Charles Chauncy remains an important transitionary figure between eighteenth century Puritan orthodoxy and nineteenth century liberal Congregationalism. Many historians imagined Chauncy as a figure caught between the revelatory experiences of the Great Awakening and the rational social ethos of the Revolutionary War. This framework has helped historians harmonize Chauncy’s traditional Calvinism and his progressive Universalism, especially as they understand Chauncy’s publications on Universalism: The Mystery Hid From Ages, The Benevolence of the Deity, and Five Dissertations. Read together, these three works comprise a Universalism canon that portrays Chauncy as a theologian compromising between two extremes: reason and revelation. Read separately, however, demands a more nuanced view of Chauncy beyond portrayals of him as a religious innovator or an indecisive theologian. Chauncy’s strict adherence to scripture complicates this paradigm. On the surface, Chauncy’s biblicism illustrates his adherence to Puritan methods of epistemology. A deeper analysis of scriptural authority’s shifting role in Chauncy’s canon demonstrates an individual negotiating his abiblical environment with the texts of scripture . While historians have demonstrated the ways in which hermeneutical decisions arise from the social and political situations faced by individuals like Chauncy, few have investigated the ways in which scripture also facilitates religious transitions, at times even the decline of its influence in social and political contexts. Chauncy’s inclusion and omissions of scripture in his publications demonstrated the ways in which eighteenth century biblical canon struggled to adapt to an eighteenth century context. Recognizing this, Chauncy grounded his Universalism on scripture by appropriating John Taylor’s exegetical approaches to rebut the abiblical Universalism of John Murray or the rationalist of deists like Thomas Paine. But by the nineteenth century, New England Congregationalism demonstrated the fruits of a Chauncy’s labors: a steep decline in reliance upon biblical authority. While Chauncy had demonstrated the possibility of a biblical foundation for his Universalism, he may have also inadvertently diminished the need for it as he compromised on biblical authority in his works on Universalism. These compromises foreshadowed the challenges to scriptural authority in the nineteenth century.

This dissertation explores the liturgical work and influences of Methodist theologian Georgia Harkness in the broader context of mainline American Christianity and theological liberalism of the twentieth century. Through an examination of Harkness’s writing about worship as well as the resources she produced for worship, the thesis argues that her often overlooked liturgical work was central to her self-understanding as an applied theologian and shaped her theological interests and evolution throughout her career. This study begins by showing the centrality of prayer and worship in the personal and professional biography of Harkness. Through analysis of her many articles and sections of books on prayer and public worship, it leads to an assessment of Harkness’s own growing commitment to the liturgical life of the church and demonstrates how a self-described “evangelical liberal” built on her personalist foundations to help modern Christians reclaim the church’s liturgical tradition within new theological constructs. Further, by examining the prayers, worship services, and hymns that Harkness planned and wrote, the dissertation helps to explain how her theological understanding of worship and prayer was made manifest in the liturgical resources she created. This study also argues that Harkness’s growing commitment to the liturgical life of the church played a key role in her own theological evolution. Through her own immersion in worship and prayer, Harkness’s work became more theological, her theology became more Christocentric, and her ecclesiology deepened and developed a global and ecumenical conscience. As she delved deeper into the liturgical life of the church, she began drawing connections between liturgy, theology, and ethics, which presaged a central topic of modern-day liturgical studies. Finally, the dissertation claims that her work as an applied theologian at the intersection of various disciplines and communities makes her an excellent model for modern-day practical theology. This research and assessment contributes to existing scholarship by reclaiming an often-overlooked part of Georgia Harkness’s legacy. More broadly, it helps dispel the myth that theological liberalism was not interested in worship or devotion and gives a more nuanced understanding of the theological and liturgical landscape of mid-twentieth-century mainline Protestantism. / 2020-06-21T00:00:00Z

abstract: ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the encounter of a large cadre of 103 Roman Catholic priests from Ireland and their Mexican parishioners. Scholars have not explored this rich historical juncture. This is the first study to do so. Primary and secondary sources, as well as numerous oral history interviews provide the evidence that supports the thesis that the Irish priests and the Mexican people shared something of a common consciousness, resulting from similar histories, worldviews, and cultural values. This counters the prevailing scholarly opinion which excoriates Euroamerican churchmen of that time for misunderstanding and neglecting their Hispanic flock. Standing apart in this respect, most priests from Ireland--unlike clergy from other backgrounds-- were sympathetic to folk traditions and experienced a synergy with Mexican people which enabled them to adapt and learn from Hispanic communities. Yet for all that Irish priests and Mexicans shared in common, these pastors failed to see or at least address the social, economic, and ecclesiastical discrimination which Mexicans daily experienced or challenge the systems which kept them subservient. Paradoxically, these clergy accepted Mexican people, but they also accepted the racist structures which marginalized them. This historical moment is unique for two reasons. In the mid-twentieth century Irish-born priests were ubiquitous and constituted the largest number of Catholic missionaries in the world. Today there are scarcely enough priests to supply the parishes of Ireland. Similarly, in the mid- twentieth century Mexicanos and Mexican Americans were almost without exception Catholic. Today this can no longer be taken for granted. These shifts presage the end of an era for the Church in Arizona. Nationally, they correspond to the denouement of long-standing U.S. Irish ecclesiastical establishment and herald the ascendancy of an Hispanic Catholic Church. In reconstructing this history salient themes emerge: ethnicity, religion (official/popular), power relations, prejudice/discrimination, and the discovery of common ground amid differences. This matrix gives rise to a complex crisscrossing of trajectories of Catholics and Protestants (in society), Irish and Mexican Catholics (in the church), priest and parishioners (in the parish). It holds lessons for the future. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2015

