Browsing by Subject "Religion"

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Assembling the Orthodox Soul: Practices of Religious Self-Formation among Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy
(2013-07) Winchester, Daniel Alan
This dissertation is the result of a multi-sited ethnographic study of contemporary conversions to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region of Minnesota. Theoretically, this case study of Orthodox conversions is utilized as a way to better approach and account for the phenomenon of religious self-formation, here defined as the process by which social actors, with the aid and encouragement of others, incorporate aspects of a religious tradition into their own subjective experiences and self-interpretations. Through talking, interacting, and practicing with Orthodox Christian converts, this study provides answers to how individuals come to inhabit and experience a religious system as a personal reality, making a particular construal of the religious world a formative part of how they experience themselves as persons. While the empirical details are necessarily confined to the ethnographic case at hand, central to this dissertation is a wider claim that coming to grips with the question of how religious cultural systems enter into the lived experiences of individuals requires a better understanding of the constitutive effects of religious practices on those who perform them. Moreover, through detailed analyses of three significant religious practices and their phenomenological effects on the converts who participated in them, I demonstrate how these constitutive relationships between particular religious practices and subjectivities unfolded over time and in context, extending cross-disciplinary literatures on religious narrative, embodiment, and materiality.
Beyond Social Support: Spiritual Support as a Novel Design Dimension in Sociotechnical Systems
(2020-12) Smith, C. Estelle
For people facing life-threatening physical and/or mental illness, matters of spirituality or religion often assume a role of elevated importance in their lives. However, spirituality is an understudied topic in Social Computing, and has largely been omitted or minimized in research narratives and trajectories related to online health. Taking a human-centered design approach that seeks to honor people's core values and beliefs, this dissertation contributes an empirically-derived theoretical perspective that views spirituality as a crucial underlying dimension in sociotechnical systems for online health and social support, such as Online Health Communities (OHCs). Because of their widespread adoption and ability to provide users with social support, OHCs are a topic of prominent interest in Human-Computer Interaction and Social Computing. OHCs have been studied across a variety of online spaces, ranging from disease-specific niches on larger social media platforms, to specialized platforms designed specifically for patients and caregivers--such as CaringBridge, a Minnesota-based nonprofit OHC that served over 300,000 people daily in 2019, including 40 million unique users from 237 countries. Two studies in this dissertation were completed in collaboration with CaringBridge, while the third presents Flip*Doubt, a novel prototypical system for crowd-powered cognitive reappraisal. Whereas prior work in OHCs has focused on conventional support categories, the first study provides a content analysis and survey of CaringBridge users that, together, quantitatively distinguish ``prayer support'' as an independent category of crucial importance to users. Because prayer indicates a deeper set of beliefs/values that cannot be captured quantitatively, the second study involves qualitative focus groups with CaringBridge stakeholders. This study contributes a definition of ``spiritual support,'' along with its design implications in OHCs. In particular, one implication is that designers should consider technical mechanisms to provide users with assistance with supportive communication. Thus, the final study of this dissertation, a field deployment of Flip*Doubt, can inform the development of future AI/ML-based systems in OHCs for mental health. All together, these contributions help to shift the lens through which we view social support online, and to guide future work towards creating systems that serve the deepest needs of users.
Case studies in compassion: need interpretation, gender, and family in an era of faith-based provision
(2013-08) Docka-Filipek, Danielle E.
