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Title: A Transcription and Preliminary Analysis of the Latin Text of Book Six of Josephus' Jewish War in St. Gallen Latin Ms 627.
Creator: Leach, Chelsea, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: This thesis presents a transcription and preliminary analysis of the Latin text of book 6 of Josephus' Jewish War found in the 9th century St. Gallen Codex 627. This is the first transcription of any book of the fifth- or sixth-century Latin translation of the Jewish War, a translation that was one of the most widely disseminated works in the medieval Christian West. The transcription includes all corrections and glosses in the manuscript as well as all readings from two other important...
Show moreThis thesis presents a transcription and preliminary analysis of the Latin text of book 6 of Josephus' Jewish War found in the 9th century St. Gallen Codex 627. This is the first transcription of any book of the fifth- or sixth-century Latin translation of the Jewish War, a translation that was one of the most widely disseminated works in the medieval Christian West. The transcription includes all corrections and glosses in the manuscript as well as all readings from two other important manuscripts, Vatican Latin 1992 (10th century) and Cologne Latin 163 (12th century), that differ from St. Gallen 627. A comparison of an extended sample from the St. Gallen manuscript with forty-nine other manuscripts establishes a close relationship with two other manuscripts: Einsiedeln Latin 345, and British Library 39645. An analysis of the differences among St. Gallen 627, Einsiedeln 345 and BL 39645 in the sample passage demonstrates that they ultimately depend upon a common source rather than any one being directly dependent on another. A preliminary analysis of the scribal hands and orthography of the manuscripts confirms earlier work that posited two different 9th century scribes responsible for almost all of book 6. In addition to confirming an earlier analysis that identified a twelfth-century hand in a page of book 6 that replaced a damaged or lost page, the thesis identifies for the first time an additional 12th century replacement page in another part of book 6. Comparison of the scribal hand in these two replacement pages and in another replacement page found in book 1 suggests that while the hands are very close, some differences can be observed, leading to the possibility that the replacement pages are the work of different scribes. Analysis of the corrections for the first part of book 6 establishes that the correctors made at least some of their corrections on the basis of other manuscripts to which they had access.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0152
Format: Thesis

Title: Anyone Can Protest, Only We Can Save Souls: Authority and Dissent in a Brazilian Christian Church.
Creator: Porter, Jacqueline N., Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: More and more, religion scholars question the usefulness of the category of "religion." Many reject presumptions that what "religion" signifies is unique, universal, inherently meaningful, and, perhaps more importantly, self-evidently "religious." Scholars have therefore reconceived "religion" as a modern technology fabricated as a private domain intended to contain political dissent. Such arguments, however, depend on a distinction between the religious and the political rather particular to...
Show moreMore and more, religion scholars question the usefulness of the category of "religion." Many reject presumptions that what "religion" signifies is unique, universal, inherently meaningful, and, perhaps more importantly, self-evidently "religious." Scholars have therefore reconceived "religion" as a modern technology fabricated as a private domain intended to contain political dissent. Such arguments, however, depend on a distinction between the religious and the political rather particular to North America. My project, in contrast, aims to explore these categories through a history and ethnography of the lives of contemporary Brazilian evangelical Christians belonging to the International Church of Christ (ICOC). I take issue specifically with the narrowness by which recent arguments have defined "politics," arguing for a more nuanced understanding of what the political is in relation to local forms of religious organization in the Brazilian ICOC.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0444
Format: Thesis

Title: Local Diets, Global Foods: The Dietary Habits of Ivorian Immigrants in the United States.
Creator: Rojas, Alfredo, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: Food production in Muslim West Africa ensures more than mere nourishment. Food plays an integral role in hospitality and moral relationships between people. Not only do people exchange food for other gifts with each other, but husbands and wives assume mutual tasks to produce food for their families. Women cook meals, tend gardens, and run urban markets while men hunt game or harvest crops. Thus, men and women rely on each other for food. My research aims to show how these gendered, moral...
Show moreFood production in Muslim West Africa ensures more than mere nourishment. Food plays an integral role in hospitality and moral relationships between people. Not only do people exchange food for other gifts with each other, but husbands and wives assume mutual tasks to produce food for their families. Women cook meals, tend gardens, and run urban markets while men hunt game or harvest crops. Thus, men and women rely on each other for food. My research aims to show how these gendered, moral relationships persist abroad. My fieldwork among West African immigrants in Atlanta, GA reveals that immigrants use mass-produced African foods to sustain their diets and moral relationships in order to avoid foods produced in the United States. In the United States, immigrant women usually cook for themselves, their husbands, and friends. Men with no strong moral ties to an African woman may have to resort to fast food unless they can cook. My research attempts to explain these relationships.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0333
Format: Thesis

Title: Local Diets, Global Foods: The Dietary Habits of Ivorian Immigrants in the United States.
Creator: Rojas, Alfredo J., Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: Food production in Muslim West Africa ensures more than mere nourishment. Food plays an integral role in hospitality and moral relationships between people. Not only do people exchange food for other gifts with each other, but husbands and wives assume mutual tasks to produce food for their families. Women cook meals, tend gardens, and run urban markets while men hunt game or harvest crops. Thus, men and women rely on each other for food. My research aims to show how these gendered, moral...
Show moreFood production in Muslim West Africa ensures more than mere nourishment. Food plays an integral role in hospitality and moral relationships between people. Not only do people exchange food for other gifts with each other, but husbands and wives assume mutual tasks to produce food for their families. Women cook meals, tend gardens, and run urban markets while men hunt game or harvest crops. Thus, men and women rely on each other for food. My research aims to show how these gendered, moral relationships persist abroad. My fieldwork among West African immigrants in Atlanta, GA reveals that immigrants use mass-produced African foods to sustain their diets and moral relationships in order to avoid foods produced in the United States. In the United States, immigrant women usually cook for themselves, their husbands, and friends. Men with no strong moral ties to an African woman may have to resort to fast food unless they can cook. My research attempts to explain these relationships.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0469
Format: Thesis

Title: Irreconcilable Worlds: A Shift in the Relationship between Japanese Women and the Other World beginning with Literature from the 1950s.
Creator: Evans, Jessica M., Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: There has been a shift in how the relationship between Japanese women and the other world is portrayed in Japanese popular culture: the shift is important because it reflects societal beliefs that have undergone a drastic alteration. This previously unsuccessful and death-ridden relationship has recently seen the addition of successful endings in the 1980s. This shift can be seen in both literature and folk tales. According to Ian Reader, folk tales can be regarded as folk religion, which in...
Show moreThere has been a shift in how the relationship between Japanese women and the other world is portrayed in Japanese popular culture: the shift is important because it reflects societal beliefs that have undergone a drastic alteration. This previously unsuccessful and death-ridden relationship has recently seen the addition of successful endings in the 1980s. This shift can be seen in both literature and folk tales. According to Ian Reader, folk tales can be regarded as folk religion, which in turn reflects the beliefs of the common people.1 As such, ancient tales and The Legends of Tono can all be seen as representing contemporary beliefs of the other world by the people. Folklore recorded in the Kojiki and Fudoki can be read as reflecting societal beliefs, and the shift seen in my sources can therefore reflect a change in society. More modern literature also illustrates a belief in the other world, as can be seen in works from the 1980s, such as Kitchen and Alseep by Banana Yoshimoto, as well as in manga. All of the stories I will examine below feature a relationship between Japanese women and the other world. Looking at literature may help us to better understand religious changes in modern society, by investigating the mangas and literary depictions of successful relationships.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0470
Format: Thesis

Title: Gilgamesh the Giant: The Qumran Book of Giants' Appropriation of Gilgamesh Motifs.
Creator: Goff, Matthew J.
Abstract/Description: The Qumran Book of Giants shows familiarity with lore from the classic Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. It has been proposed that the author of the Book of Giants drew from the epic in order to polemicize against it. There is much to commend this view. The name of the hero of the tale is given to one of the murderous, wicked giants of the primordial age. Examination of fragments of the Book of Giants, in particular 4Q530 2 ii and 4Q531 22, however, suggests that key aspects of its portrayal of...
Show moreThe Qumran Book of Giants shows familiarity with lore from the classic Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. It has been proposed that the author of the Book of Giants drew from the epic in order to polemicize against it. There is much to commend this view. The name of the hero of the tale is given to one of the murderous, wicked giants of the primordial age. Examination of fragments of the Book of Giants, in particular 4Q530 2 ii and 4Q531 22, however, suggests that key aspects of its portrayal of Gilgamesh the giant cannot be explained as polemic against Mesopotamian literary traditions. The Book of Giants creatively appropriates motifs from the epic and makes Gilgamesh a character in his own right in ways that often have little to do with Gilgamesh.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_rel_faculty_publications-0003, 10.1163/156851709X395740
Format: Citation

Title: Ben Sira and the Giants of the Land: A Note on Ben Sira 16:7.
Creator: Goff, Matthew J.
Abstract/Description: This article presents a textual criticism of the deuterocanonical Old Testament passage of Ben Sira 16:7 and its reference to "giants." Details are given highlighting the scholastic associations between the Ben Sira passage and Genesis 6:1-4, both of which describe ancient giants. Commentary is then given showing evidence for and against such intertextual associations.
Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_rel_faculty_publications-0002
Format: Citation

Title: Discerning Trajectories: 4QInstruction and the Sapiential Background of the Sayings Source.
Creator: Goff, Matthew J.
Abstract/Description: This article argues that 4QInstruction, considered to be the largest wisdom text of the Dead Sea Scrolls, does not symbolize the redaction of different sapiential and apocalyptic layers in Q. Issues in the study of Q are given. The relationship between Q and Jewish wisdom is discussed. It analyzes the theme of revelation in 4QInstruction.
Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_rel_faculty_publications-0001
Format: Citation

Title: A Dying Industry?: The "Alternative" Funeral Movement In the American Mainstream.
Creator: Cox, Ruthelen Evangeline
Abstract/Description: Since Jessica Mitford's "The American Way of Death" in the 1960s, an active push against the American funeral industry toward "alternative funerals" gains momentum. Many different interest groups have many different motives for conducting "alternative funerals" -- and so-called "traditional" ones. In the last decade, some activists have suggested creating a mainstream "movement" comprised of these groups, hoping a broader demographic will garner more attention for "alternatives" overall to...
Show moreSince Jessica Mitford's "The American Way of Death" in the 1960s, an active push against the American funeral industry toward "alternative funerals" gains momentum. Many different interest groups have many different motives for conducting "alternative funerals" -- and so-called "traditional" ones. In the last decade, some activists have suggested creating a mainstream "movement" comprised of these groups, hoping a broader demographic will garner more attention for "alternatives" overall to change the Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule. However, a movement cannot develop without one particular end in mind -- and these groups pursue their own respective, sometimes irreconcilable, ends. This paper examines past economic, hygienic and diversity-based considerations in alternative funeral activism in order to inform current activists of recurring obstacles and suggest, ultimately, that the best Funeral Rule avoids specificity and favors open interpretation.
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Date Issued: 2018/04/27
Identifier: FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1524807356_0d4e6e8b
Format: Thesis

