Contributions to a knowledge of Latter-day Saint Church history can not only be made from a study of the lives of its great leaders, but such contributions can also be made from a study of some of the local leaders of the Church. Benjamin Franklin Stewart was one of these leaders who gained only local and temporary acclaim. Yet he contributed a life of service to his Church.

The effects of Romanization were believed to be devastating to the cultures conquered by Rome, but Britain was an exception. The Romanization of Britain began through trade with the continent long before the invasion by Claudius. But the natives of Britain did not accept the Roman culture as completely as other conquests by Rome. R. G. Collingwood did not believe that the Romans dominated the Celtic culture. What he observed in the inscriptions and archaeology of Britain was a conflation of both cultures. Roman Britain was a unique combination of Celtic and Roman culture that was achieved through mutual acceptance and practice of both cultures’ values. The examination of two of those values, religious and mortuary practices, can help reveal the extent of Romanization in Britain and finally confirm Collingwood’s theory of Romanization.

<p>I examine the central influence of anti-Catholicism upon the construction of English Canadian nationalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Anti-Catholicism provided an existing rhetorical and ideological tradition and framework within which public figures and other Canadians communicated their diverse visions of an ideal Canada. The study of anti-Catholicism problematizes the rigid separation that many scholars have posited between a conservative ethnic nationalism and a progressive civic nationalism. Often times these very civic values were inextricable from a context of Britishness. Hostility to Catholicism was not limited only to the staunchly Anglophile Conservative party; indeed the importance of anti-Catholicism as a component of Canadian nationalism lies in its presence across the political and intellectual spectrum. Catholicism was perceived to inculcate values antithetical to British traditions. It was a medieval faith that stunted the “natural” development of its adherents, preventing them from becoming responsible citizens in a modern democracy. The concentration of Catholicism in Quebec further inflamed many in Canada who saw French Canadian Catholics as anachronistic barriers to a united, democratic and modern Canada.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Popular interpretations and academic scholarship tends to emphasize the relationship between jihad, military action, and communal violence. These reinforce a sense that violence is inherent to Islam. Investigations into the contexts where jihad has been deployed highlight how its use is often a call for unity believed to be necessary for political goals. Therefore, in order to deconstruct this belief, this thesis tackles instead the relationship between textual interpretations and historical actions, and how these varied across specific moments in time. The case studies examined range from the initial evolution of a theory of jihad in the late antique world, to the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries, to early modern dynamics of the Ottomans and Safavids, and finally to modern state-making projects in the Arabian Peninsula These examples seek to create a comprehensive picture of the intricacies rooted in jihad and the narrative that can be associated with a religion that is most often misunderstood. The effort to shed some light on the multiple facets of jihad is hinged upon how these case studies differ from one another, thus forcing the reader to question how they previously understood the modern day phenomenon of jihad. While the conversation will reiterate various themes and concepts as discussed in previous scholarship, it should push the boundaries on how jihad has been framed as a modern day extremist ideology.

Despite the growing population in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century, decreasing numbers of men chose to train for the ministry. New England Congregational clergy not only declined in number; the status, authority and influence enjoyed by their seventeenth-century forbears had drastically declined as well. Early in the century, ministerial authority was bolstered by the clergy’s educational and financial superiority, a virtual monopoly over religious sacraments and the force of localism in small covenanted communities. But the social impact of explosive population growth, a series of currency crises, and warfare throughout the eighteenth century eroded conditions supporting ministerial hegemony. In the midst of these social and economic changes, clergy faced the temptation to prostitute their ministries for the security of their positions. The loss of educational and financial superiority, their monopoly on the sacraments, and the conforming force of localism, drove eighteenth-century clergy to negotiate for more control over their own futures. Late in the century, Congregational clergy largely managed to escape the confines of a life-long tenure with one congregation, but their newfound freedom did not restore their declining prestige and authority; rather the weakened lay-clerical bond accelerated the decline of the office of the ministry. Ultimately, ministerial authority was a negotiated process between clergy and congregations throughout the colonial period. In spite of the overall decline of clerical status, the theme of negotiation remained constant as the social and economic developments altered the degree of leverage and type of negotiation each could utilize.

This dissertation traces the rise of Jim and Tammy Bakker and analyzes the birth and growth of prosperity theology in the United States of America. It highlights how Jim and Tammy created a form of Pentecostalism that grew alongside and because of the growth of the Sunbelt. It blossomed in the new suburban enclaves of this region. Jim Bakker's religious ideas had their roots in an increasingly powerful anti-New Deal coalition that was led by the conservative business community. Positive thinking and the prosperity gospel reinforced their beliefs in unfettered markets and their opposition to activist government. Bakker combined these ideas with an emphasis on the family, creating a power new kind of religion. It became a form of cultural conservatism that increasingly shaped American society in the 1970s and 1980s, helping transform political issues into moral and religious questions.

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From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, a minority conservative faction took over the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). This project seeks to answer the questions of how a fringe minority within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination could undertake such a feat and why they chose to do so. The framework through which this work analyzes these questions is one of competing worldviews that emerged within the SBC in response to decades of societal shifts and denominational transformations in the post-World War II era. To place the events of the Southern Baptist “crisis” within this framework, this study seeks to refute the prevailing notion put forth in earlier works that the takeover was an in-house event, driven purely by doctrinal disputes between conservative Southern Baptists and SBC leadership. Illustrating the differences between rhetoric and action on both sides of this intra-denominational conflict, this work seeks to provide perspective to the narrative of the Southern Baptist “crisis” by asserting that the worldviews guiding the opposing factions diverged not only on doctrine, but culture and politics as well. Placing the events of the “crisis” within the context of broader worldviews, this project highlights and examines the intertwined nature of religion, culture, and politics in modern American society.

Judean hagiographies are unusual. Some are unexpectedly structured: a saint’s life in the form of a history text. Others offer surprising content. Expected hagiographic stylizations, for example, often depict moments in which the saint is offered money for a miracle. In such cases the saint invariably refuses. Judean saints, however, accept gratitude willingly – often with cash amounts recorded. The peculiarities of these works have regularly been examined on literary and theological grounds. In this dissertation I propose a different approach: socio-economic context. The monasteries that produced these texts were utterly dominated by the environment of Christian Jerusalem. Although often commented upon, the unmined implications of this reality hold the key to understanding these hagiographies. It is only by examining these monasteries’ ties to – and embeddedness within – their peculiar context that we can perceive the mindset that produced such baffling texts. Lengthy historical, literary, and archaeological analysis force Judean hagiography to give up its secrets. These works were in fact not odd at all. Rather, they were hyper-specialized, a unique adaptation to a unique environment. True, we do not see their like in other eastern regions over the span of late antiquity. Yet this is to be expected. Nowhere else can we find the particular conditions that brought these works into being. Nor can we understand the Judean works absent their milieu. It is only upon the foundation of layers of context that these hagiographies stand high enough to view. They were, most accurately, Holy Land hagiographies: a label as unique as the land that produced them.

What is religion? That is a question that have been asked and answered over and over again since the invention of the word itself. The definition of religion is still engaging and dividing social science. Despite that, the word has a untaught part of our everyday life. We meet the word on the news, in conversations and in education. What we may not consider is that religion is a product of it’s own history which until today, influences the understanding of it. The definition of it is also produced and reproduced in different contexts. These contexts in which religion is presented and explained imprint thus our understanding of religion. This paper aim to examine what religion is and how it is defined and described in the context of a museum, more particularly the exhibition Nordamerikas indianer at Etnografiska museet in Stockholm, Sweden.