As a result of provisions codified in the 1996 PRWORA, and later, through presidential Executive Order, many Americans now encounter the welfare state through small programs run by local churches. Both liberal and conservative worship communities in the US have embraced and maintained a `traditional' family ideology in which nuclear family ideals are normative--despite increasing levels of diversity in the way the majority of Americans organize their family lives. The central concerns of this dissertation revolve around whether and how programs receiving funds associated with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) are organized around the needs of families that do not fit the traditional nuclear male-breadwinner ideal. I pose three primary questions: 1) How do institutionalized models of family and gender in faith-based organizations inform service providers' interpretations of clients' needs? 2) Do the models of family circulating in faith-based organizations have consequences for the ways these organizations become gendered social spaces? 3) In environments where models for the "Ideal Family" exist in tension with other forms of family life, will organizational rhetorics about family and gender reflect this diversity? To answer the above questions, interviews and participant-observation in four case study organizations (one theologically liberal, two theologically conservative, and one "community-based"), as well as 39 interviews with program authorities in 27 different organizations (drawn across a Midwestern, metropolitan area) were conducted. Although the organizations profiled exhibited a good amount of practices accommodating family diversity, organizational rhetorics did not always reflect the full diversity of participants' family lives. Significantly, I observed a deep ambivalence surrounding non-nuclear family models, a pattern I argue is attributable to the way such family forms call into question dominant beliefs and practices related to the social construction of gender. Furthermore, I found that in settings of community and faith-based social service provision, rhetoric associated with the ideology of religious neoliberalism is pervasive, and extends beyond the discourse circulated by the theologically conservative coalition of elites with which it is normally associated. I argue the pervasiveness of religious neoliberalism is driven by structural conditions compelling organizations to resort to individualistic "moral resources" in the absence of material resources, which limits providers' capacity to promote and access alternative discursive resources that might otherwise reference structural inequality. Lastly, my data indicates that organizations' self-definition as either community-based or faith-based does not indicate "more" or "less" religion, as many other analyses otherwise presuppose. The boundaries between organizations with religious characteristics and those with "non-religious," or more secular, self-presentations are porous, in that they shift over time and in both directions (i.e., organizations become more explicitly expressive of their religious character, or they choose to consciously abandon elements of their religious identity as time passes and their structure develops).
Complications and complexities in the schooling experiences of young Northern Nigerian women living in Zaria
(2010-07) Jatau, Phebe Veronica
The purpose of this research was to share and interpret the stories of young women in Zaria, an urban city in northern Nigeria, in order to illustrate how their unique positions framed their identity and their attitude toward schooling. There has been a huge concern about the increasing school dropout rate among women in the country, particularly in northern Nigeria. The gender gap and inequities that pervade the educational system have remained daunting challenges. Many stories have been told and are still being told about these women and their ability or inability to access formal education. Most of the literature that examines this phenomenon comes at the problem from a quantitative research approach which beclouds important nuances. As such, a one-size-fits-all approach has been used to promote women's education in Nigeria without recognizing difference. In my research, the complexities and complications involved in the schooling process of these women were uncovered in order to deepen understanding about the issues that they grappled with as they went to school. Qualitative research methods, particularly interviews and deep conversations, were used to elicit the seventeen young women's (between the ages of 18 and 30) experiences. I chose these women purposively using criterion sampling and snowballing. Some women self-selected themselves to participate. Postmodernism, postcolonial feminism, socio-cultural perspectives on literacy, and funds of knowledge were theoretical frameworks that helped me to understand the forces at work in these women's schooling. These forces included poverty, ethnicity, religion, and lack of proficiency in English language, which together informed their identity construction and in the end complicated their schooling processes.
Defining the Physician's Duty: Medical Professionalization in America and the Politics of Prostitution Reform Activism, 1870s-1910s
(2017-10) Luepke, Laura
Historians have identified the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries as a period of intensified professionalization in American medicine, marked by the growth of professional associations and specialization, the development of licensing standards, and efforts to improve medical education. This dissertation intervenes in that literature by moving beyond this focus on institutional structures to instead address how extra-professional intervention shaped professionalization processes. Focusing on physicians’ prostitution reform activism from the 1870s-1910s, this study demonstrates that professionalization was often the product of unplanned actions in unexpected areas of intervention, not of a clear plan with a predetermined direction. As doctors entered prostitution reform, confluences of circumstances and actions beyond physicians’ control generated opportunities that individuals exploited for many reasons besides professionalization, but nonetheless shaped how physicians claimed professional status and identity. This dissertation contends that to understand medical professionalization, it must be situated in its Christian, sexual, and imperial politics because it was at the crossroads of faith, gender, and empire that balances of power between groups of physicians, and with it their ability to shape the trajectory of their profession, could tilt. Prostitution reform activism thus became a key battleground upon which doctors worked collectively for expanded authority and power, even as they engaged in internecine conflicts over professional duty and its areas of social, political, moral, and spiritual purview. Attending to these relations of power reveals women physicians, eccentric male health reformers, military surgeons, venereal specialists, and other assumed-to-be marginal groups playing leading roles in defining the physician’s duty.