Title: Aggressive Philanthropy: Progressivism, Conservatism, and the William Volker Charities Fund.
Creator: McVicar, Michael J.
Abstract/Description: This essay explores the history of the William Volker Charities Fund, a significant charitable organization founded in 1932 by William Volker, a Kansas City furniture manufacturer. A self-describe progressive, Volker was a prominent Kansas Citian who earned the nickname Mr. Anonymous because he ssecretly gave away most of his personal fortune to create the city's private/public welfare system in the first half of the twentieth century. After Volker's death, Harold W. Luhnow, Volker's nephew,...
Show moreThis essay explores the history of the William Volker Charities Fund, a significant charitable organization founded in 1932 by William Volker, a Kansas City furniture manufacturer. A self-describe progressive, Volker was a prominent Kansas Citian who earned the nickname Mr. Anonymous because he ssecretly gave away most of his personal fortune to create the city's private/public welfare system in the first half of the twentieth century. After Volker's death, Harold W. Luhnow, Volker's nephew, used the fund's resources to move from progressive concerns related to social welfare to support free market, libertarian, and conservative intellectuals after World War II. Before collapsing in the late 1960s, the fund financed the early careers of five Nobel Prize winners; prominent figures in what would become the Religious Right; controversial revisionist historians; and, numerous conservative writers, publishers, and public figures.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_rel_faculty_publications-0007
Format: Citation

Title: Mission to the Seekers: Evaluating Seeker Sensitive Churches Through Andrew Walls' Missionary Paradigm.
Creator: Ensminger, Shawntel Lyn, Porterfield, Amanda, Corrigan, John, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis assesses seeker sensitive churches from the standpoint of Andrew Walls' missionary paradigm. Seekers are described as a distinct population on the American religious landscape, characterized by the importance of individual relevance, immanence, and open-mindedness. Their ideological lineage is said to go back to the Transcendentalists. Seeker sensitive churches act as missionaries to seekers. These churches have conservative statements of faith. However, in translating their...
Show moreThis thesis assesses seeker sensitive churches from the standpoint of Andrew Walls' missionary paradigm. Seekers are described as a distinct population on the American religious landscape, characterized by the importance of individual relevance, immanence, and open-mindedness. Their ideological lineage is said to go back to the Transcendentalists. Seeker sensitive churches act as missionaries to seekers. These churches have conservative statements of faith. However, in translating their message to seeker culture, some of the aspects of those conservative beliefs become muted. Seekers come away with a strain of Christianity which is tailored to the three key characteristics of seeker religiosity. This new seeker Christianity makes the religion viable for a population who had moved away from the Christian faith. Other missionary encounters often have similar results, with Christianity adapting based on the culture into which it is introduced. These adaptations have led to Christianity's continued success.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0558
Format: Thesis

Title: Maimonides' Sons: Episodes in Modern Jewish Thought.
Creator: Lagrone, Matthew, Kavka, Martin, Twiss, Sumner, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: My thesis centers on three modern Jewish thinkers—Yeshayahu Leibowitz, David Hartman and Joseph Soloveitchik—and their philosophical relationship with and use of Maimonides. Maimonides is the central thinker in and the touchstone of Jewish philosophy, matched only by Aquinas in Catholic theology. The first essay concerns the nature of halakha in the concluding chapters of The Guide of the Perplexed and Leibowitz's formalist understanding of the Law through those chapters. I defend this...
Show moreMy thesis centers on three modern Jewish thinkers—Yeshayahu Leibowitz, David Hartman and Joseph Soloveitchik—and their philosophical relationship with and use of Maimonides. Maimonides is the central thinker in and the touchstone of Jewish philosophy, matched only by Aquinas in Catholic theology. The first essay concerns the nature of halakha in the concluding chapters of The Guide of the Perplexed and Leibowitz's formalist understanding of the Law through those chapters. I defend this reading of Maimonides by employing David Shatz's provocative argument that 3.51 and not 3.54 constitutes the true end of the Guide. By arguing thusly a Leibowitzean reading of the conclusion is plausible and faithful to Maimonides' purpose in the Guide. The middle essay covers Hartman's philosophy of halakha in association with Maimonides' philosophy of halakha. Three controlling aspects of Hartman's philosophy are examined: pluralism, rationalism and lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. I attempt to assess Hartman's use of Maimonides in determining these aspects, and find his interpretations of the Rambam to be generally in error. The final essay looks at neglected second part of Soloveitchik's Halakhic Man and his seamless utilization of Maimonides to shape the concepts of creation, repentance divine providence, time and prophecy. I argue that Soloveitchik's use of Maimonides is closest to the Rambam's intentions, but that it also takes the fewest risks. Instead, Soloveitchik employs Maimonides as a prop and support to defend his radically new and radically strange vision of individual observant existence in modern times.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3315
Format: Thesis

Title: The Other Heifer.
Creator: Feddon, Dustin Ryan, Kangas, David, Kavka, Martin, Twiss, Sumner, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis will work to illuminate the significant similarities between Johann Georg Hamann and Søren Kierkegaard; a relationship that is often referred but rarely attended to. The lines of correspondence are both hidden and pronounced in their early work—Hamann in Socratic Memorabilia and Kierkegaard in the Concept of Irony. Peculiarly, both Hamann and Kierkegaard employ the ambiguous figure of Socrates in order to impede the rush of philosophy towards absolute knowledge. This is to say...
Show moreThis thesis will work to illuminate the significant similarities between Johann Georg Hamann and Søren Kierkegaard; a relationship that is often referred but rarely attended to. The lines of correspondence are both hidden and pronounced in their early work—Hamann in Socratic Memorabilia and Kierkegaard in the Concept of Irony. Peculiarly, both Hamann and Kierkegaard employ the ambiguous figure of Socrates in order to impede the rush of philosophy towards absolute knowledge. This is to say that the two writers discern a move towards a world ordering morality that tramples over the perspective of the subject. Hamann and Kierkegaard will counter this move towards the grounding of philosophy into a universal system by re-casting Socrates in an ambiguous light; a mediating figure strung between ideality and actuality. Hamann and Kierkegaard both use Socrates in order to open religious dimensions in the currents of modern philosophy. Hamann and Kierkegaard share common foundations (Lutheranism), common objectives (elevating experience over knowledge), and common vehicles in their argumentation (Socrates and Socratic ignorance).
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4485
Format: Thesis

Title: Education, Invention of Orthodoxy, and the Construction of Modern Buddhism on Dharma Drum Mountain.
Creator: Tuzzeo, Daniel Ryan, Yu, Jimmy, Cuevas, Bryan, Hellweg, Joseph, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: My research involves an ethno-historical study of Dharma Drum Mountai, founded in 1989 by Venerable Shengyan (1930-2009). Dharma Drum is currently one of the most powerful, international Buddhist organizations on Taiwan, and has incorporated the discourse of education with an aim to modernize Chinese Buddhism in response to a perceived crisis and need for revitalization. Dharma Drum's education campaign involves three types of what the organization broadly defines as education, but for the...
Show moreMy research involves an ethno-historical study of Dharma Drum Mountai, founded in 1989 by Venerable Shengyan (1930-2009). Dharma Drum is currently one of the most powerful, international Buddhist organizations on Taiwan, and has incorporated the discourse of education with an aim to modernize Chinese Buddhism in response to a perceived crisis and need for revitalization. Dharma Drum's education campaign involves three types of what the organization broadly defines as education, but for the purposes of this research I focus solely on what the organization identifies as "education through academics," namely referring to educational and research projects such as those affiliated with Dharma Drum Buddhist College, the Chung-Hwa Institute for Buddhist Studies, and the organization's monastic seminary, Dharma Drum Saá¹gha University. The goal of this educational system is to engage socially and transform the world by first transforming the self. On one hand, the effect of this is to "uplift the character of humanity and build a pure land on earth." On the other hand, this practice-oriented approach of world-transformation is a modern technique used for promoting DDM's brand of orthodox Chinese Buddhism. My research provides historical context around the conditions that led Dharma Drum Mountain's founder, Venerable Shengyan, to perceive of a crisis of survival for Chinese Buddhism in the twentieth century and to determine education to be the solution to this problem; translations of Ven. Shengyan's written discourse on the need for education in order to combat this perceived decline in Chinese Buddhism; and ethnographic examination of the current state of Dharma Drum's educational institutions, within which communities of practice and an environment of situated learning are established, and an assessment of the organization's success in implementing Shengyan's goals. My thesis is that Shengyan's establishment of Chinese Buddhist orthodoxy through modern education is transforming the way Buddhism is understood in contemporary Taiwan. While this transformation is still undergoing continual change as it is mediated between institutional goals and individual preferences, it is forming two different forms of modernity: institutional and personal. DDM's orthodoxy also mirrors the struggle that many contemporary religious institutions face when balancing traditional values with modern sensibilities. In the case of DDM, such a balancing act can also be witnessed in its formulation and integration of practice and study. This integration of practice and study is a tool for promoting and actualizing Shengyan's unique worldview, which recasts the self as interconnected with society and humanity as a means of transforming the world while simultaneously promoting DDM's brand of Chinese Buddhism through practice rather than discourse. Shengyan's design of the community of practice at DDM to train clerics, laity, and secular scholars was intentionally developed with an environment of situated learning that aims to close the practice-study divide. It is still too early to discern the ultimate successfulness of his design, but it is possible to assess its current state. While DDM's aim is to nurture capable people to revitalize, disseminate, and contribute to the greater appreciation of Chinese Buddhism, the individuals who are living on DDM are often experiencing difficulties living up to this expected goal.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5238
Format: Thesis

Title: The "Peculiar Children" of the Nation: American Civil Religion at Antebellum West Point.
Creator: Graziano, Michael, Porterfield, Amanda, Corrigan, John, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the history of antebellum West Point, tracing connections between the religious atmosphere of the Academy and the political ideology which it inculcated into cadets. A central claim of this essay is that the Revival of 1826 cemented a distinctly religious rhetoric as the operating ideology of West Point. This ideology held that the defense and maintenance of the sovereignty of the United States was to be cadets' primary objective. Cadets were taught that defending...
Show moreThis thesis examines the history of antebellum West Point, tracing connections between the religious atmosphere of the Academy and the political ideology which it inculcated into cadets. A central claim of this essay is that the Revival of 1826 cemented a distinctly religious rhetoric as the operating ideology of West Point. This ideology held that the defense and maintenance of the sovereignty of the United States was to be cadets' primary objective. Cadets were taught that defending American sovereignty constituted a divine mandate incumbent upon them as students of West Point. Finally, a key goal of this essay has been to ground "civil religion" in sources particular to this essay in the hope of reworking the concept for broader use in American religious history.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4876
Format: Thesis