abstract: In order to illuminate the role written documents played within medieval monastic life, this project takes as a case study the monastery of Cluny and some associated houses during the central Middle Ages. I approach these documents as signs, drawing on anthropological and philosophical work on semiosis, and as media technologies, using history and cultural studies centered on orality and literacy, and conclude that the monastic use of texts was essentially ritual, and as such exerted an important influence on the development of literacy as a tool and a set of practices. Nor did this influence flow in just one direction: as monastic ritual transformed the use of documents, the use of documents also transformed monastic ritual. To study the relationship between document and ritual, I examine what medieval documents reveal about their production and use. I also read the sources for what they directly report about the nature of monastic life and monastic ritual, and the specific roles various documents played within these contexts. Finally, these accounts of changing monastic scribal and ritual practice are laid alongside a third—that of what the monks themselves actually enunciated, both directly and indirectly, about their own understanding of semiosis and its operation in their lives. Ultimately, my dissertation connects valuable theoretical and philosophical work on ritual, semiosis, and orality and literacy with manuscript studies and with a wide range of recent historiography on the complex transformations remaking society inside and outside the cloister during the Middle Ages. It thus serves to bring these disparate yet mutually indispensable lines of inquiry into better contact with one another. And in this way, it approaches an understanding of human sign-use, carefully rooted in both material and institutional culture, during a key period in the history of human civilization. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2015

abstract: In "Between Mountain and Lake: an Urban Mormon Country," I identify a uniquely Mormon urban tradition that transcends simple village agrarianism. This tradition encompasses the distinctive ways in which Mormons have thought about cities, appropriating popular American urban forms to articulate their faith's central beliefs, tenants, and practices, from street layout to home decorating. But if an urban Mormon experience has as much validity as an agrarian one, how have the two traditions articulated themselves over time? What did the city mean for nineteenth-century Mormons? Did these meanings change in the twentieth-century, particularly following World War II when the nation as a whole underwent rapid suburbanization? How did Mormon understandings of the environment effect the placement of their villages and cities? What consequences did these choices have for their children, particularly when these places rapidly suburbanized? Traditionally, Zion has been linked to a particular place. This localized dimension to an otherwise spiritual and utopian ideal introduces environmental negotiation and resource utilization. Mormon urban space is, as French thinker Henri Lefebvre would suggest, culturally constructed, appropriated and consumed. On a fundamental level, Mormon spaces tack between the extremes of theocracy and secularism, communalism and capitalism and have much to reveal about how Mormonism has defined gender roles and established racial hierarchies. Mormon cultural landscapes both manifest a sense of identity and place, as well as establish relationships with the past. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2015

abstract: Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) is most often treated as a secular philosopher in the literature. But the critical-historical and textual analyses explored in this study suggest that Spinoza wrote the Ethics not as a secular project intended to supersede monotheism for those stoic enough to plumb its icy depths, but rather, and as is much less often assumed, as a genuinely Judeo-Christian theological discourse accounting for the changing scientific worldviews and political realities of his time. This paper draws upon scholarship documenting Spinoza's involvement with Christian sects such as the Collegiants and Quakers. After establishing the largely unappreciated importance of Spinoza's religious or theological thought, a close reading of the Ethics demonstrates that friendship is the theme that ties together Spinoza's ethical, theological, political, and scientific doctrines. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Religious Studies 2014

<p> The tumultuous period of the 1960s reflect an era of change and renegotiation of the power dynamics in the United States. While forging an ethno-nationalist identity, the historical agents of the Chicano Movement also struggled with some of their identifying characteristics and those characteristics impact on their activism. The most notable internal conflict with the Chicanos&rsquo; construction of identity was the role of their faith and its physical manifestation: the Catholic Church. Through the external movements of notable leaders, such as C&eacute;sar Ch&aacute;vez, Ricardo Cruz, and Reies Lopez-Tijerina, the role of religion in a movement that is typically considered secular was notable. These leaders questioned the use of resources by the Church on behalf of the Chicanos and demanded that the Church serve, along with the movement, in their pursuit for equality. Chicano leaders established a precedent for internal changes via Chicano priests and religious Chicanas within the Church. As criticism of the Catholic Church by external forces allowed for ample space for internal members of the system to advocate for change on the basis of the protests. Members of the movement pressured the Catholic Church to support its Chicana constituents were necessary to elicit change from the Catholic Church in its support of Chicano constituents. Each group within the Chicano political movement shared demands of the Church to utilize native clergy, reconsider the use of their resources, and serve their constituents&rsquo; physical and not just their spiritual needs. Aside from this reciprocal relationship, these Chicanos political leaders forced the Catholic Church to act on the declarations of Vatican II by relying on liberationist concepts. These concepts sought to establish a focus on the impoverished and to treat the spiritual needs and earthly needs of the poor simultaneously. The Chicano Movement demanded that the Catholic Church become involved with issues of social justice and provide the Chicano Movement with a greatly needed moral justification.</p><p>

