Abstract Not Prrovided / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 165-180). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

No description available.

This thesis examines the spiritual lives of eighteenth-century English women through an analysis of their personal writings. It explores the manuscripts of religious women who practised their faith by writing letters, diaries, poetry, and other highly personal texts—texts that give unique access to the interior, spiritual lives of their authors. Concerned not only with the individual meaning of those writings but with their communal meanings, it argues that women’s informal writing, written within personal relationships, acted to undergird, guide, and indeed shape religious communities in vital and unexplored ways. Through an exploration of various significant personal relationships, both intra- and inter-generationally, this thesis demonstrates the multiple ways in which women were active in ‘writing religious communities’. The women discussed here belonged to communities that habitually communicated through personal writing. At the same time, their acts of writing were creative acts, powerful to build and shape religious communities: these women wrote religious community. A series of interweaving case studies guide my analysis and discussion. The thesis focuses on Catherine Talbot (1721–70), Anne Steele (1717–78), and Ann Bolton (1743–1822), and on their literary interactions with friends and family. Considered together, these subjects and sources allow comparison across denomination, for Talbot was Anglican, Steele Baptist, and Bolton Methodist. After an introductory chapter, Chapter Two focuses on spiritual friendship, showing how women used personal writings within peer relationships to think through religious ideas and encourage faith commitments. Chapter Three considers older women as spiritual elders, arguing that elderly women sometimes achieved honoured status in religious communities and were turned to for spiritual direction. Chapter Four explores the ways in which women offered religious instruction to spiritual children through the creative use of informal writings, including diaries and poetry. And Chapter Five considers women’s personal writings as spiritual legacy, as they were preserved by family and friends and continued to function in religious communities after the death of their authors.

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This thesis investigates the establishment and development of a religious community of immigrants from the Netherlands to Canada, whose lives centered around a small denomination called the Free Reformed Churches of North America (FRC). The purpose of this thesis was to explore major reasons for the insularity of the FRC community in Southern Ontario between 1950 and 1976. Primary sources for the research were the FRC???s denominational newspaper, The Messenger, and oral interviews of FRC members. The first chapter draws on the life stories of interviewees to explore the challenges of their early years of settlement in Canada, and the comfort they found in the church community. Chapter two focuses on the history, structure and leadership of the church, the faith and beliefs of members, and the connections between church and faith. The third chapter delves into the FRC???s perspectives on and relationships with other churches and Canadian culture. Chapter four considers beliefs about women???s roles and the experiences of FRC women at church, home and work. This thesis argues that the following factors contributed to the FRC???s sustained insularity and isolation: the church, its activities, leaders and laws; the individual faith of members; the strong ideological resistance of leaders and members to change and ???outside??? influence; and the social support and pressure of friends, family, and fellow members of the church community.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T12:18:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Ivoneide_pg1_50.pdf: 581926 bytes, checksum: 9b99c15fa673360b3243e83b636d17ce (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-08-22 / This work, situated between the studies of religion, gender sociology and examines three documents of the Catholic Church Catechism of the Catholic Church: Mulieris Dignitatem and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, whose main focus is on sexuality and gender. We seek with this analysis, to understand issues related to the discourse of the Catholic Church, as well as the everyday practices of women in the Episcopal Brasilândia Region, searched the neighborhood in Sao Paulo. The analysis was critical in making a contrast between the Catholic discourse on sexuality and the practices of these women, who live in constant tension between the practice of sexuality and the discourse of the Catholic Church. Initially, the analysis makes a historical visit of the official discourse of the Catholic institution on sexuality, theoretical articulated by Ivone Gebara, Priore, Schott, Ranke-Heinemann, among others. We deal, finally, the conflict between the Catholic discourse, conservative, and the practice of these women, a progressive vision. The authors surveyed note a departure from the faithful with regard to Catholic dogma, is due to secularization or the fact that the Catholic Church has lost part of hegemony as a regulator of the life of the faithful. / Este trabalho, situado entre os estudos de religião, sociologia e gênero analisa três documentos da Igreja Católica: Catecismo da Igreja Católica, Mulieris Dignitatem e Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, cujo foco principal é a sexualidade e a questão de gênero. Buscamos, com esta análise, compreender questões relacionadas ao discurso da Igreja Católica, bem como as práticas cotidianas das mulheres da Região Episcopal Brasilândia, bairro pesquisado da capital paulista. As análises foram fundamentais para fazer um contraponto entre o discurso católico sobre a sexualidade e as práticas dessas mulheres, que vivem em constante tensão entre prática da sexualidade e o discurso da Igreja Católica. Inicialmente, a análise faz um percurso histórico do discurso oficial dessa instituição católica sobre a sexualidade, articulado pelas teóricas Ivone Gebara, Priore, Schott, Ranke-Heinemann, entre outros. Tratamos, enfim, do conflito entre o discurso católico, conservador, e a prática dessas mulheres, numa visão progressista. Os autores pesquisados constatam um distanciamento dos fiéis em relação aos dogmas católicos, seja devido à secularização ou pelo fato de a Igreja Católica ter perdido parte da hegemonia como reguladora da vida dos fiéis.

This thesis seeks to offer new perspectives on the role of women in African-American Christian denominations in the United States in the period between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century. It situates the changes in the roles available to black women in their churches in the context of ecclesiastical politics. By offering explanations of the growth of black denominations in the South after the Civil War and the political alignments in the leadership of the churches, it seeks to offer more powerful explanations of differences in the treatment of women in distict denominations. It explores the distinct worship practices of African-American Christianity and reflects on their relationship to denominational structure and character, and gender issues. Education was central to the participation of women in African-American Christianity in the late nineteenth century, so the thesis discusses the growth of black colleges under the auspices of the black churches. Finally it also explores the complex relationship between domestic ideology, the politics of respectability, and female participation in the black churches.