Title: Towards a Regional Ismā'Īlī Cosmology: An Analysis of the Kitāb Al-Shajara of Abū Tammām.
Creator: Beaver, Kimberly, Gaiser, Adam, Hellweg, Joseph, Garretson, Peter, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The heresiography portion found in the Kitb̄ al-shajara by the fourth/tenth century Ismā'īlī dā'ī Abū Tammām presents an interesting opportunity for scholars of religion. Not just an unique heresiographical work written from a non-Fatimid Ismā'īlī position, the Shajara also presents a complex Neo-Platonic conception of Ismā'īlī thought, from cosmology to soteriology and epistemology. Above all, the Shajara is an attempt to consciously create an orthodoxy for the Ismā'īlīs of Greater Khurasan,...
Show moreThe heresiography portion found in the Kitb̄ al-shajara by the fourth/tenth century Ismā'īlī dā'ī Abū Tammām presents an interesting opportunity for scholars of religion. Not just an unique heresiographical work written from a non-Fatimid Ismā'īlī position, the Shajara also presents a complex Neo-Platonic conception of Ismā'īlī thought, from cosmology to soteriology and epistemology. Above all, the Shajara is an attempt to consciously create an orthodoxy for the Ismā'īlīs of Greater Khurasan, particularly one that is outside both the Sunni dominated region and the rising Fatimid Ismā'īlī state. The Shajara also reveals that Abū Tammām made use of the vibrant scholastic milieu in the area of Greater Khurasan, drawing from a wide variety of sources that mostly happened to be non-Ismā'īlī in origin. From this foundation, however, Abū Tammām creates his own distinctly eastern, Neo-Platonic portrayal of the sects wherein the ordering of the sects themselves in the heresiography reflects the larger structure of the universe; more specifically, the unfolding of knowledge within the sects as they move towards the end of the heresiography (and thus closer to the views of the Ismā'īlīs as the "saving sect") echoes the series of emanations that created the cosmos as well as the necessary steps by which humankind can return to God. The Kitāb al-shajara, then, is a project to define a regional, Neo-Platonic Ismā'īlī orthodoxy.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-8727
Format: Thesis

Title: Text as Tabernacle: Agrarians, New Critics, and the Tactical Diffusion of Protestant Hermeneutics in the Pre-War South.
Creator: Pittenger, Frank, Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Day, Matthew, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis argues that the institutionalization of literary studies in post-War American universities began as a constructive theological response to a religious crisis centered in the southeastern United States. Starting with a brief sketch of the distinct academic, literary, and religious scenes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the essay explores the formation and propagation of the New Criticism through an attention to key figures' previously ignored religious...
Show moreThis thesis argues that the institutionalization of literary studies in post-War American universities began as a constructive theological response to a religious crisis centered in the southeastern United States. Starting with a brief sketch of the distinct academic, literary, and religious scenes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the essay explores the formation and propagation of the New Criticism through an attention to key figures' previously ignored religious motivations. Dissatisfied with the literary and religious scenes within the region, a close-knit group of Nashville aesthetes set about constructing an alternative to the narrow-minded historicism with which one was forced to study both sacred and secular texts. Following failed engagements of fundamentalism and politics, the leaders of John Crowe Ransom's "Criticism, Inc." created an academic field that transformed formalist aesthetics into a workable prosthesis for a Protestant hermeneutic rendered obsolete by the previous century's historicism. In this movement the religious and political concerns of Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Cleanth Brooks were not so much abandoned as transferred. By turns explicit and concealed, Ransom's claim that "art is the only true religion and no other is needed" comes to bear upon the institutional roles of literary criticism and university English departments, as well as the curious interplay of religion and aesthetics in American cultural history. Emerging from this study is a reflection on the ambiguous secularity of aesthetic criticism in the United States.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0662
Format: Thesis

Title: Outward Beauty, Hidden Wrath: An Exploration of the Drikung Kagyü Dharma Protectress Achi Chökyi Drölma.
Creator: Muldowney, Kristen Kail, Cuevas, Bryan, Erndl, Kathleen, Yu, Jimmy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Despite her popularity within certain sects of Tibetan Buddhism, little focuses work has been done on the dharma protectress Achi Chökyi Drölma. Venerated as the guardian of the Drikung Kagyü tradition, as the maternal great-grandmother of its founder, Jikten Sumgön (1143-1217), and as a human embodiment of the fully-enlightened female Buddha Vajrayoginī, this little-researched but influential deity maintains numerous diverse roles within her community of lay and monastic devotees. Drawing on...
Show moreDespite her popularity within certain sects of Tibetan Buddhism, little focuses work has been done on the dharma protectress Achi Chökyi Drölma. Venerated as the guardian of the Drikung Kagyü tradition, as the maternal great-grandmother of its founder, Jikten Sumgön (1143-1217), and as a human embodiment of the fully-enlightened female Buddha Vajrayoginī, this little-researched but influential deity maintains numerous diverse roles within her community of lay and monastic devotees. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, this thesis examines Achi's uncommon characterizations beyond the typical mundane Buddhist dharma protector, which I categorize into three separate but at times overlapping personas: 1) Hagiographic Achi, as seen in her portrayal as a Tibetan Buddhist saint 2) Ritualized Achi, as portrayed in her roles of fierce protecttress and boon-granting goddess, and; 3) Historical Achi, or rather, the possible viability of the existence of such female teacher in the history of Jikten Sumgön's genealogy. This is done first with an exploration of Achi's iconography and ritual associations, which have roots in Indian tantric traditions, followed by the history of the domain over which she is sovereign, The Drikung valley region. I then provide a full translation of one of her more recent hagiographies and examine its meanings and implications in relation to the genre of Tibetan religious biography, an end with a look at the impact the roles of women and issues of gender in Buddhist narrative and Tibetan culture have had on the portrayal of Achi as a mother, ritual consort, an teacher. This single case study, therefore, sheds light not only on the construction of religious figures and divine entities within a given cultural sphere, but at the influence gender and normative social values play on the perception of such constructions. In conclusion, I argue these two points: First, that Achi, and other semi-wrathful deities like her, as able to assume different and seemingly contrary roles because they embody a specifically Tibetan Buddhist cultural repertoire grounded in indigenous beliefs and imported religious and social constructs, and second, that while the deity's voluntary assumption of a female body specifically to give birth to a lineage may appear to exemplify the presence of an androcentric gaze in Buddhist narrative, reducing her to a mere reproductive function and an association with a male authority figure, such activities actually stem from a legacy of both religious male and female figures who have used the activities of the house-holder life as skillful mean in spreading the Buddha's teachings.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4677
Format: Thesis

Title: The Raven and the Serpent: "The Great All-Pervading Rāhula" Daemonic Buddhism in India and Tibet.
Creator: Bailey, Cameron, Cuevas, Bryan, Yu, Jimmy, Erndl, Kathleen, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: My thesis is a profile of the Tibetan Buddhist protector deity Rāhula (Tib: Khyab 'jug chen po), particularly the ritual/magic and mythic complex that surrounds the cult of this deity. However, I will be using Rāhula as a case study to make a larger theoretical point. Namely, I will argue that the cult of Rāhula, as it developed in Tibet, was part of a broader Buddhist campaign to demonize the landscape of Tibet for missionizing and political purposes, in what we might call the mandalization...
Show moreMy thesis is a profile of the Tibetan Buddhist protector deity Rāhula (Tib: Khyab 'jug chen po), particularly the ritual/magic and mythic complex that surrounds the cult of this deity. However, I will be using Rāhula as a case study to make a larger theoretical point. Namely, I will argue that the cult of Rāhula, as it developed in Tibet, was part of a broader Buddhist campaign to demonize the landscape of Tibet for missionizing and political purposes, in what we might call the mandalization of Tibet. While this took place in Tibet approximately from the twelfth century through the seventeenth, I will further argue that Buddhism, since its inception and as it developed in India, rested firmly on the foundation of a cosmology teeming with spirits (or daimons, to use a Greek umbrella term for a host of different kinds of beings). That is to say, conceptions of daimons like Rāhula have historically been intimately connected with Buddhist doctrine and philosophy. As such, I will critique both the borrowing model and (to a lesser extent) the substratum model which both suggest that daimon cults are somehow an amalgamation or epiphenomenon in Buddhism. I am particularly interested in using Rāhula as a case study because he represents a peculiar case of Tibetan elaboration upon an Indian antecedent. Rāhula, or Rāhu in Indian conceptions, has been a more or less abstract cosmological force that is synonymous with malignancy. While all the other planets (Skt. graha, Tib. gza') are deemed to be gods, Rāhula alone is an asura (demon or titan), in fact the only asura to have tasted the elixir of immortality. Thus he is regarded as a particularly fierce enemy of the gods. By the early second millennium in Tibet, Rāhula has become a high-level Buddhist dharma protector (specifically of the Dzokchen (Rdzogs chen) tradition of Nyingma (Rnying ma) philosophy) and an emanation of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (or often, Vajrapāṇi). He has historically been heavily associated with destructive rites or war magic, and weather-making magic. There are a number of specific questions concerning this particular deity that I intend to answer in my thesis, in particular: How do the mythology and astrological functions of Rāhula in Tibet relate to Indian antecedents? Why might Buddhists have transformed a relatively minor figure in Hindu mythology in such a significant way? Who were some of the Tibetan figures involved in valorizing this deity? What larger social and political climate in Tibet might have contributed to this transformation? How might Rāhula's mythology relate to Buddhist philosophy, specifically Dzokchen thought?
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5498
Format: Thesis

Title: Vaisnava Goddess as Plant: Tulasi in Text and Context.
Creator: Carbone, John, Erndl, Kathleen M., Cuevas, Bryan, Gaiser, Adam, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Tulasī plant (Ocimum sanctum) is viewed within the purview of Hinduism as a form of the goddess Lakṣmī, or a consort of the god Viṣṇu. This designation seems to originate within the corpus of Purāṇic texts composed in the Sanskrit language from approximately the 5th to 15th centuries CE. The sanctity of the plant, and other forms of vegetation, resembles even earlier cults of Yakṣa and Yakṣī, or nature spirit, worship. The adoration of the plant continues into modernity in various ways....
Show moreThe Tulasī plant (Ocimum sanctum) is viewed within the purview of Hinduism as a form of the goddess Lakṣmī, or a consort of the god Viṣṇu. This designation seems to originate within the corpus of Purāṇic texts composed in the Sanskrit language from approximately the 5th to 15th centuries CE. The sanctity of the plant, and other forms of vegetation, resembles even earlier cults of Yakṣa and Yakṣī, or nature spirit, worship. The adoration of the plant continues into modernity in various ways. This paper examines the Tulasī plant through the various myths describing her sanctity, as well as how these myths are interpreted by modern devotees of the plant.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4229
Format: Thesis

Title: Religion, Sex & Politics: The Story of the Equal Rights Amendment in Florida.
Creator: Brock, Laura E., Porterfield, Amanda, Corrigan, John, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines the decade-long (1972-1982) Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) battle in Florida. It reviews the role that religion played in the political conflict. Religion had a motivating effect on ERA proponents and opponents. Women were mobilized to enter the political arena, many for the first time, on both sides of the ERA battle. Religion affected the legislative debates and public rhetoric, and had a strong role in galvanizing support and opposition. Moving beyond the...
Show moreThis dissertation examines the decade-long (1972-1982) Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) battle in Florida. It reviews the role that religion played in the political conflict. Religion had a motivating effect on ERA proponents and opponents. Women were mobilized to enter the political arena, many for the first time, on both sides of the ERA battle. Religion affected the legislative debates and public rhetoric, and had a strong role in galvanizing support and opposition. Moving beyond the description of religion in the historical narrative, this dissertation also describes how pro- and anti-ERA forces transmitted beliefs, communicated ideology, and constructed meaning through portraying, or "framing" events for public consumption. The "frames" used by each side of the debate demonstrate how moral worldviews transformed into political positions. Primary and secondary historical sources are used to trace the affect of religion on political semantics - especially the framing of legislative debate arguments, anecdotes, and rhetoric. Archival research includes information from legislative committee meetings, floor debates, correspondence, newspaper articles, and oral histories. In addition, this dissertation emphasizes the religious connection made by ERA opponents to other social concerns and how religious rhetoric obscured economic concerns that had been paramount to the conception and congressional support for the ERA. As the decade unfolded, ERA opposition fueled the rise of the Religious Right. Ratification was unsuccessful in Florida for the same reasons the ERA failed in other states. The white male-dominated southern legislature favored opponents' explicit moral framing while also implicitly following the wishes of business interests. A handful of senate powerbrokers blocked passage of the amendment for a decade, based on varying reasons, although the rhetoric followed similar religious arguments throughout the ten-year battle. The decade-long debates reveal the perpetual conflict in the political realm when religion, gender, and social issues intersect. This project attempts to make a contribution in three ways: first, by expanding the current ERA studies to include a slice of political life - the ERA battle - in the state of Florida, with its unique political demographics; second, by explaining how religion led to the failure of ratification when opponents linked the amendment to "threatening" social issues such as abortion expansion or gay rights, and forced ERA supporters into a defensive strategy; and third, by showing how Florida women used political framing in their lobbying efforts to generate support, or opposition, or resources, in the decade-long political conflict. Ironically, although the ERA was defeated, female proponents and opponents were empowered through political involvement. This was especially paradoxical for ERA opponents, who advocated traditional female roles while immersed in political activism outside the home. After the ERA battle ended in 1982, many women's issues were addressed through progressive legislation, court decisions, and administrative rulings. More female legislators were elected to political office on the state and national government levels.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7311
Format: Thesis

