Matching Items (8)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Religious history
- All Subjects: Hindus
- Creators: Moore, Moses
- Creators: Feldhaus, Anne
Description
This thesis discusses the intersection of Christian and Blues exegesis and hermeneutics in the life and lyrics of Eddie "Son" House, a Baptist and Methodist preacher and Blues singer who was born in Lyon, Mississippi. It is intended as a biographical case study that highlights and explores the complex and multifaceted relationship between Black Protestant Preaching and Blues Singing/Preaching. In doing so, it critically appropriates Religious Studies theoretical and methodological considerations, orientations, and insights--particularly those from Charles Long and Paul Ricoeur--to examine the life, artistry, ministry, and lyrics of House in light of his expressed religious orientations and dual, often conflicting roles as a Christian Minister and Blues Preacher.
ContributorsBroyles, Michael (Author) / Moore, Moses (Thesis advisor) / Ali, Souad (Committee member) / Anderson, Lisa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the encounter of a large cadre of 103 Roman Catholic priests from Ireland and their Mexican parishioners. Scholars have not explored this rich historical juncture. This is the first study to do so. Primary and secondary sources, as well as numerous oral history interviews provide the evidence that supports the thesis that the Irish priests and the Mexican people shared something of a common consciousness, resulting from similar histories, worldviews, and cultural values. This counters the prevailing scholarly opinion which excoriates Euroamerican churchmen of that time for misunderstanding and neglecting their Hispanic flock. Standing apart in this respect, most priests from Ireland--unlike clergy from other backgrounds-- were sympathetic to folk traditions and experienced a synergy with Mexican people which enabled them to adapt and learn from Hispanic communities.
Yet for all that Irish priests and Mexicans shared in common, these pastors failed to see or at least address the social, economic, and ecclesiastical discrimination which Mexicans daily experienced or challenge the systems which kept them subservient. Paradoxically, these clergy accepted Mexican people, but they also accepted the racist structures which marginalized them.
This historical moment is unique for two reasons. In the mid-twentieth century Irish-born priests were ubiquitous and constituted the largest number of Catholic missionaries in the world. Today there are scarcely enough priests to supply the parishes of Ireland. Similarly, in the mid- twentieth century Mexicanos and Mexican Americans were almost without exception Catholic.
Today this can no longer be taken for granted. These shifts presage the end of an era for the Church in Arizona. Nationally, they correspond to the denouement of long-standing U.S. Irish ecclesiastical establishment and herald the ascendancy of an Hispanic Catholic Church.
In reconstructing this history salient themes emerge: ethnicity, religion (official/popular), power relations, prejudice/discrimination, and the discovery of common ground amid differences. This matrix gives rise to a complex crisscrossing of trajectories of Catholics and Protestants (in society), Irish and Mexican Catholics (in the church), priest and parishioners (in the parish). It holds lessons for the future.
This dissertation examines the encounter of a large cadre of 103 Roman Catholic priests from Ireland and their Mexican parishioners. Scholars have not explored this rich historical juncture. This is the first study to do so. Primary and secondary sources, as well as numerous oral history interviews provide the evidence that supports the thesis that the Irish priests and the Mexican people shared something of a common consciousness, resulting from similar histories, worldviews, and cultural values. This counters the prevailing scholarly opinion which excoriates Euroamerican churchmen of that time for misunderstanding and neglecting their Hispanic flock. Standing apart in this respect, most priests from Ireland--unlike clergy from other backgrounds-- were sympathetic to folk traditions and experienced a synergy with Mexican people which enabled them to adapt and learn from Hispanic communities.
Yet for all that Irish priests and Mexicans shared in common, these pastors failed to see or at least address the social, economic, and ecclesiastical discrimination which Mexicans daily experienced or challenge the systems which kept them subservient. Paradoxically, these clergy accepted Mexican people, but they also accepted the racist structures which marginalized them.
This historical moment is unique for two reasons. In the mid-twentieth century Irish-born priests were ubiquitous and constituted the largest number of Catholic missionaries in the world. Today there are scarcely enough priests to supply the parishes of Ireland. Similarly, in the mid- twentieth century Mexicanos and Mexican Americans were almost without exception Catholic.
Today this can no longer be taken for granted. These shifts presage the end of an era for the Church in Arizona. Nationally, they correspond to the denouement of long-standing U.S. Irish ecclesiastical establishment and herald the ascendancy of an Hispanic Catholic Church.
