abstract: This work examines the spectrum of Christian attitudes toward yoga as demonstrative of contemporary religious imagination in recent United States history. With the booming commodification of yoga as exercise, the physical and mental elements of yoga practice are made safely secular by disassociation from their ostensible religious roots. Commonly deployed phrases, "Yoga is not a religion," or even, "Yoga is a science," open a broad invitation. But the very need for this clarification illustrates yoga's place in the United States as a borderline signifier for spirituality. Vocal concern by both Christians and Hindus demonstrates the tension between perceptions of yoga as a secular commodity and yoga as religiously beget. Alternatively embracing and rejecting yoga's religious history, Christian yoga practitioners reframe and rejoin yoga postures and breathing into their lives of faith. Some proponents name their practice Christian Yoga. Christian Yoga flourishes as part of contemporary religious and spiritual discourse and practice in books, instructional DVDs, websites and studios throughout the United States. Christian Yoga proponents, professional and lay theologians alike, highlight the diversity of American attitudes toward and understanding of yoga and the heterogeneity of Christianity. For religious studies scholars, Christian Yoga advocates and detractors provide an opportune focal point for inquiry into the evolution of spiritual practice, the dynamics of tradition, experience and authority, and the dialectic nature of evolving cultural attitudes in a religiously plural and complex secular environment. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Religious Studies 2014

In 1962 Walter Trobisch, a Lutheran missionary in Cameroon, published a book about love, sex, and marriage. By 1974 the book had been translated into seventy languages. One million copies were in circulation, and Walter had received 10,000 letters from young people around the world asking for sexual advice. The book, J'ai Aimé Une Fille, launched Walter and his wife Ingrid into a global marriage counseling ministry. Through books, seminars, and personal correspondence the Trobisches advocated western, Christian sexual ethics like premarital chastity, spouse self-selection, monogamy, and the intimacy and spiritual equality of husband and wife. This dissertation analyzes the economic, political, and religious conditions that facilitated the global flow of the Trobisches' message. Global gender relations during this period were in flux, due to the influence of colonial encounters, industrialization, urbanization, and new forms of education. Cultural chasms often developed between the young, who were open to new family structures and sexual norms, and the old, who insisted on preserving traditions like the bride-price and arranged marriage. While the Trobisches held paternalistic attitudes common among western missionaries of their generation, their vision of sexual ethics aimed to provide young people around the world with tools to navigate changing sexual norms of the mid-twentieth century. In the 1960s, the Trobisches helped to popularize and shape an African marriage guidance movement. However, with the awareness in the 1970s of the church's complicity in colonialism, the Trobisches' leadership in African marriage guidance became increasing problematic. As they lost influence in Africa, they shifted their focus to the United States, where their vision of sexual ethics resonated with evangelicals who were trying to distinguish their views of sexuality from those of the surrounding culture. Although the Trobisches conceived of their work as a way to introduce non-Christians to the faith, the people most affected by their work were those who already considered themselves Christian. Through historical analysis of books, correspondence, diaries, articles, and conference proceedings, this dissertation argues that the Trobisches played a significant role in shaping a transcultural conversation about the meaning of Christian marriage during the mid-twentieth century.

While XVII$\sp{\rm th}$ century France was fraught with wars, epidemics, never-ending riots, and famine, the name of Saint Vincent de Paul came to be associated with the notion of Charity. When Vincent became a priest at the age of 20, little did he realize the extraordinary role he would play in the history of the Counter-Reformation, with women as his principal allies. As a child, Vincent experienced the unique nurturing of his mother's love, and his devotion to the Virgin Mary would play a major part in his spiritual life. At 26, he established his first society of women to help the poor, known as Charite. Later on, he became the spiritual director of a young widow, Louise de Marillac. Their common love for the poor eventually led to the creation of the community of the Daughters of Charity. Unlike cloistered nuns, the members of this new secular community were for the most part peasant girls who were able to perform works of charity throughout France and abroad. A year after establishing the Daughters of Charity, Vincent was asked to form an assembly of aristocratic and bourgeois women in Paris to be given the name Ladies of Charity. These women helped finance most of his projects, and were the decision-makers in an effort to provide one of the first forms of social assistance to the entire country. As Vincent's notoriety spread far and wide, Anne d'Autriche and Louise-Marie de Gonzague, Queen of Poland, came to rely on his guidance for spiritual matters regarding their respective countries. Unlike many of his contemporaries, known for their anti-feminism, Saint Vincent de Paul had understood that women have an undeniable role to play as mediators in God's plan of love. The remarkable results of his collaboration with them mark an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of Catholicism and the promotion of women. This partnership is examined closely, along with its impact on the XX$\sp{\rm th}$ century.