Title: "Parallel Lines Never Intersect": The Influence of Dutch Reformed Presuppostitionalism in American Christian Fundamentalism "Parallel Lines Never Intersect":.
Creator: Brasich, Adam S., Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Much of the current historiography of American Christian fundamentalism focuses solely on Scottish Common Sense Realism as an intellectual source of fundamentalist epistemology since the early twentieth century. This thesis argues against this historiographical trend by illuminating the central role of Dutch Reformed presuppositionalism in the formation of fundamentalist epistemologies. Articulated within the context of revitalization, confessional, and secessionists movements within the...
Show moreMuch of the current historiography of American Christian fundamentalism focuses solely on Scottish Common Sense Realism as an intellectual source of fundamentalist epistemology since the early twentieth century. This thesis argues against this historiographical trend by illuminating the central role of Dutch Reformed presuppositionalism in the formation of fundamentalist epistemologies. Articulated within the context of revitalization, confessional, and secessionists movements within the state Dutch Reformed Church, theologians such as Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck developed an epistemological system that stressed the necessity of correct presuppositions as a prerequisite for obtaining truth. Without correct ideas about God, in other words, one was incapable of perceiving any other truth in its fullness. This epistemological tradition was brought to North America by Dutch Reformed immigrants, who primarily settled in the Upper Midwest during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cornelius Van Til, one of these immigrants, served as a professor at J. Gresham Machen's Westminster Theological Seminary immediately following the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy and taught his unswerving presuppositionalism to several generations of non-Dutch, American Presbyterian seminarians, including Francis A. Schaeffer. Schaeffer, though rejecting the strictly Reformed strain of fundamentalism represented by Machen and Van Til's Orthodox Presbyterian Church, adapted presuppositionalism to suit his purposes, combining it with traditional Princetonian Scottish Common Sense Realism. This resulted in an epistemology that proved to be influential during the rise of the Christian Right in the latter half of the twentieth century. By investigating epistemologies that competed with Scottish Common Sense Realism or creatively interacted with it, a clearer picture appears of the diverse nature of Christian fundamentalism. It no longer seems to be monolithic, but rather it contains a plethora of theological and confessional influences that interact in numerous ways that necessitate academic investigation.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7308
Format: Thesis

Title: Regulating the Dead to Protect the Living: Chinese Immigrants, Religion, and the Bio-Politics of Public Health in Nineteenth Century San Francisco.
Creator: Johnson, Zachary M., Porterfield, Amanda, Corrigan, John, Hellweg, Joseph, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The challenge posed by Wong Yung Quy, a Chinese immigrant living in San Francisco in the 1870s, to a law regulating the exhumation of human remains on the basis of religious freedom reveals the subordination of religious practice to public health concerns and regulation in nineteenth century California. This thesis examines the relationship between religion and public health in nineteenth century California through an analysis of the religio-racial climatology of the State Board of Health of...
Show moreThe challenge posed by Wong Yung Quy, a Chinese immigrant living in San Francisco in the 1870s, to a law regulating the exhumation of human remains on the basis of religious freedom reveals the subordination of religious practice to public health concerns and regulation in nineteenth century California. This thesis examines the relationship between religion and public health in nineteenth century California through an analysis of the religio-racial climatology of the State Board of Health of California as well as the court's privileging of public health in Wong Yung Quy's challenge to California's law regulating the exhumation of human remains (In Re Wong Yung Quy, 1880). The intersection of religion, law, and public health in this context reveals the bio-political authority held by public health authorities, and the means by which a vision of the United States as a Christian society was normalized and enforced.The challenge posed by Wong Yung Quy, a Chinese immigrant living in San Francisco in the 1870s, to a law regulating the exhumation of human remains on the basis of religious freedom reveals the subordination of religious practice to public health concerns and regulation in nineteenth century California. This thesis examines the relationship between religion and public health in nineteenth century California through an analysis of the religio-racial climatology of the State Board of Health of California as well as the court's privileging of public health in Wong Yung Quy's challenge to California's law regulating the exhumation of human remains (In Re Wong Yung Quy, 1880). The intersection of religion, law, and public health in this context reveals the bio-political authority held by public health officials, and the means by which a vision of the United States as a Christian society was normalized and enforced.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7440
Format: Thesis

Title: The Church of St. Benedict the Moor: Propagating and Contesting Black Catholicism in New York City, 1883-1920.
Creator: Wheatley, Jeffrey, Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Kalbian, Aline, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the Church of St. Benedict the Moor from 1883 to 1920. St. Benedict's was the first black Catholic church in the North. I argue that supporters of the Catholic mission to African Americans sought to incorporate the assumptions of black religiosity in order to render Catholicism as a legitimately black religion. The institutional history of St. Benedict's demonstrates the difficulties that the Catholic Church faced in attempting to overcome African American suspicion. A...
Show moreThis thesis examines the Church of St. Benedict the Moor from 1883 to 1920. St. Benedict's was the first black Catholic church in the North. I argue that supporters of the Catholic mission to African Americans sought to incorporate the assumptions of black religiosity in order to render Catholicism as a legitimately black religion. The institutional history of St. Benedict's demonstrates the difficulties that the Catholic Church faced in attempting to overcome African American suspicion. A key contribution of this thesis is its approach to black Catholicism as a contested and propagated identity. Prompted by St. Benedict's creation in New York, black Catholics, Irish priests, freethinking radicals, and Protestants all participated in a dialogue over the nature and function of black religion vis-à-vis Catholicism.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-8908
Format: Thesis

Title: Outward Beauty, Hidden Wrath: An Exploration of the Drikung Kagyü Dharma Protectress Achi Chökyi Drölma.
Creator: Muldowney, Kristen Kail, Cuevas, Bryan, Erndl, Kathleen, Yu, Jimmy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Despite her popularity within certain sects of Tibetan Buddhism, little focuses work has been done on the dharma protectress Achi Chökyi Drölma. Venerated as the guardian of the Drikung Kagyü tradition, as the maternal great-grandmother of its founder, Jikten Sumgön (1143-1217), and as a human embodiment of the fully-enlightened female Buddha Vajrayoginī, this little-researched but influential deity maintains numerous diverse roles within her community of lay and monastic devotees. Drawing on...
Show moreDespite her popularity within certain sects of Tibetan Buddhism, little focuses work has been done on the dharma protectress Achi Chökyi Drölma. Venerated as the guardian of the Drikung Kagyü tradition, as the maternal great-grandmother of its founder, Jikten Sumgön (1143-1217), and as a human embodiment of the fully-enlightened female Buddha Vajrayoginī, this little-researched but influential deity maintains numerous diverse roles within her community of lay and monastic devotees. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, this thesis examines Achi's uncommon characterizations beyond the typical mundane Buddhist dharma protector, which I categorize into three separate but at times overlapping personas: 1) Hagiographic Achi, as seen in her portrayal as a Tibetan Buddhist saint 2) Ritualized Achi, as portrayed in her roles of fierce protecttress and boon-granting goddess, and; 3) Historical Achi, or rather, the possible viability of the existence of such female teacher in the history of Jikten Sumgön's genealogy. This is done first with an exploration of Achi's iconography and ritual associations, which have roots in Indian tantric traditions, followed by the history of the domain over which she is sovereign, The Drikung valley region. I then provide a full translation of one of her more recent hagiographies and examine its meanings and implications in relation to the genre of Tibetan religious biography, an end with a look at the impact the roles of women and issues of gender in Buddhist narrative and Tibetan culture have had on the portrayal of Achi as a mother, ritual consort, an teacher. This single case study, therefore, sheds light not only on the construction of religious figures and divine entities within a given cultural sphere, but at the influence gender and normative social values play on the perception of such constructions. In conclusion, I argue these two points: First, that Achi, and other semi-wrathful deities like her, as able to assume different and seemingly contrary roles because they embody a specifically Tibetan Buddhist cultural repertoire grounded in indigenous beliefs and imported religious and social constructs, and second, that while the deity's voluntary assumption of a female body specifically to give birth to a lineage may appear to exemplify the presence of an androcentric gaze in Buddhist narrative, reducing her to a mere reproductive function and an association with a male authority figure, such activities actually stem from a legacy of both religious male and female figures who have used the activities of the house-holder life as skillful mean in spreading the Buddha's teachings.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7202
Format: Thesis

Title: "The Lord Has Led Me, and He Will Lead You: " The Role of Gospel Music in the Formation of Early Twentieth Century Chicago Culture.
Creator: Reed, Monica C., Porterfield, Amanda, Corrigan, John, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis considers the role that gospel music played in the culture of early to mid-twentieth century Chicago. In order to better understand why the popularity of gospel music increased dramatically in the first half of the century, this paper looks at a number of Thomas Andrew Dorsey's songs. Dorsey's lyrics discussed life's difficulties and acknowledged pain and suffering, while at the same time offering hope for a better future through God. By understanding the social conditions of...
Show moreThis thesis considers the role that gospel music played in the culture of early to mid-twentieth century Chicago. In order to better understand why the popularity of gospel music increased dramatically in the first half of the century, this paper looks at a number of Thomas Andrew Dorsey's songs. Dorsey's lyrics discussed life's difficulties and acknowledged pain and suffering, while at the same time offering hope for a better future through God. By understanding the social conditions of Chicago at this time, it becomes clear why these themes were appealing to Chicagoans of all backgrounds. In addition to impacting individuals' lives, gospel also affected Chicago's culture by uniting disparate groups by fostering compassion and negotiating racial tension through its performance at outdoor music festivals. The widespread appeal of these songs also worked to humanize the suffering and hope of African Americans. By relating to these songs, people of all backgrounds were also relating to the experience of African Americans, which fostered a compassionate understanding among whites and blacks. Furthermore, performances of gospel music at festivals brought migrants, old settlers, and whites together, literally and figuratively, by opening the events to people of all races and by emphasizing the similarities of attendees' American and Protestant identities. Catherine Bell's theory of ritual in her work Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice also helps make sense of how these festivals united Chicagoans by explaining how the performance of gospel music allowed people of various backgrounds to become involved in the formation of a new, more interracial Chicago culture.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-1912
Format: Thesis

