Thesis (D. Min.)--Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, MN, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-120).

The attitude of the church school teacher must be improved, and this is the primary purpose of this paper. An attempt was made to study scientifically teacher attitudes as measured by an adaptation of the Purdue Teacher Opinionaire administered to a systematically observed sample chosen from three church school faculties in the three Southern Baptist Churches in Denton, Texas.

The purpose of this study is to get some concrete evidence that group principles can be applied to church groups in an effective manner. The more immediate purpose is to improve the relations in the individual classes so that they will have a feeling of belongingness, relatedness, or close affiliation. It is the purpose of this experiment to help these individuals find the fulfillment of their personal needs that can be supplied in the Sunday School class.

The changing relationship of Americans to their churches has been documented but has not been explained. This is a narrative qualitative research inquiry for the purpose of exploring the perspectives of members of Southern Baptist churches who experienced disaffection as a result of marginalization within the church as they practiced their religious faith. Using Social Identity Theory (SIT) and the microaggressions literature, this study described negative interactions and explained the group processes that marginalize church members and motivate their disaffection from the church. The narratives of this study extend the literature on negative interactions in the religious community, describing and examining antecedents and consequences. Two semi-structured interviews with ten participants who were once members of Southern Baptist churches informed this study. Four Southern Baptist churches were represented by the ten participants. Data analysis was aided by NVivo 11. In spite of the inclusive mission of the church, the results of this study clearly place microaggressions, with their accompanying marginalization, within the church. Characteristic of microaggressions, this study found that micro aggressions in the church: a) leave the responsibility of reparation with the target; b) deny the existence of microaggressions within their congregation; and c) breed a sense of rejection as a result of marginalization. This study affirms and extends Pargament's (2002) suggestion that short-term distress may lead to long-term spiritual growth. This study also emphasizes the need to address issues of faith as a dimension of diversity.

The purpose of this study was to compare the avowed beliefs and reported practices of Southern Baptist pastors based upon their level of attainment in higher education and their choice of theological seminary.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University Abstract: leaves 328-330. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 320-327). Microfilm. s / This dissertation attempts to determine the range and the intensity of the Western missionary impact on the African scene. The Southern Baptist mission field in Western Nigeria serves as an example in case. The phenomenon of the missionary impact is of a twofold nature: religious and cultural. The cultural impact of Christian missionaries on the African scene has been of interest for some time, especially to students of the social sciences. As such, it has repeatedly been mentioned in sociological studies concerning certain aspects of social and cultural change. However, rarely has the missionary-induced culture change been studied per se, and never has such change been studied in a context which does justice to Christian missionary motivation as a primary source of action. It is, therefore, the objective of this study to describe this impact both as to its theological cause and its cultural implications. For this purpose, a methodology has had to be designed which would do justice to both the theological concern for and the sociological interest in the culture-mediating activity of the missionary work. The methodology can be broken down into the following two steps. First, the Southern Baptist mission enterprise is described in terms of the theological, philosophical, and cultural forces which contribute to the Southern Baptist mission outreach to the Western Nigerian scene. Against the background of this knowledge, the program of the Southern Baptist mission operations is observed in its interaction with Nigerian Baptist institutions. Secondly, any Nigerian Baptist reactions resulting from this interaction are submitted as data to an analytical model. For the detection of genuine Nigerian Baptist reactions, there was derived a key-factor which serves as a catalyst in determining the analytical values of those data submitted to the model. The resulting values are co-ordinated through the process of quantification and are then integrated into a graph which gives evidence of the qualitative distribution of impact factors, as they contribute to the formulation of the Nigerian Baptist outlook. The evaluation of this evidence makes possible a determination of the range and the degree of intensity of the Southern Baptist mission impact on that portion of the Western Nigerian scene which has become identified with this mission work: the Nigerian Baptist Convention. This methodology represents one portion of the results of this dissertation. The other set of results is provided by the evaluation of the information which was extracted from this analytical process. This evaluation gives some insight into the range and the intensity of the Southern Baptist cultural and theological impact on the Nigerian Baptist scene: 1. Through early autonomy and timely transfer of power to their Nigerian Baptist constituency, Southern Baptists have succeeded in keeping the traditional tensions between overlords and dependents at a minimum. 2. Because of this minimum of tensions, the Southern Baptist mission impact may have prolonged effects on the Nigerian Baptist outlook. 3. The Southern Baptist domination of the theological outlook of the Nigerian Baptist Convention may serve as an example of this prolonged effect. Exceptions are the Nigerian Baptist theological and ethical expressions which have their origin in the experience of the traditional Yoruba social structure and customs. 4. Nigerian Baptists' preoccupatian with the national future of Nigeria, together with the fact that they are a religious minority group, explains their adherence to a Nigerian rather than a Southern Baptist philosophical identity. The positive ecumenical spirit of the Nigerian Baptists is based upon the same phenomenon. 5. Nigerian Baptists--together with most other Nigerians--only now begin to respond to an indigenous cultural identity over against the previously accepted Western cultural identity. 6. Baptist principles of freedom and democracy and Nigerian Baptist political aspirations have not yet come into competition with one another.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2001. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-246).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2001. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-246).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2001. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-246).

This dissertation argues that the pulpit rhetoric of the Pastors’ Conference and SBC Forum portrays the Conservative Resurgence as a competition between conservative and moderate visions for Baptist identity as differentiated by the mutually exclusive manner in which each group perceived of doctrine and the constitution of denominational fellowship. That conservatives and moderates both construed of the conflict in this way is revealed with remarkable consistency by their respective preaching at the annual pre-convention gatherings. Regardless of what conservatives and moderates may have said during the battle or since, their preaching revealed that they both viewed the Resurgence as a competition of visions for Baptist identity. Conservatives pursued the vision of a well-defined and well defended Baptist orthodoxy, while moderates pursued a vision of Baptist freedom. Chapter 1 presents the primary research problem and main argument of this work. Chapter 2 introduces the preaching of the Pastors’ Conference and SBC Forum, giving special attention to those sermons that best exemplified the disagreements that fueled the controversy. Chapter 3 analyzes the preaching of the events using a variety of complementary theories from within the field of social movement rhetorical criticism. Chapter 4 applies Richard Weaver’s theory of ultimate terms to the discourse of the two preaching meetings, revealing what were the most rhetorically potent words and/or phrases among competing conservative and moderate rhetorics. Chapter 5 administers Ernest Bormann’s theory of fantasy theme analysis to the most relevant sermons in order to determine the dramatic motifs to which conservative and moderate rhetor-leaders most often appealed when they invited their hearers to support their vision for Southern Baptists. Chapter 6 provides a synopsis of the main discoveries of this work by describing the issues, the people, the setting, the values, and the visions contained in the pulpit rhetoric of the Conservative Resurgence. The differences between conservative and moderate Southern Baptists as revealed by the rhetorical analysis contained in this work were so profound that a conflict of the nature and significance of the Resurgence was essentially inevitable.