Luther’s theological and ethical consideration of lying is founded on protecting the reputation and welfare of the neighbor. In sermons, prayer books, catechisms, lectures, letters, and table talks, Luther addresses lies and secrecy in varying contexts and continually returns to the same conclusion: a person’s speech should protect the neighbor’s reputation rather than harm it. Luther first develops his thoughts on lying in catechetical literature on the eighth commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” which he interprets positively as a requirement to protect the neighbor’s reputation. Diverging from an idealized Augustinian ethic which condemns all lies as sinful, Luther’s emphasis on protection of the neighbor allows him to identify truths as sinful when they harm another and lies as sinless when they protect another. Luther does draw on Augustine’s framework of three types of lies—the harmful, the playful, and the dutiful—to distinguish among sinful, harmless, and beneficial lies. Luther maintains this focus on protection and the distinction among kinds of lies in his Lectures on Genesis, where he examines lies in many different contexts, commending some and condemning others. Luther’s interpretations expand to offer application and advice to his contemporaries, including advice on how to deceive others in an appropriate way. Luther’s consistent position on deception in his catechetical and exegetical writing provides his rationale for advising lying in the case of Philipp of Hesse’s bigamy despite the disastrous consequences for both Luther and Philipp. Combined with his theology of the seal of the confessional, Luther’s view of lying provides further protection for the neighbor, whether the neighbor is a rich influential ruler or the vulnerable woman next door. As others in the Wittenberg circle wrote their own catechisms, they drew heavily on Luther’s concern for protecting the neighbor and continue to excuse lies that prevent harm. Luther’s emphasis on protection and prevention of harm thus become an enduring focus in the Lutheran ethical tradition’s treatment of lying and deception. / 2025-07-26T00:00:00Z

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation examines the powerful vortex of John Sung's revivals in China and Southeast Asia, which directly influenced ten percent of all Chinese Protestants by the end of the 1930s. It begins in 1926 with his decision to pursue theological education in the United States, and ends with his physical collapse in 1940. But the work is not focused on biographical details; it is primarily concerned with how Sung's ministry evolved. Contrary to the numerous biographies on Sung that circulate in multiple languages, he did not return to China as a newly born-again believer enthusiastic to call the nation to repentance. Instead, this work demonstrates that Sung first floundered in China, spending several years piecing together his conversion narrative, and he adopted the revivalism that made him famous only after joining the Shanghai Bethel Mission in 1931. Once those pieces fit together, however, Sung became the preeminent Chinese evangelist of the twentieth century. The dissertation uses archival material and unrestricted access to Sung's own diaries not only to reconstruct the transformations within Sung's ministry, but also to make new dimensions of his work accessible. Particular attention is given to class, women, and divine healing. Sung's revivals appealed to the xiaoshimin, or China's petty urbanites, who sought a modern spirituality that befit their urban lives, yet wanted a religious system that addressed their traditional concerns. Women appeared at Sung's revivals in disproportionate numbers, because in China and Southeast Asia revivalism and modernity fueled one another, and women could use that combustible mix to cast new places for themselves in local societies--even if it meant challenging Sung's own perception of women. Sung's practice of healing, derived from the holiness movement, temporarily challenged China's medical pluralism, before eventually becoming part of it. Analysis of Sung's ministry suggests that revivalism was a powerful tool for personal and social revitalization. Through it, Sung not only rebuilt his own life and ministry, but he also used revivalism to recreate a distinctively Chinese spirituality, though now Christianized and expressed in ways appropriate to China and Southeast Asia's modernizing cities.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.