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This dissertation critically examines both the discursive and empirical significances of recent newcomers in the Haitian religious field, namely Korean and Korean American Protestant women missionaries. This confluence of Korean and Haitian Protestantism, which first emerged in the early 1990s, is a compelling case of the diversification of contemporary transnational and even global Christianity. Protestant Christianity was implanted in Haiti and Korea at around the very same time, in the nineteenth century, by North American missionaries who were inspired to work in new national religious fields by the Second Great Awakening (1790-1840) and its evangelical fervor. In the eyes of North American missionaries, both countries were religious wildernesses waiting to truly receive and understand the Good Word. Since then, in both Korea and Haiti, westernization, Western hegemony, and Western neo-colonialization have featured strong undercurrents of North-American-derived Protestantism. However, the respective lots and religious fields of each country have been dramatically different overall largely because of national and global economic and political forces. South Korea enjoyed formidable growth both in its economy and its evangelical Christian population after the Korean War (1950-1953), resulting in Korean Christianity’s zealous participation in evangelical Protestant mission overseas, following the models of North American mission enterprises, especially toward the end of the century. Meanwhile, Haiti continued to suffer from natural disasters, political turmoil, and widespread abject poverty. Thus, overseas Haitian Protestant mission work is altogether non-existent, though internally evangelical prosetalization efforts are legion and often aggressive. Vodou and Catholicism, meanwhile, continue to captivate the majority of the Haitian masses, but Protestantism is clearly on the rise across the nation. In is into this socio-religious context that Korean Protestant missions expanded in the Caribbean nation, an expansion that has amplified especially since the tragic 2010 earthquake. Toward understanding these developments, this project investigates the influx of Korean and Korean American Protestant missionaries in contemporary Haiti and the reverberations of North American evangelicalism as channeled through and adapted by Korean missionaries. With all of these historical and contemporary contexts in mind, this dissertation more sharply focuses on a specific group of actors in the Haitian religious field, namely contemporary Korean American Protestant women missionaries. I argue that their activity suggests a new type of examples for current scholarly discourses about the relationship between gender and evangelical missions. By way of historical analyses of both Korean and Haitian Protestant Christianity and oral histories based on interviews with Korean missionaries in Haiti, this study argues that Korean evangelicalism has developed a distinctive gendered praxis that claims both continuity with and divergence from North American evangelicalism. It also shows that in both South Korea and Haiti, twentieth-century U.S. hegemony and military occupation were significant factors in propelling Protestant Christianity. / Religion

When, at age forty-nine, B.B. McKinney becae the Music Editor for the Baptist Sunday School Board, he began a career as probably the most influential man in Southern Baptist music, setting in motion the machinery that has made the Southern Baptist church music program among the largest in the nation. After six years with the Board, McKinney was promoted to Secretary of the newly-formed Church Music Department. Through his leadership state conventions were led to employ music secretaries to help train and assist churches with their individual music programs. Besides his continued editorship and composing, he set up, with his associate Hines Sims, the Church Music Training Course, and began the publication of a monthly journal, The Church Musician.

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<p>This thesis is a study of the patterns of change within Sri Lankan Tamil tradition, with a particular focus on the nineteenth century. It endeavours to accomplish two things. First, by the examination of colonial Sri Lanka against a detailed consideration of the pre-existing society and culture, the thesis shows that the colonial period, far from being one of great change and disjunction with the past, in fact experienced a very gradual course of social change which was facilitated by the widespread incorporation of traditional structures that gave colonial society a much needed stability and a peaceful environment where trade and commerce could prosper. ~econdly, by taking this approach, the thesis demonstrates that the nineteenth century Anglo-Saxon Protestant missionaries eventually fell into the traditional role of sannyasins, a role, as this work shows, that had been adopted by the Jain mendicants and the Buddhist bhikkhus who had preceded them. The thesis first demonstrates that the sannyasin, although in a fundamental sense an enemy of caste, having turned his or her back on caste society, has nevertheless deeply influenced Hindu society, partfcularly when organized as a community of renouncers. The thesis then goes on to argue that the Protestant sannyasins likewise, in the establishment of male and female boarding schools, advocated a form of communal renunciation, which contributed .to the formation of a parallel society alongside the caste society, and which became instrumental in initiating many changes within Tamil culture in Sri Lanka.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This ethnography explores the interracial encounters between individuals in a biracial old-line Protestant congregation. Using the theoretical framework of aversive racism, this dissertation suggests that an individual's racial paranoia and racial identity attitude helps to explain the way that white members interact with black members and the way they perceive these encounters. This dissertation addresses the questions: How do members of a biracial congregation interact across race? How do they engage in discussions about race? How does racial identity attitude inform their perspectives? It draws upon data collected over two periods: a two-month pilot study and a nine-month dissertation study. Data include field notes from more than 240 hours of observations during 80 visits, and transcripts of interviews with 17 people (nine black, eight white; two pastors, two staff, 13 members; ages 21 to 76) which averaged 2½-hours each. This dissertation describes three findings. (1) White members have learned to comfortably co-exist with black members in worship but have not developed deep enough relationships to learn from them the extent of racism that survives in the post Civil Rights era. (2) Misconceptions among white members about what is "politically correct" stifle constructive interracial dialogue about race issues and lead to aversive behaviors that have a racist effect for African American members. (3) With only modest social interaction across race and little dialogue about race, white members of the congregation hold markedly different perceptions than black members about the interracial life of this church and the problem with racism there. These findings are significant because they help us to understand the obstacles which this nation must address in order to respond to the complexities of race in urban America, of which this congregation offers a microcosm. / Urban Education

Over the past fifty years, Christian contemporary music has joined hymnody and psalmody as a major form of evangelical liturgical and devotional song. While the production and content of this genre have been explored by scholars, few studies have attended to the devotional use of the genre and its role in shaping the religious lives of American evangelicals. This project draws from several sets of data to address this matter: analysis of church-created worship music albums, listener testimonials on Christian radio websites, and focus group interviews of laity and clergy at four South Carolina churches. The data revealed that music is significant to their religious lives outside of church as a means of encountering God, managing emotions, and displaying spiritual capital. Inside churches, the music is used to create a sense of corporate identity that reinforces social bonds within the community and attracts newcomers. Drawing on the methodological framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his work on social distinction, I argue that American evangelicals who listen to Christian contemporary music are engaged in aural piety, a set of practices, attitudes, and ideas invested in music that structure and evoke the experience of the sacred. / Religion