Matching Items (8)
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- All Subjects: Religious history
- Creators: Chen, Huaiyu
- Creators: O'Donnell, Catherine
- Resource Type: Text
Description
This study examines how a populist religious leader, Alexander Campbell, altered the economic value system of religious material production in the early United States and, subsequently, the long-term value structure of religious economic systems generally. As religious publishing societies in the early nineteenth century were pioneering the not-for-profit corporation and as many popular itinerants manufactured religious spectacles around the country, Campbell combined the promotional methods of revivalism and the business practices of religious printers, with a conspicuously pugilistic tone to simultaneously build religious and business empires. He was a religious entrepreneur who capitalized on the opportunities of American revivalism for personal and religious gain. His opponents attacked his theology and his wealth as signs of his obvious error but few were prepared for the vigor of his answer. He invited conflict and challenged prominent opponents to grow his celebrity and extend his brand into new markets. He argued that his labor as a printer was deserving of compensation and that, unlike his “venal” clerical opponents, he offered his services as a preacher for free. As Americans in the early national period increasingly felt obligated to find the “right kind of Christianity,” Campbell packaged and sold a compelling product. In the decades that followed his first debate in 1820, he built a religious following that by 1850 numbered well over 100,000 followers. This dissertation considers the importance of marketing, promotion, investment capital, distribution networks, property law, print culture, and ideology, to the success of a given religious prescription in the nineteenth century American marketplace of religion. Campbell’s success reveals important social, political, and economic structures in the nineteenth century trans-Appalachian west. It also illuminates a form of religious entrepreneurialism that continues to be important to American Christianity.
ContributorsDupey, James (Author) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Thesis advisor) / Critchlow, Donald (Committee member) / Fessenden, Tracy (Committee member) / Schermerhorn, Calvin J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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
Description
This study focuses on the Black Tiger Cult in Anze, Shanxi from the 17th to the 21stcentury and explores changing human-tiger relationships as well as the localization of canonical traditions. Drawing upon local gazetteers, scholar-officials' petitions, canonical texts, stele inscriptions, and temple murals in the area, this study sheds new light on relations among animals, humans, and gods through the deification of the black tiger. While the harsh natural environment intensified conflicts between humans and tigers, the rise of the Black Tiger Cult in local communities helped ease these ecological and social conflicts during the late-imperial era. As the cult gradually established its presence to serve spiritual and practical needs of local people, its practice complemented the mainstream religious communities and state-sponsored sacrificial rituals. The Black Tiger Cult brought together communities and the state power by providing them a space to express and negotiate their spiritual, political, agricultural, and cultural interests. This study also offers a comparative perspective on the Black Tiger Cult in North China and the Tiger Lord Cult in Taiwan during modern times. Different levels of connections between these cults and the historical memory of human-tiger conflicts may contribute to the reinvention of the deified tiger and its relationship with contemporary people. This study argues that the deification of tigers did not elevate the position of animals higher than that of human beings. The establishment of Black Tiger Temples likely changed the local distribution of tigers. Moreover, although traditions of tiger gods vary in different regions and times, they share similar cultural elements that have been interwoven with local human-tiger/animal relationships.
ContributorsZhang, Shuran (Author) / Chen, Huaiyu (Thesis advisor) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This thesis is a translation and analysis of the “Epitaph of the Wu Kingdom
Transcendent Duke Ge of the Left Palace of the Grand Bourne” (Epitaph below). The author was Tao Hongjing (456 CE-536 CE). The subject of this Epitaph inscribed on a stele was Ge Xuan (trad. 164 CE-244 CE). Ge Xuan had two titles attributed to him by later Daoists. According to the Lingbao scriptures, Ge was appointed by the Perfected of Grand Bourne, a heavenly title. Later, in the Shangqing scriptures, Ge Xuan was said to be an earthly transcendent without any heavenly appointment. This debate occurred before Tao Hongjing began to write. This stele epitaph is essential, as it records sayings from both Lingbao and Shangqing scriptures. By reading this translated epitaph, scholars can know more about different versions of Ge Xuan's legend, as well as how Ge Xuan's legend was constantly rewritten by later Daoists.
Transcendent Duke Ge of the Left Palace of the Grand Bourne” (Epitaph below). The author was Tao Hongjing (456 CE-536 CE). The subject of this Epitaph inscribed on a stele was Ge Xuan (trad. 164 CE-244 CE). Ge Xuan had two titles attributed to him by later Daoists. According to the Lingbao scriptures, Ge was appointed by the Perfected of Grand Bourne, a heavenly title. Later, in the Shangqing scriptures, Ge Xuan was said to be an earthly transcendent without any heavenly appointment. This debate occurred before Tao Hongjing began to write. This stele epitaph is essential, as it records sayings from both Lingbao and Shangqing scriptures. By reading this translated epitaph, scholars can know more about different versions of Ge Xuan's legend, as well as how Ge Xuan's legend was constantly rewritten by later Daoists.