In reconstructing this history salient themes emerge: ethnicity, religion (official/popular), power relations, prejudice/discrimination, and the discovery of common ground amid differences. This matrix gives rise to a complex crisscrossing of trajectories of Catholics and Protestants (in society), Irish and Mexican Catholics (in the church), priest and parishioners (in the parish). It holds lessons for the future.
ContributorsCunningham, John (Author) / Fessenden, Tracy (Thesis advisor) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Fixico, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation discusses the processes of post-colonial minoritization of Hindus in Pakistan from the inception of the state in 1947 to the secession of the eastern wing (former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) from the country after a civil and international war in 1971. The dissertation analyzes the emergence and development of the minority question in Europe and connects it with Colonial India, where it culminated into Partition of British India and emergence of Pakistan in 1947. The dissertation analyzes post- Colonial minoritization of Pakistani Hindus as a gradual process on three different but interconnected levels: 1. the loss of Hindu life from Pakistan, 2. the transference of Hindu property and 3. the political minoritization of Pakistani Hindus. The dissertation does so by approaching the history of Pakistani Hindus in two distinct geographical locations, Sindh and the ex-Pakistani province of East Bengal. It also includes discussion on Pakistani Scheduled Castes and Tribes. The dissertation is based on indepth, detailed fieldwork in Tharparkar district of Sindh province and archival research in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
ContributorsMahmood, Sadia (Author) / Feldhaus, Anne (Thesis advisor) / Eaton, Richard (Committee member) / Henn, Alexander (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation project addresses one of the most critical problems in the study of religion: how do scriptures acquire significance in religious communities in ways that go beyond the meaning of their words? Based on data collected during ethnographic work in Maharashtra, India, in 2011 and 2012, I analyze the complex relationship between a religious text and its readers with reference to ritual reading of the Gurucaritra, a Marathi scripture written in the sixteenth century. I argue that readers of the Gurucaritra create a self-actualized modern religiosity both by interpreting the content of the text and by negotiating the rules of praxis surrounding their reading activity.
In particular, this dissertation analyzes the ways in which members of the Dattatreya tradition in urban Maharashatra ritualize their tradition's central text-- the Gurucaritra--in terms of everyday issues and concerns of the present. Taking inspiration from reader-response criticism, I focus on the pArAyaN; (reading the entire text) of the Gurucaritra, the central scripture of the Dattatreya tradition, in the context of its contemporary readings in Maharashtra. In the process of reading the Gurucaritra, readers become modern by making a conscious selection from their tradition. In the process of approaching their tradition through the text, what they achieve is a sense of continuity and a faith that, if they have the support of the guru, nothing can go wrong. In the process of choosing elements from their tradition, they ultimately achieve a sense of being modern individuals who work out rules of religiosity for themselves.
This dissertation contributes to the study of scriptures in two major ways: first, by bringing forth how religious communities engage with scriptures for reasons other than their comprehension; second, by showing how scriptures can play a crucial role in religious communities in the context of addressing concerns of their present. Thus, this research contributes to the fields of scripture studies, Hinduism, and literary criticism.
In particular, this dissertation analyzes the ways in which members of the Dattatreya tradition in urban Maharashatra ritualize their tradition's central text-- the Gurucaritra--in terms of everyday issues and concerns of the present. Taking inspiration from reader-response criticism, I focus on the pArAyaN; (reading the entire text) of the Gurucaritra, the central scripture of the Dattatreya tradition, in the context of its contemporary readings in Maharashtra. In the process of reading the Gurucaritra, readers become modern by making a conscious selection from their tradition. In the process of approaching their tradition through the text, what they achieve is a sense of continuity and a faith that, if they have the support of the guru, nothing can go wrong. In the process of choosing elements from their tradition, they ultimately achieve a sense of being modern individuals who work out rules of religiosity for themselves.
This dissertation contributes to the study of scriptures in two major ways: first, by bringing forth how religious communities engage with scriptures for reasons other than their comprehension; second, by showing how scriptures can play a crucial role in religious communities in the context of addressing concerns of their present. Thus, this research contributes to the fields of scripture studies, Hinduism, and literary criticism.
