This dissertation analyzes the relationships between black religious discourse and the moral panic surrounding contemporary black youth culture. Focusing on the public discourses of black preachers (i.e. sermons, essays, articles, interviews, videos, musical recordings and other public utterances), the dissertation demonstrates the ways that such religious rhetoric both reinforces and resists prevailing perceptions of black youth as morally and socially deviant. At the center of the dissertation are three case studies that probe the interventionist strategies of three black activist preachers, who position themselves within the prophetic stream of the Black Church tradition. Each of these ministers make a public theological turn to popular culture- and hip-hop in particular- as a site of struggle over the meanings and values that define the social, political, and moral status of black youth within the social imaginary. The case studies in this dissertation resist reductionist readings of both black youth culture and the public theological discourses of black activist preachers. Rather, they reveal the moral complexity of black youth culture, and the moral urgency of a public theological discourse, informed by cultural analysis and criticism, that is committed to the flourishing of black youth in the era of hip-hop.

The principal objective of this dissertation is to read the Apocalypse as resistance literature in the interest of suffering readers through the construction of a new hermeneutic of liberation. I suggest a cultural studies reading of the Apocalypse that foregrounds the theme of justice by reconstructing an apocalyptic vision of utopia inscribed in the text, in such a way as to highlight the contextual concerns of the suffering reader. In so doing, the present study undermines previous readings that may end up maintaining the status quo of injustice insofar as they foreground an ethic of peace at the expense of justice. In reading the Apocalypse as envisioning the resolution of apocalyptic crisis by means of human agency as well as divine intervention, this study highlights human resistance in terms of both thought and action in social as well as religious dimensions of human relations. The contribution of this work to Revelation Studies lies in reclaiming the Christian apocalypse as a helpful text that not only encourages suffering readers to endure in the hope of God¡¯s future salvation but also empowers them to actively resist against unwarranted suffering via a variety of resistance strategies that subsume more assertive ways than in previous scholarship.

<p> The author presents a legalism orientation as a problem in ministry for Stonecrest Community Church. The researcher developed the Stonecrest Survey of Discipleship Orientation (SSDO), an instrument to measure movement in a person&rsquo;s discipleship orientation with relation to legalism. The attitudes of ninety-one responders who participated were measured, first to establish a baseline for the study, and eleven months later to measure their movement in discipleship orientation regarding legalism. With the help of a local church elder who conducted interviews with twelve congregants looking for factors of movement from legalism orientation to abiding faith spiritual orientation, the researcher discovered that the Stonecrest congregation's discipleship orientation shifted due to the influence of its lead pastor's own journey away from legalism. Based on these findings, the author made ministry recommendations.</p>

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The Gospel of Matthew and the rabbinic compilation Genesis Rabbah draw on Scripture in order to portray individuals as symbols of biblical Israel that respond to present concerns about sin and forgiveness. Matthewâs Vineyard Parable (Mt 21:33-46) and Passion Narrative (Mt 26:36-27:56) describe Jesus recapitulating the events surrounding the Babylonian exile in his arrest and crucifixion. By narrating Jesusâ suffering and death in terms of Israelâs suffering, Matthew illustrates how Jesus âwill save his people from their sinsâ (Mt 1:21) by undergoing the exilic consequences of collective Israelâs sins. The rabbis bring together the story of Israelâs exile with Adamâs expulsion from Eden (Genesis 2-3), Jacobâs sojourn in Bethel (Gen 28:10-13), and Jacobâs sonsâ captivity to Joseph (Gen 43:14), so that the earliest biblical characters provide templates for contemporary suffering under Christian Rome, which will lead to salvation from sin. Both Gospel and Midrash utilize narrative pattering to form their respective symbols: Matthew cites Scriptures that establish a pattern on which to base Jesus, and the rabbis find patterns between figures from Genesis and collective Israel that exist within the Tanakh. Both texts also employ metalepsisâa device that pushes readers to interpret a citation in light of its unstated biblical context. Thus, Matthew and Genesis Rabbah share exegetical techniques that furnish symbols for distinct groups and circumstances, and provide messages to define and sustain early Jewish and Christian identity.

This dissertation presents evolutionary and developmental science models that integrate attachment theory and mentalization theory with mindfulness meditation. Attachment researchers study the quality of the evolved bond between infants and caregivers and its effects on childhood and adult functioning. Mentalization theorists examine the development of the human capacity to understand the behavior of self and others in terms of underlying mental states. Mindfulness therapists emphasize dis-identifying with painful thoughts by attending to and accepting our present, unfolding experience. Attachment- and mentalization-based therapies are relational, developmental, conscious- and unconscious-oriented, reflective, and past/present/future-oriented. Mindfulness therapies are intrapersonal, non-developmental, non-reflective, bodily- and mentally-focused, and present-oriented. Research suggests both approaches can treat the same affective and anxiety disorders. Both also cause changes in the brain, often in different neural networks. How might we explain this? I answer by appealing to evolution and human development. We see disparities in the research literatures because psychotherapy and meditation invoke different mechanisms in the brain, which have evolved in different periods of mammalian and human history. This dissertation has three central premises. First, attachment, mentalization, and mindfulness can be integrated in evolutionary and developmental models of human functioning. Attachment came first (200 million years ago); mentalization came second (200,000 years ago); and mindfulness came third (2,500 years ago). The neural mechanisms and psychological capacities underlying mentalization and mindfulness are shaped by early attachment bonds. Deficits in these capacities can account for problems encountered in meditation. Second, Buddhism, like all religions, builds upon attachment-related processes. Buddhist philosophies, rituals, and practices are suffused with attachment themes. Third, early attachment bonds shape moral sensibilities and empathy. Buddhist ethical and meditative practices have an important role to play in our globalized, interdependent world in helping us to extend empathy to others.