Disciplined by democracy: moral framing and the rhetoric of Red Letter Christians.
(2010-03) Boerboom, Samuel Isaac
In this dissertation I study both the textual reception and rhetorical production strategies of the Red Letter Christians, a discourse community whose identity is linked to these very same strategies. I contend that the Red Letter Christians engage in biblical reading strategies that make them distinct from other politically liberal or progressive religious groups. The Red Letter Christians employ a moral frame based on their particular reading of the Bible. Embedded in the notion of "conservative radicalism," such a moral frame asserts a dedication to timeless principles and truths authenticated by the gospel accounts of Jesus while it simultaneously upholds a passionate defense of social justice and the activist need to engage in political action in the present. Such a moral frame is biconceptual, expressing both conservative and progressive dimensions of moral social action. Due to the biconceptuality of the Red Letter Christian moral frame, Red Letter Christians often stress the importance of humility and non-partisan dialogue. Critics of the Red Letter Christians from both the political left and the right argue that such discourse is often incomprehensible and obfuscates the political positions the group defends in their rhetoric. I assert that in spite of their common reception as a religiously liberal group, the Red Letter Christians offer a model of discourse that at its best authenticates and otherwise justifies a model of post-partisan discourse that re-imagines religion's role in public political discourse.
Dynamics of Religious Ritual: Migration and Adaptation in Early Medieval Britain
(2019-08) Creager, Brooke
How do migrations impact religious practice? In early Anglo-Saxon England, the practice of post-Roman Christianity adapted after the Anglo-Saxon migration. The contemporary texts all agree that Christianity continued to be practiced into the fifth and sixth centuries but the archaeological record reflects a predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture. My research compiles the evidence for post-Roman Christian practice on the east coast of England from cemeteries and Roman churches to determine the extent of religious change after the migration. Using the case study of post-Roman religion, the themes religion, migration, and the role of the individual are used to determine how a minority religion is practiced during periods of change within a new culturally dominant society.
Eric McLuhan’s 2015 Book and Walter J. Ong’s Thought
(2016-09-05) Farrell, Thomas J.
Essays on religion as an industry
(2009-08) Walrath, Michael W.
This dissertation is comprised of two chapters. The first chapter is titled "Estimating a Strategic Entry Model for Churches." This chapter treats the entry decisions of churches as if they were profit-maximizing firms and uses recent developments in the strategic entry industrial organization literature to study these decisions. A central theme in the entry literature is the potential for excess entry because the entrant fails to internalize the negative impact of its entry on the revenue of existing firms. Two key facts underlying my analysis are that Catholic churches tend to be much bigger in terms of members than Protestant churches and there are also fewer Catholic churches in a typical market. As compared to relatively decentralized Protestant churches, the Catholic Church is hierarchical, with authority for entry decisions vested in a local bishop. One might expect the bishop to internalize negative impact from entry of a new church, in a way that a Protestant preacher starting a new church would not. I estimate the parameters of an entry model using data from the entry of Protestant churches in specially defined markets and then do an experiment to determine how things look different when a Catholic bishop controls entry. I find that I can explain a large amount of the differences in entry patterns between Catholic churches and Protestant churches taking this difference in entry regulation into account. The second chapter is titled, "A Model of Church Exit." Much work has been in the fields of economics and sociology treating religion as an industry. One significant empirical difference between churches and for-profit firms is that churches have much lower exit rates. This paper develops a model of the exit decisions of for-profit firms and religious entrepreneurs that differ in objectives, in what can be done with assets when a store or church (a unit) is shut-down and in the number of units they control. Historical data on the exit rates of churches and grocery stores support the predictions of the model.
Exhibit Catalog for, "Ritual of Reading: Religion and the Illustrated Book," March 22-May 14, 2010
(2010-03-22) Sienkiewicz, Emily
Throughout history, the illustrated book has served a significant role in the practice of religion and the expression of religious beliefs. Ranging from bibles to codices to examples of great literature and reproductions of master paintings, the books in the Francis V. Gorman Rare Art Book Collection and the University's Special Collections demonstrate the key role art and artists play in the cultivation and promotion of religion, faith and spirituality.