Title: Opposition to Evangelism in India, China, and Tibet.
Creator: Stoltz, Christina, Cuevas, Bryan J., Erndl, Kathleen, Porterfield, Amanda, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Christian evangelism in Asia often faces opposition from various political and religious forces. Although the specific types of opposition vary between different locations, opposition to evangelism and resistance to Christianity are nearly always the result of the view that Christianity is "foreign" and that the spread of the religion poses a threat to the existing power structure in any given area. In India, various anti-conversion laws prohibit conversion to Christianity in many cases,...
Show moreChristian evangelism in Asia often faces opposition from various political and religious forces. Although the specific types of opposition vary between different locations, opposition to evangelism and resistance to Christianity are nearly always the result of the view that Christianity is "foreign" and that the spread of the religion poses a threat to the existing power structure in any given area. In India, various anti-conversion laws prohibit conversion to Christianity in many cases, while Hindu nationalist organizations often attempt to "re-convert" Christians from tribal or Dalit communities. In both the Christian and Hindu attempts to convert these individuals, the question of what constitutes conversion by "force" or "coercion" is often an issue. In China, the governmental agencies responsible for controlling religion ultimately decide who may preach, what they may preach, where they may preach, and to whom they may preach. As a result, many evangelical Christians choose not to register with the official church and participate instead in illegal underground organizations, while some choose to remain within official church groups yet continue to participate in unauthorized evangelistic activity. In the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, foreign missionary activity is still at a relatively early stage, and very little information is known about the methods that missionaries are employing. By examining the failures of various historical missions among Tibetan Buddhists, the current methods and hopes of missionaries in the TAR are placed in an historical context.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-1557
Format: Thesis

Title: Divine Women in Santeria: Healing with a Gendered Self.
Creator: Tracy, Elizabeth, Corrigan, John, Koehlinger, Amy, Porterfield, Amanda, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This paper addresses the formation of gender identity through the presence of female deities and related mythology. Using the theory developed by Luce Irigaray in "Divine Women", it proposes that women need a religious mythology that includes complex females in order to create a whole self and to build a healthy society. In order to demonstrate an example of this theory, the paper examines the way that divine women are created in the stories of Santeria as well as how through ritual, female ...
Show moreThis paper addresses the formation of gender identity through the presence of female deities and related mythology. Using the theory developed by Luce Irigaray in "Divine Women", it proposes that women need a religious mythology that includes complex females in order to create a whole self and to build a healthy society. In order to demonstrate an example of this theory, the paper examines the way that divine women are created in the stories of Santeria as well as how through ritual, female (and male) practitioners gain a better sense of self; they are able to become divine women through their human characteristics, are able to heal through an enhanced intimacy with the deities and through a deeper connection to their selves, their bodies and their environment.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-1537
Format: Thesis

Title: Charles M. Sheldon and the Heart of the Social Gospel Movement.
Creator: Burnidge, Cara L., Porterfield, Amanda, Corrigan, John, Oshatz, Molly, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In 1896, Congregational minister Charles M. Sheldon wrote the seminal social gospel novel In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do. What began as an attempt to inspire college students in Topeka, Kansas became a national bestseller that continued to inspire millions long after its initial publication. Historians and literary critics disagree about the literary merit and historical significance of both Sheldon and his most famous novel. Much of this debate concentrates on the relative sophistication...
Show moreIn 1896, Congregational minister Charles M. Sheldon wrote the seminal social gospel novel In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do. What began as an attempt to inspire college students in Topeka, Kansas became a national bestseller that continued to inspire millions long after its initial publication. Historians and literary critics disagree about the literary merit and historical significance of both Sheldon and his most famous novel. Much of this debate concentrates on the relative sophistication and originality of Sheldon's prose as well as the degree of liberal or conservative influences in the text. In the process, historians and literary critics set Sheldon apart from other social gospelers as a direct result of his popularity. This paper intends to further scholarship by placing Sheldon in conversation with other social gospel thinkers rather than distinguishing him as a "popular" figure. In doing so, historical understanding of social gospel movements can broaden to include figures like Sheldon and places like Kansas. The historiography of the social gospel currently stifles a movement that was more fluid than is typically considered. By bringing Sheldon fully into the social gospel movement, the historiography can maintain its urban, industrial, and intellectual core while also allowing for less acknowledged areas of the social gospel movement like frontier, rural, and middle-brow reformers and reform movements. Furthermore, Sheldon provides the best perspective on social gospel history and historiography because the phrase and concept driving In His Steps mainstreamed the social gospel. To avoid the popularity of In His Steps or the centrality of "What would Jesus do?" to the social gospel ignores the heart of the social gospel movement.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2731
Format: Thesis

Title: Crossing the Berm: The Disney Theme Park as Sacralized Space.
Creator: Newcomb, Chris, Kelsay, John, Neuman, Robert, Erndl, Kathleen, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation proposes that the Disney theme park be approached as an agent of ritualization in the creation and experience of sacralized space: an ordered, organized space for the thoughtful, selective construction of social meaning and the mutual exercise of symbolic power, initiated in the creation of environment and experienced through ritualized activities and spatial movement, resulting in the recovery of the past and the possibility of a transformed future. This thesis will be...
Show moreThis dissertation proposes that the Disney theme park be approached as an agent of ritualization in the creation and experience of sacralized space: an ordered, organized space for the thoughtful, selective construction of social meaning and the mutual exercise of symbolic power, initiated in the creation of environment and experienced through ritualized activities and spatial movement, resulting in the recovery of the past and the possibility of a transformed future. This thesis will be pursued in four stages: first, an examination of the definitional parameters of sacralized space and ritualization, emphasizing the mutual construction of meaning and the interwoven power relationships inherent in the creation and experience of such a space; second, the application of these parameters and emphases to the Disney theme parks in terms of the creative process of park participants; third, the application of these parameters and emphases to the Disney theme parks in terms of the experiential process of park participants; and fourth, the resultant exercise of power and construction of meaning by park participants within sacralized space. Such an examination of Disney theme parks hopefully will provide a broad ground on which to place in dialogue the other interpretive proposals within contemporary Disney thought, a basis for the thoughtful discussion of these sites within Religious Studies, as well as a more flexible and coherent method of newly considering the complexity of the parks and their pervading influence, for good or for ill, on the global cultural stage.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2635
Format: Thesis

Title: Catholic Southerners, Catholic Soldiers: White Creoles, the Civil War, and the Lost Cause in New Orleans.
Creator: Pasquier, Michael, Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Roman Catholics lived in the antebellum South, fought for the Confederate States of America, and participated in the postwar Lost Cause tradition. They encountered a Protestant-dominated South, but retained their minority religious identity. The creation of a southern brand of Catholicism, therefore, required that both Catholics and Protestants identified with some nondenominational attributes of southern culture. An examination of a white Creole regiment, the Orleans Guard, and their...
Show moreRoman Catholics lived in the antebellum South, fought for the Confederate States of America, and participated in the postwar Lost Cause tradition. They encountered a Protestant-dominated South, but retained their minority religious identity. The creation of a southern brand of Catholicism, therefore, required that both Catholics and Protestants identified with some nondenominational attributes of southern culture. An examination of a white Creole regiment, the Orleans Guard, and their Catholic chaplain, Father Isidore Francois Turgis, challenges the historiographical omission of southern Catholicism from American religious history. As southerners, the Creoles of New Orleans reinforced the white supremacist, honor-driven cause of the Confederacy. They joined the predominantly Protestant Confederate Army, in which Catholics and Protestants fought and died for the same causes. As Catholics, the Confederate soldiers valued the accompaniment of a priest for sacramental and spiritual guidance. The experience of combat energized their religious sensibilities, but they did not express their religion in the same ways as Confederate evangelicals. After the war, Catholic southerners participated in the remembrance of the Lost Cause. Yet in addition to focusing on the standard Confederate icons of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, they emphasized the memory of ordinary soldiers, their brothers-in-arms. Moreover, they transformed the figure of Turgis into a hero of the South, acceptable even to non-Catholics, despite his position as a recent French immigrant and an anti-slavery advocate.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2156
Format: Thesis

Title: Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism.
Creator: Baker, Kelly Jeannette, Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: According to some scholars, religion is inseparable from the African-American experience. Others viewed race as almost a separate ontological category from religion. How can it be possible for scholars to view the relationship between race and religion so differently? "Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism" seeks to understand the complex relationship between religion and race and to explore Tanner's visual mysticism by examining his life and paintings. Tanner was an...
Show moreAccording to some scholars, religion is inseparable from the African-American experience. Others viewed race as almost a separate ontological category from religion. How can it be possible for scholars to view the relationship between race and religion so differently? "Henry Ossawa Tanner: Race, Religion, and Visual Mysticism" seeks to understand the complex relationship between religion and race and to explore Tanner's visual mysticism by examining his life and paintings. Tanner was an African-American artist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose body of work consisted of landscapes, genre paintings, and religious narratives. It will be argued that he considered his religious paintings to be his most important work. The case of Henry Ossawa Tanner, his life and art, demonstrates the dialectical relationship between race and religion. These two identities were in conversation with each other in his life and in his art. Tanner was shaped by his African Methodist Episcopal background, which provided the religious lens through which he viewed life and drew inspiration for his art. Tanner also faced racism, because he was an African-American artist in the time period when to be such was an anomaly, and criticism from his peers because he chose to paint religious themes instead of racial ones. Despite criticism, Tanner remained devoted to his religious works, and many proposed that Tanner was a mystic. This thesis will promote that Tanner was not only a mystic but also a visual mystic by painting on canvas his religious experience and its universal elements. The artist hoped to communicate religious experience to the viewers of his paintings, and he desired to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the world and the interaction between divinity and humanity. For Tanner, painting was a way to connect to viewers, but it was also an act of religious devotion the moment his brush touched the canvas.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0963
Format: Thesis

Title: Tsiu Marpo the Career of a Tibetan Protector Deity.
Creator: Bell, Christopher Paul, Cuevas, Bryan, Erndl, Kathleen, Corrigan, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: I propose to examine the mythological and ritual significance of an important yet little-known Tibetan protector deity named Tsiu Marpo (Tsi'u dmar po). Tsiu Marpo is the protector deity of Samyé (Bsam yas) monastery (est. 779 C.E.), the oldest Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Almost nothing is known of this figure in available scholarship. De Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1998, Gibson 1991, and Kalsang 1996 are the only secondary sources available on Tsiu Marpo, and the latter source provides a very poor...
Show moreI propose to examine the mythological and ritual significance of an important yet little-known Tibetan protector deity named Tsiu Marpo (Tsi'u dmar po). Tsiu Marpo is the protector deity of Samyé (Bsam yas) monastery (est. 779 C.E.), the oldest Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Almost nothing is known of this figure in available scholarship. De Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1998, Gibson 1991, and Kalsang 1996 are the only secondary sources available on Tsiu Marpo, and the latter source provides a very poor and rudimentary history. The first two sources are informative; however, de Nebesky-Wojkowitz is outdated and Gibson only briefly examines Tsiu Marpo for the purpose of his larger argument. Due to this paucity of information, in order to understand better this deity and his importance in Tibet, I will explore Tsiu Marpo through four venues representative of his influential role: his origin story and its connection with Tibetan cultural history, his iconography and its representation of Tibetan expressions of violence, his involvement in apotropaic ritual, and his importance within the Tibetan oracle tradition. This last venue of exploration will pull from all previous venues in order to elaborate on the oracle tradition as a dynamic outlet, through which the ritual program of the deity is enacted for a social service, and which utilizes iconographically significant ritual implements to submerge the service within a realm of sacrality. Through this detailed examination of one Tibetan protector deity, I hope to provide a template for further studies on protector deities as a whole, an arena of Tibetan studies that is still dim and disorganized. Therefore, my thesis will begin with an introduction to Tibetan protector deities, the texts through which they are encountered, and the various sources that have contributed to the figure of Tsiu Marpo and of protector deities in general. From there my focus will contract into a detailed exploration of the protector deity Tsiu Marpo and expand outward into his iconographic, cosmologic, ritual, and oracular importance. My conclusion will tie these observations together to illustrate the multifaceted connections between the ritual and the social in Tibetan Buddhism and the importance of protector deities as a cohesive force between multiple cultural milieus, particularly lay and monastic communities.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-1306
Format: Thesis