Married Christians in Rome in the third and fourth centuries commissioned works of visual art containing their portraits accompanied by Christian motifs and symbols. This visual evidence, found in sarcophagus reliefs, catacomb painting, gold glass medallions, gems, seals, jewels, and other personal items, is examined as a means of articulating the little-known views of the non-celibate majority of late antique Christians who continued in traditional patterns of Roman life, including marriage and childrearing. Lay Christians adopted marital iconography found in Roman art, including the dextrarum iunctio, wedding scenes with a mediator figure, intellectual sphere portraits, and double-portraits in circular frames. They also adapted these forms and used new iconography, including coronation images and figures of spouses worshiping at Jesusâs feet. The emergence of these distinctive images coincides with the development of a nuptial blessing and early forms of marriage liturgy. Images of Adam and Eve often appear in marital contexts and correspond to discourse using the story of the first parents to conceptualize marriage and married life. Both funerary art and literary sources give evidence of spousal devotion after death, the idea of a marital bond that endured beyond death, and hopes that spouses would reunite in an afterlife. The visual art of married Christians shows their participation in discourse on marriage and celibacy, and their contributions during a formative period in the Christian conceptualization of marriage and family life.

The dissertation begins with an autoethnographic account of my own experiences as a CPE chaplain resident and current PRN hospital chaplain in order to explore wider relationships between pastoral care and dominant health care trajectories and politics. Using empirical studies, personal accounts by health care professionals, and the political theories of Michel Foucault, I argue that current trends and practices in the hospital both marginalize those who cannot buy into the system and render the human experience of decline and death invisible. Chaplains contribute to these trends through their pastoral presence, assessment, and recording of the patientâs spirituality. These practices are heavily laden with the therapeutic ideals of acceptance and self-realization, which further medicineâs power and management of death rather than reckoning with the realities of loss in human experience. However, employing the theories of Julia Kristeva and Jean-Luc Nancy, I also argue that chaplains nonetheless experience a sense of loss in their work of care and articulate this loss with families and patients in the terms of spirituality. These experiences and language recognize and honor loss within the hospital, thus subverting the excesses of biomedicine today that can speak only of progress and commodification.

Homileticians have felt the pressure and the apathy of emerging postmodern cultures about the church and its preaching. From Clyde Reid to Fred Craddock, John McClure to David Lose, Lucy Rose to Sarah Travisâthe hunch has been that something needs to change. The solutions have revolved around conversational sermonic formsâtactics for inhabiting the troubled space of pulpit and pew. This dissertation uses the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead to dismantle the pulpit/pew binary in order to invite homiletics to novel vistas for the ministry of preaching in the midst of Web 3.0. Web 3.0 is a global network that with ever-present and evolving tools. This âgadflyâ has lured hundreds of millions of people into a daily reality known as X-reality, with relationships and connections and conversation informing and forming us in a constant flow blurring the lines between âvirtualâ and âconventionalâ reality (another troubled binary). The novelty of this moment offers to homiletics new ways in which to preach for those who are willing to embrace the new possibilities within technoculture for reimagining the event, spaces, and media in which we preach. In other words, the way in which we preach (from a pulpit to a pew, rooting preaching in the liturgical event, a pulpit-pew monologue, and aural-oral media) could now be reimagined (homiletics) through Web 3.0 At the same time, the way we understand congregation and neighbor (ecclesiology) also undergoes a transformation in this age of globalization and the World Wide Web. This project seeks the defining essences preaching so that it can dialogueânot debateâwith Web 3.0. Then it develops a theological ethic for relationality under the rubric of touch. This norm resists strategies of the young and powerful system of social media that run counter to the Imago Dei revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. Finally, some models are identified for preachers who wish to practice homilecclesiology in their ministry contexts, guided by the theological ethic of touch.

In this thesis I offer a critique of the United States health care system and posit that a better relationship between the social sciences and theology could pave the way for better public health programs and services. My argument uses texts from ethnographic and womanist theologians Christian Scharen and Emilie Townes as well as psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott. My critique echoes the work of other scholarship in religiously based approaches to healing that critique health systems medical care for people with illnesses in the Black communities. My addition creatively uses culture, and specifically Black culture when possible, to offer an unfeigned rally cry for the academy and Christian community to join in reviving Black health. I will explore how communal lament coupled with the concept of everyday people engaging in communion with their neighbor has the potential to provide healing in Black life and ignite a revival within Black communities of care. The rally cry calls for the community to join in a revival to revitalize Black health.