Health Outcomes of Family Caregivers: Examining the Role of Spirituality and Religion
(2018-07) Trudeau, Stephanie
It is estimated that there are nearly 40 million family caregivers actively providing care for a loved one with a chronic illness in the United States today (American Association for Retired Persons, 2015). This number is projected to double by the year 2050, as our nation’s baby boomers become recipients of this care (Family Caregiving Alliance, 2016; Pollard & Scommenga, 2014). Family caregivers are at higher risk for negative emotional (e.g., depression, anxiety) and physical (e.g., heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis) health outcomes (Charles, Piazza, Mogle, Sliwinski, & Almeida, 2013; Li, Shaffer, & Bagger, 2015; Roth, Fredman, & Haley, 2015). The impacts that caregiving have on health outcomes are clear. Which factors put caregivers at higher risk for poor health outcomes is not as clear (Kane, 2011). What remains particularly understudied is how the spiritual and religious practices of caregivers influence their personal mental and physical health. This study advanced a secondary analysis on a longitudinal sample of caregivers aimed to understand how use of spirituality impacts mental and physical health outcomes. This subset of prospective data was taken from the National Survey of Midlife Development (n = 89), in 2004-2006, and 2014-2015. A predictive model showed that caregivers’ religious resources had an impact on their mental health. More specifically, use of private religious practices showed more positive mental health outcomes over other variables of religious resources. Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.
If I give my soul: Pentecostalism inside of prison in Rio de Janeiro.
(2012-08) Johnson, Andrew Reine
One of the most dynamic and unique manifestations of global Pentecostalism has been inside of Brazilian prisons. This dissertation examines Pentecostalism inside of the jails and prisons of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and engages with the following three research questions: Why is Pentecostalism so successful in the prisons and jails of Rio de Janeiro, how is the faith practiced by inmates, and what impact does prison Pentecostalism have on the streets and surrounding communities outside of prison? To address these questions, the author collected qualitative data inside of the prisons and jails in Rio, over twelve months. The dissertation argues that Pentecostalism is strong inside of prison partly because it is the dominant faith in the neighborhoods where the vast majority of inmates lived before they were incarcerated. Another component of the faith’s success is the inmate-led Pentecostal churches that operate inside of prisons in Rio de Janeiro. These churches rely on the charismatic leadership of an inmate pastor and replicate the organizational model of Pentecostal churches on the streets. Their legitimacy as a autonomous force inside of prison is reinforced by the criminal gangs who do not subject the Pentecostal inmates to their rules. Pentecostal practice offers more than simply a means for inmates to escape the pains of imprisonment. It offers a counter-cultural identity and corresponding dignity to people who have been historically marginalized, treated as less than full citizens by the state, and who larger society views as expendable. The songs, rituals and communal practices of Pentecostalism offer inmates an opportunity to live dignified lives in the context of an extremely difficult situation. Though Pentecostalism in Rio lacks an explicit, coherent political agenda, the consistent presence of Pentecostals inside of prison is a political act that has material consequences. Pentecostals have achieved an elevated position in prison by providing for the material needs of inmates and directly intervening on their behalf during life threatening crises. The unique space Pentecostals occupy also exposes the problematic nature of their intimate involvement with the inmate population as accusations of illicit financial relationships between some Pentecostal pastors and prisoners have cast a shadow of doubt over the motives of visiting Pentecostal groups.
In A God-Fearing House: A Sibling Study of Conservative Christian Families with LGBTQ Offspring
(2022-06) Okrey Anderson, Sloan
Manuscript one explores the religious family environment and parent-child relationships for LGBTQ people from the perspectives of both the LGBTQ person and one of their siblings. The aim of this first study is to describe the experiences of LGBTQ people growing up in non-affirming Christian families, including their role in the family system, their parent-child relationships, and their experiences with identity disclosure. Manuscript one also addresses the question of theological affirmation and whether it is relevant to LGBTQ parent-child relationship quality. Manuscript two focuses on sibling relationships in the context of non-affirming Christian families. The aim of this study is to identify and describe barriers to supportive sibling relationships for LGBTQ people both before and after identity disclosure. Manuscript two also seeks to address the question of whether parental non-affirmation has an impact on sibling relationships. Finally, in light of the importance of family support, there have been calls for more research and more evidence-based interventions with families of LGBTQ people. However, research suggests that the motivations and mechanisms of anti-LGBTQ sentiment may be vastly different between Black and White American Christians. Thus, the aim of manuscript three is to explore and describe characteristics of Black and White American churches in the context of existing literature on these sub-cultures.
