Thesis (M.A.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2004. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-79).

Thesis (M.A.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2004. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-79).

Thesis (M.A.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 1994. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-123).

Thesis (M.A.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2004. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-79).

Thesis (M.A.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 1994. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-123).

Thesis (MA.(Church History)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-142).

The purpose of this research paper is to analyze a historical, theological subject concerning the rationale for the transition from a Puritanical view of God at Harvard in the early seventeenth century to a Utilitarian perspective in the first part of the nineteenth century. The Puritans had a profound effect on Harvard, bringing with them severe discipline and an authoritarian view of God. As a result, many of the first Harvard students left the college never to return,[1] and the school had significant difficulties in maintaining an enrollment in its early years. Puritanism viewed students as being essentially depraved and only allowed to live by the grace of God. The Cambridge community portrayed the Lord as being an almost heartless, judgmental father, whose main concern was the discipline of the wayward children. This perspective led to regular beatings, cruelty, and a lack of concern for scholarship that encouraged the pursuit of multiple points of view. However with the coming of Romanticism and Unitarianism to Massachusetts in the early part of the nineteenth century, there was an emerging, change in the nature of truth with respect to God. The people envisioned the Lord, as a kindly parent, who was primarily concerned with the happiness of the individual and the community. With this perspective came a drastically different view of theology, wherein all points of view had to be examined and understood. The rigidity of Puritanism gave way to the more liberal Unitarianism, and God became part of a joyous experience of living. This paper examines the change that occurred at Harvard with respect to the University’s view of God and its impact on the academic curricula. It considers the reasons for the charge and the view of the students, faculty, and administration. It a analyzes how changes within a community can have a profound influence on changes within a college, and it provides a basis for academic freedom that is the basis for academic freedom—a concept that was alien to the Puritans. The key question is whether it has been successful in shaping the development of academia or whether it has caused more chaos than success? [1] George M. Marsden. The Soul of the American University (Oxford: Oxford, 1994) 33-5.

Thesis advisor: R. Shep Melnick / Many political thinkers have suggested that religion is a necessary prerequisite for the proper functioning of American democracy. Foremost among them is Alexis de Tocqueville who argues, in particular, that religion serves as a counterbalance to individualism and crass acquisitiveness—two of the most worrisome aspects of American democracy. Yet, Tocqueville’s own analysis bids us to ask whether religion still serves this beneficial purpose nearly 200 years later, or whether democratization and individualism have not remade religion itself. The primary theme of the dissertation is therefore to investigate whether democratization and individualism have wrought changes of real significance in American religion and religious institutions. In the first part, I argue against the secularization thesis on the grounds that contemporary developments in American religion, such as the so-called rise of the “nones” and the growing distrust of organized religion, are explicable not by secularization but by democratization and individualism. To understand this phenomenon better, I return to the French liberal tradition of Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville to articulate a theory of democratic deformalization—a process whereby American democracy breaks down the “formal” elements of religion. In the second part, I argue that individualism has caused a host of quantitative changes in American religion, including declining church membership, dwindling church participation, and a collapse in the perceived importance of organized religion itself. There are notable qualitative changes as well, including increasingly tenuous connections to churches, a proliferation of religious options within churches, and a new megachurch model that is better able to cater to individual taste and preference. In the third and most substantial part, I take up the question of whether individualism itself has changed or evolved over time, in predictable or unpredictable ways. Here, I argue that there has been a general shift from utilitarian individualism towards expressive individualism, with profound consequences for religious institutions and for society itself. The former, with its connection to the Protestant work ethic and Puritan social philosophy tends to cause an inclination in individuals to partake in community, submit to institutions, and follow moral and religious rules; the latter, with its belief in authenticity, causes a profound disdain for communal sources of authority, social institutions, and moral constraints. I conclude by arguing that the anthropology of expressive individualism, and its historical growth since the 1960s, proves to be the fundamental cause behind all these changes. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

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This essay presents evidence that the institution of the corporation has its origins and its main developmental 'epochs' in Judaeo-Christian theology. The notion of the nahala as the institutional symbol of the Covenant between YHWH and Israel is a primal example of the corporate relationship in its creation of an identity independent of its members, its demand for radical accountability on the part of its members, and in its provision of immunity for those who act in its name. On the basis of the same Covenant, St. Paul transforms an ancillary aspect of Roman Law, the peculium, into the central relationship of the Christian world through its implicit use as the institutional background to the concept of the Body of Christ. The exceptional nature of this relationship allows the medieval Franciscans and the papal curia to create what had been lacking in Roman Law, an institution which can own property but which cannot be owned. This relationship is subsequently theorized as the Eternal Covenant by Reformed theologians and successfully tested in one of the greatest theological/social experiments ever recorded, the 17^th century settlement of North America. The alternative 'secular' explanation of the corporation provided by 19^th century legal philosophy relies implicitly on the theological foundations of the corporation and remains incoherent without these foundations. The theological history of the corporation was recovered in the findings of 20^th century social scientists, who also identified corporate finance as the central corporate activity in line with its Levitical origins. Although the law of the corporation is secular, the way in which this law was made a central component of modern life is theological. Without a recovery of this theological context, the corporation is likely to continue as a serious social problem in need of severe constraint.