Title: Prophet and Priest: The Redefining of Alexander Campbell's Identity.
Creator: Brenneman, Todd M., Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Previous discussions of changes in Alexander Campbell's ideology have focused on an increasing ecumenism in Campbell's thought. Many scholars have argued that as Campbell aged he became more open to denominationalism. By conceiving of Alexander Campbell through the lens of Max Weber's categories of "prophet" and "priest," a different picture emerges. Alexander Campbell was a prophet of primitive Christianity in the early nineteenth century. Campbell attacked the denominational structures of...
Show morePrevious discussions of changes in Alexander Campbell's ideology have focused on an increasing ecumenism in Campbell's thought. Many scholars have argued that as Campbell aged he became more open to denominationalism. By conceiving of Alexander Campbell through the lens of Max Weber's categories of "prophet" and "priest," a different picture emerges. Alexander Campbell was a prophet of primitive Christianity in the early nineteenth century. Campbell attacked the denominational structures of the time and offered a new vision of Christianity should look like in the modern age. In the 1830s, however, Campbell began to become more priestly in his character. His major concern was no longer his vision of restoration. Instead Campbell became concerned with the institution his movement was becoming. Campbell's battles with Sidney Rigdon and John Thomas, the controversy in the movement over a hymnbook, and the death of Campbell's son, Wickliffe, demonstrate a priestly change in Campbell's identity. This shift was the product of Campbell's self-reflection on the role he was taking as well as the role his followers asked of him. Campbell's shift from prophet to priest represents a larger trend in American history. The examples of John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison suggest that many American prophets, like Campbell, have priestly tendencies.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3048
Format: Thesis

Title: Redemptive Media: The Professionalization of the Contemporary Christian Music Industry.
Creator: Horton, Shaun, Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the historiographical paradigm of secularization as an analytical trope employed by historians of modern Christianity and as a discursive trope employed by evangelical participants in the contemporary Christian music (CCM) industry. The historical development of CCM from an apparently spontaneous youth revival to a thriving commercial industry has challenged underlying presuppositions that authentic religiosity requires a meaningful distinction between religious and...
Show moreThis thesis examines the historiographical paradigm of secularization as an analytical trope employed by historians of modern Christianity and as a discursive trope employed by evangelical participants in the contemporary Christian music (CCM) industry. The historical development of CCM from an apparently spontaneous youth revival to a thriving commercial industry has challenged underlying presuppositions that authentic religiosity requires a meaningful distinction between religious and secular music. Participants in the CCM industry have tested the malleability of this distinction by reconfiguring the boundaries between religious and secular performance to fit the shifting demands of the evangelical community and the commercial music market. By treating the distinction between religion and secular culture as a religious belief apart from academic sociocultural theories, this thesis examines its malleability in the popular discourse surrounding the genre and the business of CCM throughout its history. It focuses on evangelicals' attempts to articulate distinctions between Christian and non-Christian music wherein conflicting normative conceptions of authentic religiosity have become especially salient. Though earlier studies have portrayed these conflicts as evidence of the essential incompatibility between evangelism and commercial pop music, this thesis proposes that they have contributed to CCM's success by motivating creativity and innovation in the movement's self-conception as a redemptive enterprise in a secularized society.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3768
Format: Thesis

Title: Birthing the New Birth: The Natural Philosophy of Childbirth in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards.
Creator: Gray, Lauren Davis, Porterfield, Amanda, Corrigan, John, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: "It may be in the new birth as it is in the first birth." So wrote theologian Jonathan Edwards in his "Miscellanies" note numbered 241, named "Regeneration". The "new birth" that he spoke of was the process of religious conversion whereby God takes away one's sinful nature and instills a new, regenerate nature. The process of the new birth is intricately linked to the "first birth," which refers to physical childbirth. This thesis explores the ways in which eighteenth-century conceptions of...
Show more"It may be in the new birth as it is in the first birth." So wrote theologian Jonathan Edwards in his "Miscellanies" note numbered 241, named "Regeneration". The "new birth" that he spoke of was the process of religious conversion whereby God takes away one's sinful nature and instills a new, regenerate nature. The process of the new birth is intricately linked to the "first birth," which refers to physical childbirth. This thesis explores the ways in which eighteenth-century conceptions of childbirth helped to shape the new birth theology of Edwards. While historians have tended to portray Edwards, the revivals that he spawned, and new birth theology as erasing the distinctions of gender, this thesis will argue that Edwardsian evangelicalism actually highlighted the sinfulness of women.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4024
Format: Thesis

Title: Baptism and Humanity: Native American-Jesuit Relationships in New France.
Creator: Gueno, Michael P., Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Jesuit Missionaries and Native Americans lived in the New France region, perpetuated violence against one another, and participated in the healing ritual of baptism. Native Americans shared a nuanced cultural borderland with the Jesuit missionaries and this interaction contextualized the emotional performance of baptism to heal the illnesses of the Indians. An examination of the interaction between Jesuits and Indians in the Great Lakes region, including the Huron, Iroquois, Algonquin and...
Show moreJesuit Missionaries and Native Americans lived in the New France region, perpetuated violence against one another, and participated in the healing ritual of baptism. Native Americans shared a nuanced cultural borderland with the Jesuit missionaries and this interaction contextualized the emotional performance of baptism to heal the illnesses of the Indians. An examination of the interaction between Jesuits and Indians in the Great Lakes region, including the Huron, Iroquois, Algonquin and related nations, from 1610 to 1790 challenges the historiographical tendency to treat Native American subjects as more or less rational, autonomous or important than their European counterparts. By analyzing the role of baptism in Jesuit-Indian encounters, historical accounts can better preserve the humanity of Native Americans. Regardless of what other constituent parts the category of human may include, two defining characteristics of humanity are emotion, expressed here in hateful repulsion and the feeling of cross-culture attraction, and will, expressed through agency. Both Jesuits and Indians constructed identities that alienated and demonized the other. Each expressed this hate in both physical and non-direct forms. Both Jesuits and Indians understood baptism as a healing ritual. Each group sought to use the ritual for both physical and spiritual healing. Native Americans and Jesuit missionaries shared a relationship characterized by dependence and repulsion. Through the ritual of baptism and the resulting emergence of the more inclusive Christian identity, Native Americans and Jesuits regulated and accommodated mutual hatred and the desire for healing. In New France, the ritual of baptism functioned to temper the rift of cultural tension between and reveal the humanity of Native Americans and French Jesuits.
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3934
Format: Thesis

Title: Deep Mapping and the Spatial Humanities.
Creator: Bodenhamer, David, Corrigan, John, Harris, Trevor M.
Abstract/Description: In 2012, the Virtual Center for Spatial Humanities (VCSH) held an advanced institute in Indianapolis, Indiana, on spatial narratives and deep maps. Sponsored by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a U.S. government agency that funds humanities research, the institute invited twelve scholars—seven from the U.S. and five from Europe—whose work at the intersection of digital technologies and their disciplinary domains (history, religious studies, literary studies,...
Show moreIn 2012, the Virtual Center for Spatial Humanities (VCSH) held an advanced institute in Indianapolis, Indiana, on spatial narratives and deep maps. Sponsored by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a U.S. government agency that funds humanities research, the institute invited twelve scholars—seven from the U.S. and five from Europe—whose work at the intersection of digital technologies and their disciplinary domains (history, religious studies, literary studies, geography and geographic information science, archaeology, and museum studies) promised to advance an institute aim of re-envisioning the theories and technologies of spatialization to serve the needs of humanities research more completely.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_rel_faculty_publications-0008, 10.3366/ijhac.2013.0087
Format: Citation

Title: Ghost Dance Religion and National Identity.
Creator: Heise, Tammy Rashel, Porterfield, Amanda, Frank, Andrew, Corrigan, John, Kelsay, John, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: Revising earlier historical interpretations of the Ghost Dance, this dissertation traces the religion's emergence as an American Indian prophet movement and describes its intersections with evangelical Protestantism and Mormonism in the Far West from the mid-nineteenth century to the late-twentieth century. This project problematizes earlier studies by taking a longer view of Ghost Dance religion and incorporating its engagement with and resistance to Protestantism and Mormonism into the...
Show moreRevising earlier historical interpretations of the Ghost Dance, this dissertation traces the religion's emergence as an American Indian prophet movement and describes its intersections with evangelical Protestantism and Mormonism in the Far West from the mid-nineteenth century to the late-twentieth century. This project problematizes earlier studies by taking a longer view of Ghost Dance religion and incorporating its engagement with and resistance to Protestantism and Mormonism into the narrative. It also seeks to correct interpretations that focus solely on the Ghost Dance's 1890 manifestation and the violence of federal suppression at Wounded Knee, thereby eliding the movement's broader cultural context before and after the massacre. By examining the confluence of historical encounters, political forces, and the perceptions they engendered, this study distinguishes Ghost Dance religion from other American Indian prophet movements and demonstrates how its 1890 and 1973 manifestations marked crisis points in American history through which national authority was exerted and thereby consolidated. By reconceptualizing American history through Native American history, this dissertation also discloses the union of religion and politics at work in the Ghost Dance and the prophetic traditions of its major competitors as they sought to enshrine their own versions of American nationalism in the West. The first chapter of this project aims to situate its contribution by discussing how reactions to the violence at Wounded Knee in 1890 shaped the historiography of the Ghost Dance movement and constrained interpretations of the movement in significant ways. Chapter two traces the emergence of Ghost Dance religion to the activity of the Bannock Prophet and his efforts to forge an alliance between American Indians and Mormons in opposition to U.S. rule at the start of the Utah War in 1857. Chapter three details the general war against whites in the West that results from the collapse of Bannock and Mormon efforts to unite as a single people through their perceived prophetic affinities. Through the examination of this conflict, the study reveals how religious identities are performed through violence – a process that results in the emergence of highly politicized and radicalized national identities. Chapter four connects manifestations of the Ghost Dance in the late 1860s and early 1870s to this tradition of spirited resistance to U.S. authority, demonstrating how Ghost Dance adherents ordered their opposition to white rule through a powerful fusion of religious and social realities that galvanized collective identity and motivated action to create a new world. Chapter five adds to this discussion by narrating Ghost Dance manifestations of the late 1880s and early 1890s within this context to reveal the revolutionary potential inherent in Wovoka's prophetic ministry. This focus works to erode lines between militancy and quietism as well as politics and religion drawn in earlier studies, revealing how prophetic religion functions to create and to sustain national identity. The final chapter investigates the persistence of Ghost Dance religion into the twentieth century, tracing its history through the Saskatchewan Dakota's New Tidings community and the American Indian Movement's 1973 takeover of Wounded Knee. In examining how both groups express their connection to the radical millennialism of the nineteenth-century Lakota Ghost Dance, this study reveals how prophetic religion works to mediate political engagement in complex ways and further confirms the union of religion and politics within the Ghost Dance movement.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2016SP_Heise_fsu_0071E_12930
Format: Thesis