'In an age so enlightened, enthusiasm so extravagant': popular religion in Enlightenment Scotland, 1712-1791"
(2009-05) Brekke, Luke G.
This dissertation draws on printed and manuscript sources to provide a detailed look at parish life in the west of Scotland during the eighteenth century, examining how this society moved from Reformation to Enlightenment at the local level. It argues that religious culture in this region around 1700 is not best characterized in terms of "official religion" and "popular religion," but rather as a "folk Calvinism" substantially shared by clergy and laity and by elites and the very humble. This folk Calvinism came under increasing challenge from a new worldview related to emerging Enlightenment thought in the metropole and to a new theology among the clerical avant-garde in the international Reformed world. From a religious culture all but universally shared in this region, "folk Calvinism" became a provincial culture which opposed the new, cosmopolitan religious culture of lay and clerical elites oriented toward England, Europe, and the republic of letters. The two religious cultures clashed dramatically in the so-called "violent settlements" of the 1760s-80s, when cosmopolitan gentry sought to impose enlightened pastors on the parishes, and were resisted by an organized and surprisingly articulate campaign of petitioning, theological critique, non-compliance, and even rioting by parish traditionalists. These events were followed by the formation of competing churches (many vibrantly evangelical) and the erosion of the universal discipline for which Calvinism has been notorious, creating a society where many individuals were zealously and traditionally devout, but no one religious culture held a position of hegemony. Century's end in the west of Scotland saw the emergence of plebeian anti-Calvinists like John Goldie and Robert Burns--a striking change from what earlier appeared the strong correlation between enlightened religion and elite social status--but a sizable and passionate minority of "enthusiastic," traditionalist Christians continued to flourish. The paper argues that modernity means not particular substantive views (e.g., optimism about human nature, trust in unaided reason), but rather this resulting condition of plurality, the inability of any one worldview to achieve the kind of hegemony held before these events by Calvinism.
The inevitable clash? Inter-religious violence and local power-sharing in Nigeria
(2013-05) Vinson, Laura Thaut
Since the end of the Cold War, intra-state or ethnic conflict has emerged as one of the most serious threats to the peace and stability of states in the international system. Inter-religious violence, in particular, and the politicization of new forms of resurgent religion are now a major challenge. Not all religiously pluralistic communities witness violence, however: what explains why inter-religious violence breaks out in some communities and not others? Under what conditions does religious identity - as opposed to other salient ethnic cleavages - become the fault line and mobilizing narrative of communal violence? Examining the variation in Muslim-Christian post-1980 violence in northern Nigeria, I suggest that a community's vulnerability to inter-religious violence is a function of pre-existing ethno-tribal power-sharing arrangements at the local level. While scholars and policy-makers are disappointed by the ability of formal, national-level power-sharing institutions to avert ethnic conflict and instability, they overlook the peacebuilding capacity of informal local government power-sharing. From nearly a year of case study research and original data collection in northern Nigeria, I find that religious change in Nigeria has introduced a powerful narrative of group identity and difference that, depending on informal local power-sharing arrangements, can be leveraged for violence or peace.
