This study explores the Jewish experience within the American military. Information sources include a review of literature, interviews with nineteen Jewish service members, and data files of officers and enlisted personnel who were on active duty as of October 2005. Data files were provided by the Defense Manpower Data Center in Monterey, California. The history of military service by persons of the Jewish faith corresponds roughly to that of persons from many other ethnic or religious groups: military service has been a patriotic calling, especially in periods of war, as well as a path during earlier times toward full assimilation into American society. This study concludes that Jewish military personnel, overall, have consistently performed well in service, given current measures of success; and, this trend is likely to continue. Further research should seek to examine additional measures of success in the military for Jewish personnel. More generally, research should examine the possible relationship between military performance and a person's religious faith, since religion is such an important part of individual identity. This information would add to existing knowledge of the various background and demographic factors of military members that help to shape a diverse and highly effective force.

Thesis advisor: Peter Weiler / This dissertation explores the social, cultural, and political effects of the “Great Church Crisis,” a conflict between the Protestant and Anglo-Catholic (or Ritualist) parties within the Church of England occurring between 1898 and 1906. Through a series of case studies, including an examination of the role of religious controversy in fin-de-siècle Parliamentary politics, it shows that religious belief and practice were more important in turn-of-the-century Britain than has been appreciated. The argument that the onset of secularization in Britain as defined by both a decline in religious attendance and personal belief can be pushed back until at least the 1920s or 1930s is not new. Yet, the insight that religious belief and practice remained a constituent part of late-Victorian and Edwardian national identity and public life has thus far failed to penetrate political, social, and cultural histories of the period. This dissertation uses the Great Church Crisis to explore the interaction between religious belief and political and social behavior, not with the intent of reducing religion to an expression of political and social stimuli, but with the goal of illuminating the ways politics, culture, and social thought functioned as bearers of religious concerns. The intense anti-Catholicism unleashed by the Church Crisis triggered debate about British national identity, Erastianism, and the nature of the church-state relationship. Since the Reformation, Erastians – supporters of full state control of the church – and proponents of a more independent church had argued over how to define the proper relationship between the national church and state. This dissertation demonstrates that the Church Crisis represents a crucial period in the history of church-state relations because the eventual Anglo-Catholic victory ended Parliamentary attempts to control the church’s theology and practice and, therefore, sounded the death knell of political Erastianism. In short, tensions between Protestant and Catholics reached a high water mark during the years of the Great Church Crisis. These tensions catalyzed both a temporary revival of Erastianism and its ultimate descent into irrelevance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole / In the 1960s and 1970s American Catholics invoked conscience inordinately. They claimed to possess “sacred rights of conscience.” Catholics produced a thick psychological literature on the “formation of conscience.” They also made clear that conscience could never be handed over to an authority figure, whether in the church or state. The term conscience then became a keyword in the rights discourse of late twentieth century America. This dissertation seeks to explain why Catholics invoked conscience so frequently in the 1960s and 1970s, and it aims to chart how conscience became important to the rights vernacular of the late twentieth century. Catholics invoked conscience frequently in an effort to remain in and expand tradition. The theology of conscience had roots in the thirteenth century work of Thomas Aquinas -- a tradition American Catholics studied in the 1940s and 1950s. This study also shows how the human rights advocates of Amnesty International and a community of mainline Protestants appropriated the Catholic theology of conscience and used it for their own purposes. The 1960s and 1970s, rather than witnessing the end of tradition, facilitated its growth.

Scholars of southern Jewish history maintain that ante-bellum southerners displayed genuine philo-Semitism towards their Jewish neighbors. Historians attribute this to the southern Jews "effort to assimilate into southern society and to the presence of other, more preferred, targets of the southerners" animus, namely blacks and Catholics. This analysis, however, is not sufficiently broad to explain the South's Protestant-Jewish dynamic. It neither appraises the relationship from the perspective of the Protestants, nor accounts for the intellectual inconsistencies such a conclusion presents regarding both Protestants and southerners, generally. This thesis identifies and responds to these shortcomings by examining southern philo-Semitism through the eyes of the Protestants and thesis argues that pro-Judaic rhetoric of southern evangelical clergy inundated southerners with favorable references and images of the biblical Jews, causing southerners to develop a high degree of reverence and respect for Jews, whom they saw as their spiritual kinfolk. / by Scott H. Lebowitz. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Dissertation--Freiburg im Breisgau--Universität, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. 515-538.

Texte remanié de: Mémoire de master 1--Histoire--Toulouse 2, 2006. / Bibliogr. p. 199-204.

Habilitationsschrift--Marburg. / Bibliography: p. [458]-462.

Beginning with the fundamentalist controversy of the 1920’s, the Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS) was consistently divided by numerous disagreements over reunion with the Northern Presbyterian Church, racial policies, changing theological views, and resolutions on current social controversies. Led by groups such as the Southern Presbyterian Journal, Concerned Presbyterians, Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship, and Presbyterian Churchmen United, conservatives attempted to redirect the direction of the PCUS; however, their efforts failed. Disgruntled by a liberal-moderate coalition that held power, many conservatives withdrew and created the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in 1973, the first major division of a Southern denomination. The PCA was not solely founded because of racial disagreements or any single cultural debate; rather decades’ long theological disagreements regarding the church’s role in society fueled separation along with several sharp social controversies. This departure also expedited reunion (1983) between the Northern and Southern Presbyterian denominations that formed the present Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PC(USA)). Like many other historic Protestant denominations, the PC(USA) has seen a decline in membership, but the PCA and other small Presbyterian denominations have been growing numerically thereby guaranteeing the continued presence of Presbyterianism in America.

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii, 1964. / Bibliography: leaves [361]-381. / viii, 381 l

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1932. / At head of title: The Catholic University of America. "Biographical items." Bibliography: p. 157-163.