In 1964 the Second Vatican Council encouraged a switch from Latin Mass, celebrated by Roman Catholics across the globe in standardized form since the 16th century, to Mass in the languages spoken by the local people and with some adaptation to local circumstances. This event is familiar to scholars of...
While scholarship over recent decades has complicated the traditional classification of the Bavlis texts into the field has still maintained a model of two separate, though fundamentally interrelated, discourses. According to this model, the Bavli consists of a normative, non-narrative, legal discourse alongside an antinomian, narrativized discourse of stories. Through...
This study is an examination of conservative Christian pronatalist discourse in the contemporary United States and the myriad ways it endangers American women and children. Insofar as conservative Christian pronatalism is part of broader religious and pollical movement, this study also examines related conservative Christian discourses asserting anti-intellectualism, libertarian economics,...
In the past decade, scholars, the news media, and the public have turned increased attention to the activity of atheists in the West. Atheism serves as a source of identity and community in todays society, signaling more than a simple lack of belief in god(s). This dissertation is a cultural...
An important question in religious and theological ethics concerns the human capacity for moral action, but contemporary Christian theological anthropologies largely theorize the human person in terms of the imago Dei, not moral subjectivity. The following study contributes to this challenge an investigation of human moral agency in the theological...
This work argues that Latina/o immigrant Charismatic Catholicism does not encourage passive hope for heavenly rewards but rather emphasizes active strategies for transforming the self and the world. This study responds to two major concerns in the field of religious studies: the concern that Pentecostal forms of Christianity emphasize an...