Thesis (D. Min.)--Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2007. / Description based on Microfiche version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-67, 76-80).

The last couple of decades have witnessed an exponential increase of interest in religion and spirituality in the academic disciplines of leadership and organization. Some scholars argue that this interest is prone to neglect analysis of Western religion’s historical origins and therefore of what may be its repressed influences on leadership and organizational practices. Others, that this revived focus on the sacred may be limited by an over-reliance on too narrow a theology rooted within a singular (Judeo-Christian) cosmology. I seek to both speak to and expand the concerns of such previous research. I do this by introducing ecofeminism as a theoretical framework for a critical analysis of the macro level of what has already been framed as the repressed influence of mainstream religious orthodoxy within the field of leadership studies. Building upon the perspectives provided by ecofeminism and feminist spirituality I extend the aforementioned concerns by suggesting that some of the ethics within the Judeo-Christian cosmology itself bear some relationship to and responsibility in crises relating to environmental sustainability and social justice. I explore a number of related themes, arguing in particular that the demotion of nature and partnership with what might be described as the divine feminine within Western culture are not only linked but also generate profound dysfunction, in both leadership and organization. In the second section I present empirical data at a micro level, collected within a contemporary spiritual community where both nature and the divine feminine play central roles in its cosmology. The School of Movement Medicine functions as a financially successful business organization dedicated to the encouragement of spiritual fulfillment, ecological sustainability and social justice. The practices it teaches are specifically designed to assist those who engage with them to take responsibility for responding to the individual, societal and global challenges that lie before us - aiming, in other words to make leaders out of members. My hope is that these explorations may answer some of the calls of previous work to broaden representation within the leadership and spirituality field, as well as enriching its theory and practice with greater potential to generate increased levels of social justice, environmental sustainability and human fulfillment.

No description available.

Spiritualism has its origins in 1840s America, and continues to occupy a niche in the Anglo-American cultural world in which the craft of mediumship is taught and practised. Spiritualist mediums seek to demonstrate personal survival beyond death and thus belong to a movement that posits the existence of a spirit world, peopled with those who were once incarnate upon the earth and with whom communication is possible. Spiritualists often maintain that mediumship is a universal activity found across cultures and time, and some scholars have speculated in passing that Spiritualist mediumship might be a form of shamanism. This thesis uses both existing literary sources and ethnographic study to support the hypothesis that mediumship is indeed an example of traditional shamanism, and demonstrates that a comparison of Spiritualist mediumship and shamanism gives valuable insights into both. In particular, an apprenticeship model is proposed as offering a clearer understanding of the nature of mediumship and its central role in maintaining Spiritualism as a distinct religious tradition, helping to clarify problematic boundaries such as that between Spiritualism and New Age. Existing models of shamanism have tended to focus upon particular skills or states of consciousness exhibited by shamans and are therefore framed with reference to outcomes, rather than by attending to the processes of development leading to them. The apprenticeship model of mediumship is proposed as the basis first, of understanding the structure of Spiritualism, and second and comparatively, of a new definition of shamanism, by offering a distinctive, clearly-structured approach to understanding the acquisition and nature of shamanic skills, without being unduly prescriptive as to which particular shamanic skills should be anticipated in any given cultural setting.

This thesis explores the relationship between shamanist ritual in Buriat communities in Pribaikal’e and the institutionalised Buriat national culture that was developed by the Soviet state and persists to this day. In Pribaikal’e, I suggest that a local sense of belonging is constituted through rites held at a clan’s ancestral hearth. I characterise these rituals as a communion between corporeal kinsmen and incorporeal spirits, emphasising commensality and communitas as a means of cementing kinship. Meanwhile, belonging to national and civic territories is underpinned by performing arts developed under Soviet rule, often adapted from ritual forms. In analysing how some of these different senses of belonging are constituted, I propose a broad distinction between ‘inward-facing’ ritual forms and ‘outward-facing’ forms that are placed in what Goffman (1975) calls ‘the theatrical frame’. I suggest, however, that in both kinds of form elements of ‘performativity’ and ‘ritualisation’ (Rostas 1998) can be discerned as modes of action through which senses of belonging are constituted and asserted. In contemporary Russia, the state is moving away from a model of federalism that incorporates national territorial autonomy and instead promotes ‘cultural autonomy’. As a result, two political territories in Pribaikal’e, Ust’-Orda Buriat Autonomous Okrug and the surrounding Irkutsk Oblast, have been unified. In a context where Buriat national culture no longer presupposes belonging to national territory, more localised expressions of belonging are being brought into public view. These include large-scale communion rites and public rituals that utilise the presentational conventions of Buriat national culture. The public framing of rites asserts local Buriats’ sense of belonging to their ancestral homelands and the authority of Buriat shamans to mediate with spirits on behalf of the Pribaikal’e.

A Research Report submitted towards a MAAD by Course Work and Research Report / This is an auto ethnographic project in which I explore how my personal and cultural narratives can be used for healing and transformation through a theatre making process. I look at performance as an object of making meaning while placing myself at the centre of the study as the subject of this research. During this process, I was looking at discovering a personal theatre making language with an aim of finding my voice. The outcome of my journey was an experimental creative project titled Eenganga which was performed in an alternative and nontraditional form in terms of space, text and the overall theatre making process. This study is an account of a journey that initially began as a performance ethnography project which collected cultural narratives of black urban traditional healers from Katutura, Windhoek, Namibia. There was an internal and an external data collection process. My body as a site of knowledge was the main research instrument.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Faculty of the Divinity School, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, June 2008.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Calvin Theological Seminary, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-108).