abstract: This dissertation centers on the life of Patrick Francis Healy, the son of an enslaved woman and an Irish slaveholder. Born in 1834, Healy became a Jesuit priest in 1864 and the president of Georgetown University in 1874, seven decades before Georgetown admitted its first African American student. In the twentieth century, historical investigations of race and American Catholicism cast Healy and his family in a new light. Today, the Healys are upheld in some circles as African American Catholic icons. Patrick Healy is now remembered as the first African American Jesuit and Catholic university president, as well as the first African American to receive a doctorate. This dissertation pursues both the life of Patrick Healy as well as what I call his “afterlives,” or the ways in which he has been remembered since the 1950s, when Albert S. Foley, S.J. discovered that the Healys’ mother was enslaved and refashioned them from white Irish Americans to white-passing African Americans. How and why did Patrick Francis Healy understand and comport himself as a white, upper-class Catholic? How and why have others sought to construct him as African American in the years since his ancestry was made widely known? How has Georgetown incorporated Healy’s legacy, in the context of its and other universities’ coming-to-terms with their dealings with slavery more broadly? I pursue these questions through archival sources (primarily Healy’s diaries and letters) at Georgetown University and College of the Holy Cross, as well as secondary literature on passing, subjectivity, and hagiography. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2020

The Erklaerung des Vaterunsers is a 337 page meditation and commentary on the Lord's Prayer composed by the fifteenth century German mystic, Magdalena Beutler of Freiburg. This study comprises biographical and critical essays concerning Magdalena and her works, together with a critical edition of the Erklaerung with textual apparatus. Its purpose is to reintroduce Magdalena and her hitherto inaccessible devotional works into late medieval religious and literary scholarship. Previous studies of Magdalena have dismissed her as a deluded, self-dramatizing hysteric and failed to mention either the Erklaerung or her most popular work, the Goldene Litanei, a meditation on the Passion that was widely anthologized from her own time through the early seventeenth century. This dissertation attempts to show that, despite the occasional criticism of contemporaries, Magdalena's actions lay well within a tradition of Franciscan mysticism which centered on the imitation of the life of Christ; that the special emphases of her devotion were characteristic of a strain of female piety that had begun to be voiced as early as the twelfth century; and that her peculiarly literal and physical approach to the imitatio Christi was at the same time orthodox and innovative; and that the Erklaerung represents Magdalena's efforts to share her practices and concerns with her community.

This dissertation demonstrates how the Emmanuel Gospel Center, a parachurch organization in Boston, built an urban evangelical coalition out of the city’s postwar migrant communities. Efforts to resist government-directed urban renewal and a missionary posture toward the city drove the organization’s initially all-white staff into ministry partnerships with minority Protestant leaders. The Emmanuel Gospel Center brought these diverse communities together through the organization’s consistent promotion of collaborative city-wide ministry endeavors. Partnership with Boston’s growing migrant population then extended the organization’s ministries overseas. The study argues that white urban evangelicals created and promoted enduring cross-cultural and global religious networks within the United States. Douglas Hall and Judy Hall, who arrived at the Emmanuel Gospel Center in 1964, changed the organization from a fundamentalist preaching station into an evangelical “mission society” that prioritized collaboration with migrant churches. The couple’s missionary approach fit the tenuous neo-evangelical situation in the inner city created by middle-class flight to the suburbs. Protesting urban renewal with their Puerto Rican neighbors in the late 1960s saved the Emmanuel Gospel Center, turned the Halls into community organizers, and transformed their neighborhood into the heart of the city’s Puerto Rican community. In the 1970s, the Halls built ministry networks with African-American and Puerto Rican Protestant leaders. Boston’s multicultural evangelical coalition became institutionalized with the founding of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s urban educational program in 1976. The study argues that intercultural collaboration produced a coalition that was ethnically diverse, poor and working-class, and increasingly pentecostal. Furthermore, through the Emmanuel Gospel Center, neo-evangelicals formed an integral part of this coalition. In the 1980’s, the Emmanuel Gospel Center built partnerships with Haitian ministers. These connections drew the organization’s ministries into the Haitian diaspora beyond Boston while promoting unity within the city’s often divided Haitian Protestant community. This dissertation contributes to scholarship on evangelicalism by arguing that postwar coalition-building on the local, urban level provides an alternative reading of the movement compared with studies that highlight regional or national associations. Analysis of the Emmanuel Gospel Center demonstrates that American evangelicalism developed within a transnational and interconnected Caribbean context. For the field of World Christianity, the study shows how midcentury African-American and Puerto Rican migrations laid the foundation for multiethnic Protestant networks among late twentieth-century urban immigrant communities.