ContributorsYeolekar, Mugdha (Author) / Feldhaus, Anne (Thesis advisor) / Henn, Alexander (Committee member) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Over the course of more than half a century, Rabbi Dr. Irving Greenberg has developed a distinctive theology of intra- and inter-group relations. Deeply influenced by his experiences in the Christian-Jewish dialogue movement, Greenberg's covenantal theology and image of God idea coalesce into what I refer to as Hybrid Judaism, a conceptualization that anticipated key aspects David Hollinger's notion of Postethnicity. As such, Greenberg's system of thought is mistakenly categorized (by himself, as well as others) as an expression of pluralism. The twentieth century arc of social theories of group life in America, from Melting Pot to Postethnicity by way of Cultural Pluralism, serves to highlight the fact that Greenberg is better located at the latter end of this arc (Postethnicity), rather than in the middle (Pluralism). Central to Greenberg's proto-postethnic theology is the recognition of the transformative power of encounter in an open society. Greenberg's ideas are themselves the product of such encounters. Understood fully, Hybrid Judaism has great relevance for American Jewish identity in the twenty-first century.
ContributorsKleinberg, Darren, 1976- (Author) / Gereboff, Joel (Thesis advisor) / Fessenden, Tracy (Committee member) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Though some scholars have written about place and history, few have pursued the use of place theory in length in relation to the connections between race, religion, and national identity. Using the writings in the United States and Louisiana in the years surrounding the Louisiana Purchase, I explore place-making and othering processes. U.S. leaders influenced by the Second Great Awakening viewed New Orleans as un-American in its religion and seemingly ambiguous race relations. New Orleanian Catholics viewed the U.S. as an aggressively Protestant place that threatened the stability of the Catholic Church in the Louisiana Territory. Both Americans and New Orleanians constructed the place identities of the other in relation to events in Europe and the Caribbean, demonstrating that places are constructed in relation to one another. In order to elucidate these dynamics, I draw on place theory, literary analysis, and historical anthropology in analyzing the letters of W.C.C. Claiborne, the first U.S. governor of the Louisiana Territory, in conjunction with sermons of prominent Protestant ministers Samuel Hopkins and Jedidiah Morse, a letter written by Ursuline nun Sister Marie Therese de St. Xavior Farjon to Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington Cable's Reconstruction era novel The Grandissimes. All of these parties used the notion of place to create social fact that was bound up with debates about race and anti-Catholic sentiments. Furthermore, their treatments of place demonstrate concerns for creating, or resisting absorption by, a New Republic that was white and Protestant. Place theory proves useful in clarifying how Americans and New Orleanians viewed the Louisiana Purchase as well as the legacy of those ideas. It demonstrates the ways in which the U.S. defined itself in contradistinction to religious others. Limitations arise, however, depending on the types of sources historians use. While official government letters reveal much when put into the context of the trends in American religion at the turn of the nineteenth century, they are not as clearly illuminating as journals and novels. In these genres, authors provide richer detail from which historians can try to reconstruct senses of place.
ContributorsBilinsky, Stephanie (Author) / Fessenden, Tracy (Thesis advisor) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Feldhaus, Anne (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation is a study and translation of the Hereditary Household of the Han Celestial Master (Han tianshi shijia 漢天師世家), a hagiographical account of successive generations of the Zhang family patriarchs of Celestial Masters Daoism (Tianshi dao 天師道) at Dragon and Tiger Mountain (Longhu shan 龍虎山) in Jiangxi province that was compiled in stages between the late fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Zhang family emerged in the late Tang or early Five dynasties period and rose to great prominence and power through the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties on the basis of the claim of direct and unbroken lineal descent from Zhang Daoling 張道陵 the ancestral Celestial Master whose covenant with the deified Laozi in 142 C.E. is a founding event of the Daoist religion. In this study I trace the lineal history of the Zhang family as presented in the Hereditary Household in chronological parallel to contrasting narratives found in official histories, epigraphy, and the literary record. This approach affords insight into the polemical nature of the text as an assertion of legitimacy and allows for a demonstration of how the work represents an attempt to create in writing an idealized past in order to win prestige in the present. It also affords the opportunity to scour the historical record in an attempt to ascertain a plausible timeframe for the origin of the movement and to explore the relationship of the Hereditary Household to earlier hagiographic works that may have informed it. This study also contextualizes the Hereditary Household in the post-Tang religious climate of China. In that period the establishment of lineal authenticity and institutional charisma through narratives of descent became a widespread tool of legitimation employed by Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucians in hopes of obtaining imperial recognition and patronage.