No Church in the Wild: The Politics of American Nonreligion
(2019-07) Stewart, Evan
The number of Americans with no religious identification has grown to nearly a quarter of the population in 2018. What are the political implications of this cultural change? Current research views religious disaffiliation as an example of either backlash to the religious right (expecting the unaffiliated to be engaged partisans) or drift from institutions (expecting them to be disengaged from politics). I address this debate with three studies that examine political engagement, opinion formation, and organized advocacy among the nonreligious. Across all three studies, theories from cultural sociology suggest that simple categorical measures of nonreligious identity hide substantive differences in how people engage nonreligion in their personal lives (through low religious practice, non-belief, and nonreligious identification) and in public life (through opposition to religious authority in the public sphere). For engagement, new analysis with existing survey data with validated voter turnout shows that classic measures of low church attendance associate with higher odds of turnout among unaffiliated respondents. For opinion, analysis of original survey data shows that measures of public nonreligion are more closely associated with progressive political views than measures of personal nonreligion. For advocacy, analysis of tax and lobbying records of forty nonreligious organizations shows how a focus on personal nonreligious identities creates a closed network of groups with a more narrow agenda than organizations lobbying for the separation of church and state. By focusing on the substantive differences between cultural repertoires of personal and public nonreligion, I highlight how public religious considerations are an important explanatory factor in political life. Slippage between these repertoires can explain why the nonreligious appear to have large political potential, but limited political impact.
Our Father which Art in Heaven: conservative christian protestants‘ perceptions and meanings of gendered family metaphors for God.
(2010-05) Zaloudek, Julie A.
This study employed a sample of 575 Protestants to examine how Protestants perceive God in family roles by looking first at what roles God is perceived in and if gender, controlling for age, will predict perceiving God in specific family roles. God was most often perceived as a father, husband/groom, mother, and brother for the whole sample. However, when dividing the sample by gender, this did not hold true for the men who saw God first as father followed by brother, mother, and husband, in that order. Gender was significantly related to seeing God as a husband/groom when controlling for age. The second part of this study used a sub-sample of 18 mostly Conservative participants to explore how they perceived the nature of God in those family roles. God as father was seen in these three ways: a controlling, distant father; a kind, traditional father; and a modern, flexible father. God as mother was seen in a more traditional way, although participants came to the conclusion that they actually think of God as a mothering father or more generally as a parent. God was also seen as a brother, though this was less developed. God (usually as Jesus) was also experienced in five husband-type roles which include: tender and intimate lover, passionate and desirous lover, companionable partner, sacrificial and forgiving partner, and providing and protecting husband. Many connections between family relationships and family based God images were found.
Places of Worship
(Journal of Opinions, Ideas & Essays (JOIE), 2024-03) Finnegan, John
This is a photographic presentation of “Places of Worship,” with an emphasis on the diversity of the human religious impulse from early to modern times. The video was presented to the UMRA Photography Club in March of 2024.
Priest as Criminal: Community Regulation of Priests in the Archdeaconry of Paris, 1483-1505
(2013-11) Vann Sprecher, Tiffany
This dissertation examines accusations of criminal behavior levied against priests in the archdeaconry of Paris from 1483 - 1505. It is a study of both justice and religion based on an analysis of ecclesiastical court registers. Within these registers are thousands of cases against laypeople and clergy. Focusing on priests, this dissertation scrutinizes the four most common charges brought against them: engaging in illegal business practices; participating in inappropriate leisure activities; committing violence; and having illicit contact with women. It reveals that parishioners had wide latitude and many tools to compel their priests to act in a certain manner. Community members were able to avail themselves of the ecclesiastical court to enforce church law. The ecclesiastical court also tacitly sanctioned the use of certain extralegal means, such as violence, that allowed community members to coerce priests into conforming to local expectations. Finally, community members could ignore ecclesiastical laws altogether, enabling though inaction their priests to contravene church laws against, for example, gambling or living with women. This dissertation challenges a persistent historiography which portrays parishioners as languishing under the leadership of an incompetent and unscrupulous clergy at the turn of the sixteenth century. Historians have argued that this alleged misbehavior prompted parishioners to look elsewhere for religious leadership - namely to Protestant or reformed Catholic churches. However, allegations of crimes committed by Parisian priests have not been systematically examined until now. This study argues that historians have exaggerated the prevalence of, and parishioner disillusionment with, sacerdotal misbehavior. Moreover, this work shows that parishioners had significant agency in the regulation of priests in their parishes. Parishioners were not necessarily looking outside the traditional church to fulfill their religious needs. Rather, they utilized the enforcement tools they possessed to shape the character of their local parish. This study therefore contributes to a growing body of scholarship that sees the church at the turn of the sixteenth century as a dynamic organization directed largely at the parish level by residents of the parish themselves.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ 2016 Book and Walter J. Ong’s Thought
(2016-10-13) Farrell, Thomas J.

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