoint. Assuming the possibility that alienation might prove to be a reality for evangelicals, the subordinate purposes were intended to discover the types and sources of alienation, the possible evangelical coping strategies, and their perceptions of the university's reaction to them as evangelicals. During the spring semester of 2006, I conducted two live interviews with twenty participants. The first interview included a questionnaire which was administered for the purpose of providing insight into each participant's religiosity or evangelical commitment. The first interview (conducted prior to spring break) asked the students to reflect back upon their first semester experience (the fall of 2005). The second interview, conducted towards the end of the spring semester, was oriented towards the second semester experience. I found that all evangelicals but one had successfully assimilated socially and academically into their respective university. Their academic assimilation was primarily manifested by their relatively high academic achievement. Although they did experience worldview related incongruence, it was not severe enough to manifest any related attrition. I found the most severe incongruence to be related to the perceptions of a negative university moral ethos combined with the prevailing naturalistic monism of the university that relegated the Christian worldview to marginalization or irrelevance. I also found that the high level of social integration was primarily related to participant affiliation with various evangelical entities independent of the university. The data revealed that zero participants lost or abandoned their evangelical faith during their freshman year, and the students' perceived that they had actually experienced positive growth in their spiritual lives as a result of the overall college freshman experience.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Missiology)--Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 350-360).

Thesis (Ph. D. in Missiology)--Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 350-360).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-140).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-199).

Cette thèse tentera de démontrer, dans un premier temps, si les idéologies religieuses conservent une grande importance aux États-Unis, et ce, malgré la sécularisation apparente de la société. Une analyse du processus politique qui est à l’œuvre dans la mobilisation et l’action du Christian Coalition – organisation de la nouvelle droite chrétienne – permet de cerner la place qu’a le religieux dans la sphère publique, et plus particulièrement, dans la sphère politique. Plus spécifiquement, nous observerons les stratégies et les actions que le C.C. entreprend dans le but d’exercer des pressions et d’influencer les débats et le pouvoir politique, tout en déterminant la nature des enjeux qui motivent une mobilisation pour ce groupe protestant conservateur. Une évaluation basée sur le courant des mouvements sociaux illustrera la mesure dans laquelle la nouvelle droite chrétienne détient une partie du pouvoir social et jouit du rôle d’acteur politique par son institutionnalisation dans la sphère politique.

Cette thèse tentera de démontrer, dans un premier temps, si les idéologies religieuses conservent une grande importance aux États-Unis, et ce, malgré la sécularisation apparente de la société. Une analyse du processus politique qui est à l’œuvre dans la mobilisation et l’action du Christian Coalition – organisation de la nouvelle droite chrétienne – permet de cerner la place qu’a le religieux dans la sphère publique, et plus particulièrement, dans la sphère politique. Plus spécifiquement, nous observerons les stratégies et les actions que le C.C. entreprend dans le but d’exercer des pressions et d’influencer les débats et le pouvoir politique, tout en déterminant la nature des enjeux qui motivent une mobilisation pour ce groupe protestant conservateur. Une évaluation basée sur le courant des mouvements sociaux illustrera la mesure dans laquelle la nouvelle droite chrétienne détient une partie du pouvoir social et jouit du rôle d’acteur politique par son institutionnalisation dans la sphère politique.

The war between the Peruvian state and the Maoist Shining Path rebels began in the Department of Ayacucho, an area with a majority of indigenous Quechua- speaking peasant villages. After twenty years of violence (1980-2000), this region of South America’s Andes began a critical period of demilitarization, refugee resettlement, and reconciliation. In this transition, the rebuilding of villages devastated by the war raises critical questions about indigenous autonomy, citizenship, and the role of international human rights initiatives in local reconciliation. I examine the tensions between interventions by national and transnational organizations, and the insecurities that continue to define everyday life in villages like Wiracocha - a newly resurrected community that was in the heart of the war zone.1 Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in this village and ten months of comparative fieldwork in villages across the Ayacucho region and in the city of Huamanga, my research shows that villagers were often at odds with the aid and interventions offered to them from the outside. I focus on the complicated nature of village war history, paying attention to the initial sympathy with Shining Path and the village's later decision to join the counterinsurgency. In Ayacucho, memory has itself become a site of struggle that reveals as much about present-day conflict, ambivalences, and insecurities of neoliberal Peru as it does about the actual history 1 Wiracocha is a pseudonym that I am using in order to maintain subject confidentiality. of the war. Villagers sometimes oppose official memory projects and humanitarian initiatives - including Peru's Truth Commission - that that they see at odds with their own visions and agendas. Finally, I examine the less predictable ways that villagers have redefined what it means to be Andean, including: the maintenance of village militarization, a return to hard-handed customary justice and the adoption of bornagain Christianity as a new form of moral order and social solidarity. / Dissertation

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1999. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-194).

Thesis (M.A.)--Lancaster Bible College, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-74).