Browsing by Subject "Apocalyptic"
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Item Open Access Revealing the Power: New Creation Epistemology for Adolescent Girls(2015) PeckMcClain, Emily AnneAdolescent girls need a meaningful and liberative theological lens for interpreting their lives. I argue that a close reading of Romans 6-8 offers this lens because of Paul’s apocalyptic understanding of the present time, the implications of the crucifixion of Christ, and the promise of the coming new creation. I additionally argue that critical liberative pedagogical strategies enable girls to see from this new perspective with the help of adults, particularly adult women, in their communities of faith.
Adolescent girls are subjected to different layers of oppression in the United States. They are given no voice and no vote in the public sphere. Their silence is assumed by their churches as well. Additionally, all girls struggle against sexism. Racism, classism, sizism, and heterosexism also impact some girls. Girls experience prejudice related to all these areas of oppression in their lives in personal ways. Pauline apocalypticism offers a way to understand these experiences and how they occur in order to liberate girls from taking responsibility for the ways others objectify them.
Using conversational interviews based on the work of Elliot Mishler, I spoke with 24 girls who are active in United Methodist Churches in the New York Annual Conference. I then did a close exegetical reading of Romans 6-8, and put the interviews into conversation with that reading. Emerging from those interviews were specific themes especially important to these girls. Some theological insights from Romans 6-8 are particularly pertinent to those themes. The conversation between Romans 6-8 and the interviews with girls led to pedagogical suggestions for how to help girls see from Paul’s perspective and interpret their stories and their lives in real time according to that perspective.
Girls need to be included in the full life of the church, something that is theologically supported by Paul’s understanding of the individual as always in relationship. The church is a corporate body of those participating in Christ by means of their baptism. When girls see with a new perspective, a “new creation perspective,” they can see the powers of Sin and Death manifesting in their lives through these oppressive systems. Girls need mentors who will form an alliance with them for the interpreting of their own lives from an apocalyptic perspective and against the powers of Sin and Death as they manifest in girls’ lives both in and outside the church. These mentors should be women who can share their own stories from a new creation perspective, welcome girls’ stories, help girls interpret their stories, and work to help the whole church be a welcoming community of co-interpreters for girls.
Item Open Access The History of the Future: Apocalyptic, Community Organizing, and the Theo-politics of Time in and Age of Global Capital(2013) Rhodes, Daniel PThis dissertation attempts to do two things. First, I provide a theological interpretation of congregation-based community organizing by connecting this activity to the politics of the church. The link between the two, I argue, is the rule of Christ, a non-hierarchical process of political judgment that operates in a mode of receptive generosity and vulnerability as well as accountability to deliberate and discern how best to resolve conflicts. Situating this activity within an apocalyptic orientation determined by lordship of Jesus Christ, I suggest that this process, when accompanied by the other structuring practices of the church, allows the social, historical community to embody the new age of God's reign. Congregation-based community organizing, I conclude, is the extension and extrapolation of this constitutive process, and therefore, can be understood as an act of mission in witness and service to the world. In addition, this missionary activity can also help to retool the church in the practice of binding and loosing, which has fallen into desuetude. Second, I describe how this missionary activity functions both faithfully and effectively to challenge and counteract the forces of late, global capital. By challenging the configuration and experience of time under capital, the work of organizing can serve to recover political judgment from a regnant market ideology so as to reconstitute the way decisions are made and conflicts resolved by opening them to a process more lilted to the justice of God's reign. Moreover, in doing so, the political work of organizing can serve to offer a new future through forgiveness and reconciliation to individuals and a society trapped within a capitalist history whose end is immanently experienced in the destructive pursuit of unlimited growth and expansion.
Item Open Access The Lamb Roars: Christ's Apocalyptic Message to Emerging Adults(2019) Lackey, RussellWhat would a conversation between John of Patmos and Jordan of Portland look like? To say it another way, how might Christ’s apocalyptic address to the seven churches of Revelation (Rev 2-3) aid in the faith formation of today’s emerging adults whose worldview has been described as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism? This thesis utilizes biblical and practical theology to address three issues facing emerging adults: the replacement of a love ethic with a tolerance narrative that aids market globalization but harms emerging adults; the problem of mass consumerism; and the coddling of young people with the aim of safety over against a life filled with a willingness to suffer for lasting joy. The thesis concludes with a whimsical conversation between John and Jordan that demonstrates what a mentoring relationship might look like between two people in different stages of their faith development.
Item Open Access The Weight of Mortality: Pauline Theology and the Problem of Death(2019) Longarino, Joseph FrancisThis dissertation addresses a long-standing but rarely discussed problem in Pauline studies: given Paul’s understanding of how God has acted in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to overcome death, how do we explain the ongoing existence of death? Through an examination of the Pauline letters, particularly Romans, this dissertation offers two interrelated explanations, one causal and the other teleological or purposive. From the causal perspective, it is argued that sin in the form of the sinful passions remains connected to the body even of Christians, which allows sin to exercise an ongoing corrupting influence on the body. From the teleological or purposive angle, it is contended that God uses the mortal condition to deepen the divine-human and intrahuman relationships.