ContributorsAmato, Paul (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Feldhaus, Anne (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Evolution of an Eschaton: An Analysis of On the Antichrist (CPG 3946) Attributed to Efrem the Syrian
Description
On the Antichrist (CPG 3946) is an eschatological sermon historically attributed to Efrem the Syrian. Composed in Koine Greek, On the Antichrist is not an authentic Efremic sermon but is attributed to the construct Greek Efrem, often called in the literature ‘Ephraem Graecus’. Sometime around the 12th century, Slavic Christians translated the work into Old Church Slavonic.
As its goal, this study employs On the Antichrist to investigate how religions (e.g. Christianity) employ religio-cultural constructs and either refine, or redefine, them for new audiences and circumstances. To accomplish this, the author transcribes and translates one of the most important manuscript witnesses of this sermon (labelled Ov1), translates it, compares it with other early witnesses, and analyzes the differences between the Greek and OCS versions of the text in order to ascertain the variations in the versions and to posit why such variations might have arisen in the transmission of this sermon. Finally, the critical edition is interrogated to propose a date of the autographic text-form of On the Antichrist to the 6th to 8th centuries.
This dissertation finds that multiple recensions of the sermon evolved from the earliest recension, the A Recension. The Old Church Slavonic recension of On the Antichrist falls squarely within the A Recension and seems to share a common ancestral tradition with the other A Recension manuscripts and help to reconstruct the early history of On the Antichrist. Thus, this dissertation provides one necessary step in preparation for the difficult task of preparing a critical edition of this sermon.
The sermon draws heavily upon 2 Thessalonians 2 and the Little Apocalypse. Two manuscripts overtly indicate multiple meters for the sermon, but two others only hint at such divisions, and the nature of the meters (Aramaic or Byzantine) is uncertain. The sermon itself references no datable historical events. The Greek of the sermon analyzing to a Late Koine/Early Byzantine cusp language datable to between the 6th to 8th centuries. For all the uncertainties and puzzles this sermon presents, the evidence clearly points to at least one conclusion: Efrem the Syrian (d.373) cannot have authored this work, and there is no way currently to ascertain the author.
Finally, this dissertation adduces an argument that Byzantine and Slavic Christians preserved On the Antichrist because of its emphasis upon humility and penitence, which allowed for the sermon to be incorporated into Orthodox liturgy by the 10th century.
As its goal, this study employs On the Antichrist to investigate how religions (e.g. Christianity) employ religio-cultural constructs and either refine, or redefine, them for new audiences and circumstances. To accomplish this, the author transcribes and translates one of the most important manuscript witnesses of this sermon (labelled Ov1), translates it, compares it with other early witnesses, and analyzes the differences between the Greek and OCS versions of the text in order to ascertain the variations in the versions and to posit why such variations might have arisen in the transmission of this sermon. Finally, the critical edition is interrogated to propose a date of the autographic text-form of On the Antichrist to the 6th to 8th centuries.
This dissertation finds that multiple recensions of the sermon evolved from the earliest recension, the A Recension. The Old Church Slavonic recension of On the Antichrist falls squarely within the A Recension and seems to share a common ancestral tradition with the other A Recension manuscripts and help to reconstruct the early history of On the Antichrist. Thus, this dissertation provides one necessary step in preparation for the difficult task of preparing a critical edition of this sermon.
The sermon draws heavily upon 2 Thessalonians 2 and the Little Apocalypse. Two manuscripts overtly indicate multiple meters for the sermon, but two others only hint at such divisions, and the nature of the meters (Aramaic or Byzantine) is uncertain. The sermon itself references no datable historical events. The Greek of the sermon analyzing to a Late Koine/Early Byzantine cusp language datable to between the 6th to 8th centuries. For all the uncertainties and puzzles this sermon presents, the evidence clearly points to at least one conclusion: Efrem the Syrian (d.373) cannot have authored this work, and there is no way currently to ascertain the author.
Finally, this dissertation adduces an argument that Byzantine and Slavic Christians preserved On the Antichrist because of its emphasis upon humility and penitence, which allowed for the sermon to be incorporated into Orthodox liturgy by the 10th century.
ContributorsMcAvoy, Shawn (Author) / Clay, J. Eugene (Thesis advisor) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Swanson, Todd (Committee member) / Tueller, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019