Title: Beyond the Lecture Hall: Spectral Bodies and Touch in Nineteenth-Century Material Mediumship.
Creator: Coston, Matthew, Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, McVicar, Michael J., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: This thesis analyzes both the material phenomena channeled by antebellum Spiritualists, and the attendant séance form. Sitter accounts, emphasizing the desire for emotional and material points of connection with spirits, challenge previous interpretations of material phenomena as novel sensationalism. Through practice, material mediums demonstrated an ideal model of selfhood as social, bodily, and free from spatial confines. Rail technology's disruption of the traditional social and spatial...
Show moreThis thesis analyzes both the material phenomena channeled by antebellum Spiritualists, and the attendant séance form. Sitter accounts, emphasizing the desire for emotional and material points of connection with spirits, challenge previous interpretations of material phenomena as novel sensationalism. Through practice, material mediums demonstrated an ideal model of selfhood as social, bodily, and free from spatial confines. Rail technology's disruption of the traditional social and spatial implications of distance opened up the possibility for a radical reimagining of space as primarily social, and erasable through physical and emotional harmony. Though previously neglected, practices around material manifestations demonstrate a strategic model of bodily selfhood complementary to the larger Spiritualist project of pursuing an imminent universal harmony.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2016SP_Coston_fsu_0071N_13017
Format: Thesis

Title: The Controversy of Shaykh 'Ali 'Abd Al-Raziq.
Creator: Broucek, James, Kelsay, John, Ruse, Michael, Twiss, Sumner B., Gaiser, Adam, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Often regarded as the first Islamic defense of political secularism, `Ali `Abd al-Raziq's Islam and the Foundations of Government provoked emotionally-charged repudiations that culminated in his dismissal from Egypt's corps of `ulama. Setting `Abd al-Raziq's work in historical context, this dissertation explains what `Abd al-Raziq intended to do when he wrote Islam and the Foundations of Government. Most immediately, `Abd al-Raziq intended to protect Egypt's fledgling constitutional monarchy...
Show moreOften regarded as the first Islamic defense of political secularism, `Ali `Abd al-Raziq's Islam and the Foundations of Government provoked emotionally-charged repudiations that culminated in his dismissal from Egypt's corps of `ulama. Setting `Abd al-Raziq's work in historical context, this dissertation explains what `Abd al-Raziq intended to do when he wrote Islam and the Foundations of Government. Most immediately, `Abd al-Raziq intended to protect Egypt's fledgling constitutional monarchy from the threat of Egypt adopting the caliphate institution. `Abd al-Raziq's work aimed to undercut proponents of an Egyptian caliphate by demonstrating that the caliphate institution found no support in the sources of fiqh, and had no religious significance in early Islamic history. Many studies have attributed the failure of `Abd al-Raziq's work to the innovative nature of his argument. This dissertation argues that communities constantly invent traditions in order to legitimate their emerging forms. Indeed, Egyptian Muslims of the 1920s had already come to accept nineteenth-century Islamic innovations, like the Ottoman doctrine of the caliphate, Muhammad Abduh's concept of a liberal shari`a, or the novel belief in an Egyptian nation. In this context, `Abd al-Raziq's innovative reasoning cannot account for his failure. This dissertation attributes `Abd al-Raziq's failure to the threat it posed to the perceived rule of law. Like `Abd al-Raziq, `Abd al-Raziq's critics considered tyranny the result of unrestrained, despotic rule. For them, however, God's laws, expressed in the shari`a proved the only adequate limitation to fallible human authorities. The caliphate must be reinstituted, they believed, because of all the world's systems of government, the caliphate alone acknowledged the sovereignty of God's law. By rejecting the caliphate, they inferred, `Abd al-Raziq rejected the institution required for establishing a rule of law that protects citizens from the arbitrary whims and abuses of their rulers.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5322
Format: Thesis

Title: Authenticating Religion: Religious Images and the Construction of Transnational Hinduism.
Creator: Edoho-Eket, Nkoyo, Erndl, Kathleen, Cuevas, Bryan, Villeneuve, Patricia, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the relationship between visual culture, specifically religious images, and the construction of Hindu identity. The primary scope of the paper focuses on the interactions that both Hindus and non-Hindus have with religious images in the diaspora. In particular, it will explore the meanings of religious images that are constructed within museum settings and how the museum is utilized as an institution imbued with authority. Outside of the museum, I will examine the use of...
Show moreThis thesis examines the relationship between visual culture, specifically religious images, and the construction of Hindu identity. The primary scope of the paper focuses on the interactions that both Hindus and non-Hindus have with religious images in the diaspora. In particular, it will explore the meanings of religious images that are constructed within museum settings and how the museum is utilized as an institution imbued with authority. Outside of the museum, I will examine the use of Hindu deities as they are presented in a multicultural framework and how various groups appeal to notions of authenticity to validate their specific experience of an image. Additionally, I will explore similar issues of Hindu identity construction within India, in an attempt to illuminate the different understandings of "authentic" Hinduism across the globe.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5608
Format: Thesis

Title: Antiquity and Social Reform: Religious Experience in the Unification Church, Feminist Wicca and the Nation of Yahweh.
Creator: Hutchinson, Dawn L., Corrigan, John, Padavic, Irene, Porterfield, Amanda, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Although religious innovation in America historically has been the norm rather than the exception, mainstream Americans have often viewed new religious movements with suspicion and occasionally with outright alarm. The question motivating many studies of new religious movements has been "why would someone join these religions?" In this dissertation I offer at least one answer to this often repeated query. I argue that followers of new religious movements in the 1960s-1980s, specifically the...
Show moreAlthough religious innovation in America historically has been the norm rather than the exception, mainstream Americans have often viewed new religious movements with suspicion and occasionally with outright alarm. The question motivating many studies of new religious movements has been "why would someone join these religions?" In this dissertation I offer at least one answer to this often repeated query. I argue that followers of new religious movements in the 1960s-1980s, specifically the Unification Church, Feminist Wicca and the Nation of Yahweh, considered these religions to be legitimate because they offered members a personal religious experience, a connection to an ancient tradition, and agency in improving their world. Utilizing an historical approach, I consider the conversion narratives of adherents and primary literature of the formative years of these movements which demonstrate that the religious experiences of the adherents and a resonance with the goals of these religions propelled individuals into social action.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3385
Format: Thesis

Title: Shaping Christian Identity: The False Scripture Argument in Early Christian Literature.
Creator: Vaccarella, Kevin M. (Kevin Michael), Kelley, Nicole, Marincola, John, Levenson, David, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Christian communities in the first four centuries struggled to construct and maintain a sense of social identity in a time when there were no stable descriptions for Christianity or Judaism. Competing social identities emerged among Jewish and Christian groups as various authors worked to construct and maintain communal boundaries regarding acceptable (and, simultaneously, unacceptable) beliefs and practices. While some Christian groups rejected certain traditions, other groups found reasons...
Show moreChristian communities in the first four centuries struggled to construct and maintain a sense of social identity in a time when there were no stable descriptions for Christianity or Judaism. Competing social identities emerged among Jewish and Christian groups as various authors worked to construct and maintain communal boundaries regarding acceptable (and, simultaneously, unacceptable) beliefs and practices. While some Christian groups rejected certain traditions, other groups found reasons to adopt them. These choices contributed to a community's borders; they constitute what makes "us" different from "them." The recent work of Daniel Boyarin and Judith Lieu illustrates how literary analysis reveals the way texts contribute to the construction of social identity. An author (re)presents the community's values and beliefs, whether real or idealized, not only to establish an identity but also to maintain that identity. An investigation of early Christian texts regarding their attitudes toward the Mosaic law, then, provides a window into the process of identity formation. This dissertation is an examination of a peculiar scriptural hermeneutic that claims that certain biblical mandates found in the scriptures are false. Any beliefs or regulations contained in the supposed false portions of scripture can be rejected on the grounds that they are not part of God's eternal laws. The distinction between the authentic and the false passages has been revealed by Jesus Christ and passed down to his most faithful followers. The false scripture argument is found, to my knowledge, exclusively within Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, the Didascalia Apostolorum, and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. Ptolemy's Letter to Flora teaches that the law has been instituted by three sources – none of which is the High God. Instead, Moses, the Jewish elders, and the demiurge are responsible for the law contained in the scriptures. Christ, an emissary of the High God, is sent to validate those laws that reflect the nature of the High God. On the other hand, the Didascalia Apostolorum claims that all of the scriptures were instituted by God. However, only the Decalogue constitutes the eternal laws of God delivered to Moses. The other laws were established by God through Moses as a punishment upon the Jews as a result of the golden calf incident. These secondary laws have been abrogated since the arrival of Christ. In the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, the false passages of scripture have been instituted by Satan and his forces in order discern the faithful from the wicked, the latter of which follow the regulations found in the false passages. Like the Didascalia, the Homilies claims that Christ, the true prophet, has arrived to discern the true passages from the false ones. Although there are overlapping tenets, each text presents a unique explanation of the origin and catalogue of the false sections of scripture. The variation in the false scripture argument reflects each author's distinctive effort to construct communal boundaries in the face of social competition. The competition can stem from the attraction to the ways of Judaism or a defense against the beliefs of other Christian groups, such as the Marcionites. The false scripture argument functions as a rhetorical tool designed to demarcate the author and his community as the true followers of God since they alone possess knowledge of, as well as the means to distinguish, the false passages of scripture. The false scripture argument shapes the community's religious life by barring members from dangerous practices while at the same time validating the traditions accepted by the author and his community.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4531
Format: Thesis

Title: The Paradox of Feuerbach: Luther and Religious Naturalism.
Creator: Flanagan, Christy L., Kelsay, John, Maier-Katkin, Daniel, Kavka, Martin, Twiss, Sumner B., Porterfield, Amanda, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this project I call for a reconsideration of Feuerbach's place in philosophy and the study of religion. His name is recognizable in these fields usually as a marginal or "bridge" figure, facilitating a shift from one thinker to the next. I suggest that the automatic association of Feuerbach with Left Hegelianism and/or psychological interpretations of religion obscure the greater insights of his model of religious consciousness. Feuerbach's desire to revise the anti-natural and speculative...
Show moreIn this project I call for a reconsideration of Feuerbach's place in philosophy and the study of religion. His name is recognizable in these fields usually as a marginal or "bridge" figure, facilitating a shift from one thinker to the next. I suggest that the automatic association of Feuerbach with Left Hegelianism and/or psychological interpretations of religion obscure the greater insights of his model of religious consciousness. Feuerbach's desire to revise the anti-natural and speculative tendencies of both philosophy and theology was at the cornerstone of his fundamental project. This effort was first directed towards Hegelian idealism, but grew into a larger critique of Christianity and religious consciousness in general. His criticism of religion is not due to a specific condemnation of the divine, but the extent to which it is born out of speculative presuppositions. This indicates the presence of an important theme in Feuerbach's work outside of Hegel and I argue that naturalism filled this role. Interestingly, this also demonstrates a link between the seemingly disparate goals of Feuerbach's humanism and Luther's theology. Luther's observations of religious consciousness provided a vision of naturalism and passivity in his description of the human being's experience of existing before God. Feuerbach also saw in this a profound paradox regarding the relationship between God and human being. His reflections provide the contemporary theorist with ways to reconcile many of the problematic aspects of the rationalist-dualist model that pervades Western philosophy, particularly in the effort to reconsider the foundations of religious self-identity in the post-metaphysical age. Ultimately this places his project in dialogue more appropriately with contemporary studies in pragmatism and phenomenology rather than Hegelian or Freudian thought.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4443
Format: Thesis

