• Becoming Social Justice Activists in Church: An Account of Resources that Lead to Heightened Mobilization for Progressive Causes Among White Suburban Protestant Congregations 

  Coen Gilbert, Dexter (2021)

  Often unseen, faith-based institutions and organizations in the United States today mobilize for progressive causes in ways that vitally contribute to grassroots democracy. Most scholars approaching the topic of congregational ...
• "May God Continue to Bless the United States of America": Christian Logics in Rhetorical Justifications for Humanitarian Military Missions 

  Schmidt, Sonia E. (2021)

  Wars require rhetorical justification, and this justification often comes from the mouths of politicians. Humanitarian military missions– wars conducted with the expressed intentions of helping or saving the people who are ...
• "QUEER SOUTHERN BEE-ING": EXPLORING BLACK SOUTHERN SAPPHICS' RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES IN DR. E. PATRICK JOHNSON'S HONEYPOT: BLACK SOUTHERN WOMEN WHO LOVE WOMEN 

  White, Lauryn (2021)

  In this thesis I look at E. Patrick Johnson's Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women as a primary text that offers a complex, deep understanding of the religious and spiritual lives of Black sapphics in the American ...
• Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's Defense of Judaism: From the Nineteen Letters to Biblical Commentary 

  Spar, Daniel (2021)

  Hirsch wrote his Nineteen Letters on Judaism as a response to Jewish emancipation in Europe and the start of Reform Judaism. While emancipation of Jews had not reached Germany at the time of writing, other European countries ...
• Thou Shall Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself : Tracing the Progress of Friendship in the Catholic-Jewish Interfaith Dialogue 

  Darrow, Emily M. (2021)

  In 1965 the Second Vatican Council produced a document known as Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions also known as Nostra Aetate. This document marked a shift by the Vatican towards tolerance ...
• Performative Religion and Hard Labor: How Faith-Based Drug Rehabilitation Programs Operate Within the Ideological Framework of the Prison Industrial Complex 

  Bass, Nathan (2021)

  This thesis takes theoretical framings of the relation between the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) and the Global South and extends them to reveal how non-carceral faith-based rehabilitation programs operate under the same ...
• Called' to Work; the Religious, Capitalist and Racist Roots of the Criminalization of Idleness in North America 

  Kegler, Fiona (2021)

  Acts of idleness and labor have become moralized within American culture to end that the former is criminalized and the latter is institutionalized. This thesis asks from where does the American prioritization of work and ...
• If You Pray Right: A Study of Prosperity Theology's Role in the Shaping of American Christian Faith-Based Social Services Organizations 

  Hawkins, Molly Marie (2021)

  This thesis seeks to explore the role of prosperity theology in the shaping of the landscape of American Christian faith-based social services organizations (FBOs), with specific attention focused on those FBOs that serve ...
• YSA, WHY I STAY: AN EXPLORATION OF BELIEF, RITUAL, PRACTICE, and POLICY in the CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS 

  Walton, Paige (2020)

  In this thesis I provide historical contextualization of contemporary Church doctrine and official statements, as well as explore the transitional moments in the church's history as shown by General Conference talks and ...
• Parochially Political: An Examination of The Political Nature of the Eucharist in the Thought of St. Augustine 

  King, David (2020)

  This thesis proposes to re-examine St. Augustine's political thought through an exploration of the political ramifications of the sacrament of the Eucharist, particularly as it is described in Augustine's "Sermon 227." In ...
• Two Cowardly Ruffians Committed the Coldest-Blooded Murder in the History of the World: Constructing Criminality, Sexuality, and Jewish Masculinity in the Leopold and Loeb Case 

  Wise, Allison Riley (2020)

  In the summer of 1924, nineteen-year-olds Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb committed what would come to be called "the crime of the century" when they murdered fourteen-year-old Robert Franks on the outskirts of Chicago. ...
• The Study of Lived Religion Through Different Interpretations: An Ethnography on Perceptions of Singaporean Malay-Muslims' Islamic Prayer Ritual Practice 

  Gan, Julia (2020)

  There are differences between traditional Islamic textual interpretations and modern Singaporean state interpretations of the mandatory Islamic prayer ritual of wudu (ablution in preparation for prayer) and salat (the five ...
• America's Pastor: Billy Graham, The Civil Rights Movement, and Religion in American Politics 

  Tortolani, Lucy (2020)

  Billy Graham is a fixture in American history, as both a religious force and as social figure; to many he is a household name. Graham's tremendous popularity from the 1950s through the early 2000s, as well as his ability ...
• Tracing and Chasing the Shadow: The Mysterious Eloquence of Rabi’a 

  Jahanbin, Maryam Sophia (2019)

  The tradition of Sufi poetry has been analyzed extensively through the well known works of Rumi, Hafiz, Ibn ‘Arabi, Ibn Farid, Al- Ghazali, Farid al-Din ‘Attar, and Sa’adi—among many others. These well-known figures of ...
• Conceptualizing Ancient and Contemporary Awakenings: An Analysis of Themes of Social Structures and Individualism in Ancient Gnosis, the New Age, and the Modern Day 

  Emmert, Ethan (2019)

  In this thesis, I analyze the claim that April DeConick makes in The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion From Antiquity to Today that the New Age was inspired by ancient Gnosis. ...
• “With God’s people”: Individual Paths and Communal Belonging at an LGBTQ+ Church 

  Weber, Michael (2019)

  American religious scholarship in the late 20th century identified a supposed cultural shift away from communal authority and towards individual interpretation when it came to religious identity. This thesis examines the ...
• A Shul of Their Own: Congregation Beit Simchat Torah and the Struggle to Create Communities for the Marginalized 

  Silverman, Rachel (2019)

  Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) is a non-denominational self-proclaimed synagogue for LGBT people and allies in New York City. It strives to be truly pluralistic and welcome each Jew regardless of their identity, ...
• Religion as a Way of Life: Determining conceptions of religion in the Wisconsin v. Yoder opinions 

  Ryle, Oona (2019)

  The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion, but nowhere in the religion clauses or even in the Constitution does a clear definition of ‘religion’ exist. This poses a problem to justices trying to determine ...
• The Future Belongs to the Brave: Some Thoughts on the Fate of Decolonization in Religious Studies 

  Alejandro, Joseph Mario Burkley (2019)

  This senior thesis project contributes to the ongoing conversation surrounding decolonization efforts in the field of religious studies. I argue that scholars, having already devoted much focus to understanding the colonial ...
• The Fighting Quakers: A New Vision for the Peace Testimony During World War I 

  Bowen, Christina G. (2019)

  The success of the American Quaker response to World War I through the creation of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) facilitated a shift in the Quaker peace testimony from a passive anti-war stance to an active, ...

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