ContributorsDing, Jiashuo (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Anti-popery, political prejudice against Catholicism on the basis that it is not conducive to liberty, contributed to the American religious and political discourses of the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution. While some have argued that anti-popery diminished in New England during the Revolution, this paper shows that it persisted as a political assumption among New England Protestants and continued to be expressed in sermons and political debates of America's early republican period. The Franco-American alliance was a pragmatic alliance which did not ultimately do away with anti-papal sentiment. Following history to the nativist movement of the mid-nineteenth century, this paper then shows that the arguments deployed against Catholic Irish immigrants were of the same vein as those deployed by Protestant New Englanders before the American Revolution and that the assumption of religio-political anti-popery never truly faded in the early republic, allowing for it to be enlivened by the dramatic increase in New England's Catholic population in the 1820s and 1830s.
ContributorsRobbins, Michael (Author) / Hrdlicka, James (Thesis director) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
In 1972, when relationships between the Mexican and USA Presbyterian denominations fractured, within a few years they found agreement in a newly crafted covenant, “A New Relation in Joint Mission.” At the denominational level, the leadership envisioned a new paradigm for international missional practice in which both entities mutually shared in the developmental and oversight processes. This was an exercise in diplomacy as the denominations were distinctly different in theological perspectives and expectations for program implementation. It was on the local and regional level, motivated by their deep convictions of faith, that a cadre of binational mission workers, pastors, and volunteers built meaningful, intercultural relationships under the Presbyterian Border Ministry (PBM), established in 1984. To implement the denominations’ new concepts of mutuality in mission, the PBM established binational ministry sites in twin-cities along the México/USA border. The PBM promoted spiritual growth, articulated border realities through the lens of faith, and served with and for those in need of support. Geographically, and for the purposes of this dissertation, the border region represents two spaces, the sites of engagement in the settled communities at the edges of two nations and the programmatic extensions into the interior of the two countries. In their roles of advocacy, the ministries engaged at the highest levels of both the denominations and the seats of political power, far from the border. Contextually, the México/USA border region, rich in its complexity, is a space of simultaneous conjunction and separation, influenced by its history, international politics, cultural diversity, economic disparity, and religious presence.
The intent of this historical analysis is to share an important history that provides insights into the efficacy of binational ministry, to identify the contributions of bicultural engagement, and to consider the value and insights of faith-based perspectives when addressing complex border realities and social issues such as migration. It asks how the binational mission, in collaboration with faith-based and secular partners, has affected the lives of individuals, and made an impact on local, regional, national, and international political, economic, social, and cultural concerns.
ContributorsMay, Catherine Louise (Author) / Sarat, Leah (Thesis advisor) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Thesis advisor) / Avina, Alexander (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This dissertation centers on the life of Patrick Francis Healy, the son of an enslaved woman and an Irish slaveholder. Born in 1834, Healy became a Jesuit priest in 1864 and the president of Georgetown University in 1874, seven decades before Georgetown admitted its first African American student. In the twentieth century, historical investigations of race and American Catholicism cast Healy and his family in a new light. Today, the Healys are upheld in some circles as African American Catholic icons. Patrick Healy is now remembered as the first African American Jesuit and Catholic university president, as well as the first African American to receive a doctorate. This dissertation pursues both the life of Patrick Healy as well as what I call his “afterlives,” or the ways in which he has been remembered since the 1950s, when Albert S. Foley, S.J. discovered that the Healys’ mother was enslaved and refashioned them from white Irish Americans to white-passing African Americans. How and why did Patrick Francis Healy understand and comport himself as a white, upper-class Catholic? How and why have others sought to construct him as African American in the years since his ancestry was made widely known? How has Georgetown incorporated Healy’s legacy, in the context of its and other universities’ coming-to-terms with their dealings with slavery more broadly? I pursue these questions through archival sources (primarily Healy’s diaries and letters) at Georgetown University and College of the Holy Cross, as well as secondary literature on passing, subjectivity, and hagiography.
ContributorsGriffin, Alexandria Gale (Author) / Fessenden, Tracy (Thesis advisor) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Bennett, Gaymon (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This dissertation challenges the conventional understanding that Song dynasty China (960–1279) was a period when Confucianism was placed at the center of governance. Bringing heretofore inadequately studied Buddhist and Daoist texts into discussion, it offers three case studies on interrelationships between Song emperors and the Three Teachings of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. As shown in all three cases, although a religious campaign directed by the emperor and his institutional apparatus could set out under the influence of a certain teaching/religion, the campaign’s outcome at the state level would often be a fusion of various religious and cultural components. My research suggests that Song emperors employed an eclectic strategy in selecting and utilizing elements from the Three Teachings and attempted to build an imperial religion centered around themselves. As such, Song imperial power emerged as a centripetal force that compelled the Three Teachings to tailor themselves to the imperial religion. Therefore, I term the Song imperial court as a “regulated syncretic field” where segments from different religious traditions became amalgamated into religious/ritualistic entities that served imperial visions of the time. Although proponents of the Three Teachings by and large continued their efforts to gain imperial acceptance of their teachings, they often turned to local society to ensure their authority when their efforts at the court failed. Further, I argue that such phenomena were rooted in the mechanism of patriarchal governance in which the emperor considered themselves and was considered by leaders of the Three Teachings to be the patriarch of his household/empire, who was responsible for balancing the power structure among the Three Teachings.
ContributorsLi, Jiangnan (Author) / Tillman, Hoyt (Thesis advisor) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Hartman, Charles (Committee member) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023