Title: Not "Who Is on the Lord's Side?," but "Whose Side Is the Lord on?": Contesting Claims and Divine Inscrutability in Samuel 16:5-14.
Creator: Simpson, Timothy F. (Timothy Frederick), Goff, Matthew, Moore, Dennis, Kelley, Nicole, Levenson, David, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Second Samuel 16:5-14 is an important text for defining the character of both King David and Yahweh, the God of Israel. In this scene, the points of view of the various speakers battle for control of the narrative, attempting in turn to align their perspective with some aspect of what has been revealed earlier about Yahweh in the larger biblical story. Shimei, relative of the dead King Saul, paints David as a murderer and under a divine curse. Shimei presents himself as God's instrument of...
Show moreSecond Samuel 16:5-14 is an important text for defining the character of both King David and Yahweh, the God of Israel. In this scene, the points of view of the various speakers battle for control of the narrative, attempting in turn to align their perspective with some aspect of what has been revealed earlier about Yahweh in the larger biblical story. Shimei, relative of the dead King Saul, paints David as a murderer and under a divine curse. Shimei presents himself as God's instrument of truth and vengeance. Abishai, David's nephew, first paints Shimei as a seditionist worthy of death, and then David as a kind of moral weakling who has lost his previous vigor and resolve. Abishai presents himself as the upholder of God's Torah, the traditional family and the values that David himself used to espouse. David, when it comes his turn to speak, cuts a middle path between Shimei and Abishai, agreeing and disagreeing with both in turn. He then makes a startling theological declaration about his relationship to Yahweh that has often been taken to be a sign of faith, but which can more easily be read as a sign of his own hubris, which in turn fundamentally shapes the way in which the reader comes to think about Yahweh.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5185
Format: Thesis

Title: Gender Justice in a Post-Secular Age?: Domestic Violence, Islamic Sharia, and the Liberal Legal Paradigm.
Creator: Dunn, Shannon, Kelsay, John, Travis, Joseph, Twiss, Sumner B., Kalbian, Aline H., Kavka, Martin, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In liberal democracies, debates about the status of women and debates about the authority of religious legal-moral systems often converge in the area of family law. Focusing on domestic violence, I show a patriarchal bias pervades both Islamic and liberal moral discourse. In order to argue effectively for women's rights, we must address the relationship between secular law, religious identity and legal expression, and gender.
Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4812
Format: Thesis

Title: "The Exodus Is Not yet Accomplished…": Reform Jewish Arguments for the Civil-Rights Movement in the Race Relations Sabbath Messages, 1954-1970.
Creator: Carr, Jessica Leigh, Corrigan, John, Kavka, Martin, Levenson, David, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis is a discourse analysis of the Race Relations Sabbath Messages, issued annually by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, from 1954-1970. Chapter 1, through a historiography of American Reform Judaism and related works on American Jewish history, argues for the need to study denominations of Judaism in terms of theology and social factors, primarily culture and race. With an understanding of American Jewish identity as one of being in tension with the mainstream society,...
Show moreThis thesis is a discourse analysis of the Race Relations Sabbath Messages, issued annually by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, from 1954-1970. Chapter 1, through a historiography of American Reform Judaism and related works on American Jewish history, argues for the need to study denominations of Judaism in terms of theology and social factors, primarily culture and race. With an understanding of American Jewish identity as one of being in tension with the mainstream society, seeking security in America though not complete assimilation, the function of Reform Jewish theology and interface of theology and social constraints become clear. Using this definition of American Jewish identity, Chapters 2 and 3 then serve as an example of how to treat religious rhetoric in its social context. Chapter 2 characterizes the period from 1954 to 1959 as one of universalism and civil religion due to the discrimination and segregation associated with urbanization. Reform Jews used an inclusive theology to argue for African-American civil rights. Based on the dignity of all individuals, Reform Jews sought to use universalist theology to point to the insignificance of group identity and therefore the need to create legislation that protected whites and blacks equally in order for Americans to establish a just society. Then Chapter 3 argues that, after Jewish integration into suburban neighborhoods and mainstream society, Reform Jews turned to particularism for their self-understanding. The universalism of the 1950's had allowed them to establish that group identity could not be used for the purpose of discrimination, but the need for Reform Jews to distinguish themselves from their Christian neighbors led them to develop a particularism in which group identity could be used in such a way that the distinct histories of each group offered a unique contribution to American society. African Americans and Jews, as well as other minorities, deserved to be integrated into American society because they each had something to offer. In particular, Reform Jews offered a special contribution to America because of their insight into suffering and achieving freedom. Because of their Jewish history, Reform Jews could instruct Americans how to establish the most enlightened society. A theocentric, liturgical theology fostered Reform Jews' civil-rights arguments in the 1960's because it gave them special access to the lessons available in Jewish history. This periodization shows that the particularism typically associated with the late 1960's after the Six-Day War can be located as a gradual development beginning in 1960. American social factors, as well as Jewish concerns, thus influenced Reform Jewish identity, theology and rhetoric. Furthermore, particularism should not be classified as a rejection of effort to integrate African Americans into American society; Reform Jewish particularism was developed in such a way specifically tailored to continue to argue for African-American civil-rights in response to the shifting American culture.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4173
Format: Thesis

Title: American Biblical Archaeologists and Zionism: The Politics of Historical Ethnography.
Creator: Sherrard, Brooke, Porterfield, Amanda, Garretson, Peter, Corrigan, John, Goff, Matthew, Gaiser, Adam, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This project explores the relationship between American biblical archaeologists in the mid-twentieth century and the most pressing political issue of the context in which they lived and worked, Zionism. It focuses on a set of American religious studies scholars who engaged the rapidly changing Middle East from the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem during a time when the area changed from British to Jordanian to Israeli rule. While much recent scholarship historicizes...
Show moreThis project explores the relationship between American biblical archaeologists in the mid-twentieth century and the most pressing political issue of the context in which they lived and worked, Zionism. It focuses on a set of American religious studies scholars who engaged the rapidly changing Middle East from the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem during a time when the area changed from British to Jordanian to Israeli rule. While much recent scholarship historicizes academics and critiques the politics of scholarship, very little work has been done to understand these scholars' positions in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, thus allowing the aura of scholarly objectivity, neutrality, and commitment to value-free science that has long surrounded them to continue. But as I show here, archaeologists did enter the debate over Palestine in a substantial way, with their positions on the conflict during the decades before and after the state of Israel's founding weaving their way explicitly and implicitly through both their personal papers and publications. I draw on theoretical insights about history, ethnography, and historical ethnography that have engaged the field of North American religions in recent decades to reconstruct the archaeologists' cultural theories and how these theories underpinned their political desires for the area they considered the Holy Land. The defining difference in their arguments was their understanding of culture. I argue that those archaeologists who envisioned the ancient world as replete with cultural change and hybridity opposed the establishment of a Jewish state, while those who envisioned the ancient world's ethnic boundaries as rigid and impermeable favored it. I support this argument by combining readings of the archaeologists' writings with archival research documenting their heretofore almost unknown political involvement either for or against the establishment of an ethno-national state in Palestine. Many of the scholars in the latter group belonged informally to the "Baltimore school," founded by William Foxwell Albright, who held that biblical archaeology was corroborating the Hebrew Bible's historicity and showing how different the ancient Israelites and Canaanites had been, as discussed in Chapter One. During the 1940s, Albright also lectured frequently on behalf of a Jewish state. Others, most prominently Millar Burrows, discussed in Chapter Two, held a more cautious view of the Bible's historicity and believed the archaeological data showed that the ancient Israelites and Canaanites were culturally similar, not different. Burrows resigned his positions in scholarly organizations in order to publish a book about the Palestinian refugee crisis in 1949. Chapter Three details American rabbi-archaeologist Nelson Glueck's mid-career shift from opposing a Jewish state to supporting it and the dramatic corresponding shift in his scholarship about the ancient past. Chapter Four shows the way the differences between Israelites and Canaanites were drawn in even bolder lines by biblical theologian and archaeologist George Ernest Wright, who considered his support for Israel non-political and harshly criticized archaeologists who took pro-Palestinian positions. Chapter Five shows the way that two archaeologists who became associated with pro-Palestinian positions, Paul Lapp and Albert Glock, grounded their arguments in an appeal to the flexibility and hybridity of cultures and a rejection of scholars' ability to be objective. It is important to note that when Glueck, Burrows, Lapp, and Glock opposed a Jewish state, it was not because they favored an Arab state. They rejected ethnic nationalism in any form, and they used the theoretical basis for that opposition--that cultures are not essentially homogeneous, or mutually exclusive, or unchanging over the centuries--to combat modern ethnic nationalism through their scholarship.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5972
Format: Thesis

Title: Among the Pueblos: The Religious Lives of Franciscan Missionaries, Pueblo Revolutionaries, and the Colony of Nuevo Mexico, 1539-1722.
Creator: Gueno, Michael P., Corrigan, John, Gray, Edward, Porterfield, Amanda, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Among the pueblos of Nuevo Mexico, Franciscan missionaries and Pueblo Indians structured their perceptions of and relationships with one another within religious frameworks. The history of cultural contact and interaction between friars and Pueblo peoples of the Southwest borderland reveals the prominence of religion within the history of the region and the lives of its inhabitants. The actions and reactions of Franciscans and Native American colonists expressed the influence of the religious...
Show moreAmong the pueblos of Nuevo Mexico, Franciscan missionaries and Pueblo Indians structured their perceptions of and relationships with one another within religious frameworks. The history of cultural contact and interaction between friars and Pueblo peoples of the Southwest borderland reveals the prominence of religion within the history of the region and the lives of its inhabitants. The actions and reactions of Franciscans and Native American colonists expressed the influence of the religious motivations and behavioral norms that permeated their lives. Amidst patterns of social interaction that were infused with religious significance, missionaries and Pueblo congregants developed nuanced and fluid relationships. Residents of Nuevo Mexico engaged elements from diverse religious traditions and evidenced conversion, rejection, hybridization, and parallelism within their religious lives. The series of Native American revolts that marked the seventeenth century history of the colony was an articulation of Pueblo religious resistance that sought to redress the transgressions of New Mexican colonists. During initial Spanish colonization, the Pueblo Revolutionary period, and the later renewal of the colony, religion prominently influenced the cultural landscapes and historical experiences of Franciscan missionaries, Pueblo peoples, and the colony of Nuevo Mexico.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7153
Format: Thesis

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