Browsing by Subject "Faith"

Transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people have historically had a bad relationship with Christianity. We have experienced rejection, physical harm, and spiritual violence justified in the name of faith. Such a history of trauma means it is hard for transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people to find refuge and sanctuary in the church. Those who have reconciled or remained connected to faith are often looked upon suspiciously by others within our communities. Even the most affirming churches fail to recognize the unique needs of transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people. Many others stand by and remain complicit in the harm done in the name of faith. Using memoirs and resources written by and about the lives and experiences of transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people, this resource equips pastors and lay leaders to understand better the spiritual needs of transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people and communities.

This dissertation explores the phenomenon of “religious doubt”, which has emerged in recent years as a pervasive concern in American Muslim communities and discourses. The dissertation takes a two-pronged approach: an analysis of American Muslim public discourses, and an ethnographic analysis of Muslims in Boston. Firstly, I analyze how the growing sense of a “crisis of faith”—and a framing of people’s ambivalence, uncertainty, and doctrinal dissent as a problem of “doubt”—can be traced to the convergence of American secularity and Muslim discursive constructions of “faith”. Secondly, through the narratives, reflections, and exchanges of my ethnographic interlocutors, I examine how faith and doubt are experienced and navigated by individuals. Through my attention to lived experience, I argue that there is a far more ambiguous relationship than has been generally assumed between two distinct senses or dimensions of “faith”: on the one hand, people’s mental conviction in authoritative doctrines; and on the other hand, a more general sense of religious commitment, as a moral-devotional relationship and aspiration. Standard assumptions about religion typically operate with a deeply intellectualist and reified model of religion that presumes a thoroughly heteronomous subject. Such models assume a linear movement in religious subjects, from mental conviction in the foundational claims of a religion, to assent in the myriad doctrines and precepts presumably demanded by the religion, to a commitment to live faithfully in accordance with these doctrines and precepts. What my ethnography ultimately highlights, however, is that people live out their sense of faith in a far more complex and messy fashion, such that their moral and devotional commitments to Islam do not so neatly line up with doctrinal affirmation in the way these linear models of religion assume. Finally, I argue that what is central to people’s navigation of faith is personal experience and experiential knowledge, which serve as the inescapable prism through which conviction, judgment, knowledge, and commitment are shaped.

I have observed that contemporary Christian believers and churches often have distorted views of the meaning of faith as they seek to live out their Christian life. Such distorted views can translate into a variety of forms. For example, the phrase “the faith” may collectively denote a set of doctrines or theological beliefs. It is also adopted by the prosperity gospel movement to attain health and wealth. So, how does one learn the true meaning of faith as expressed in the New Testament and avoid the distortions in today’s Christendom?This thesis looks at the lived-out definition of faith as expressed in the book Fear and Trembling, written by Søren Kierkegaard under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio. In this book, the author uses the narrative of Abraham and Isaac in the Akedah to define the concept of faith, and he states that he has never met a person with the kind of faith that Abraham possessed. However, across the North Sea, in Bristol (England), there was a contemporary of Kierkegaard whose name was George Müller. His autobiography and the annual reports published to document the donations in support of his orphanages, schools, and missionary efforts that he had received through the power of his prayers describe well his life of faith. Last year, I published a novel featuring a fictionalized George Müller set in the twenty-first century. This contemporary setting makes this exceptional character accessible to today’s culture and society while preserving the original meaning of his mission and his faith in God. My novel was positively received and “inspired” a film that is currently being developed for release in 2023. The methodology that I employ to communicate the meaning of faith to Christians consists of a teaching model for small groups known as generational mentoring. Gregory Scott Massey developed this model in his 2019 dissertation Generational Mentoring: Using Past Saints as Present Examples. As the title suggests, the author uses small groups as a setting where Christians can learn specific character qualities from the model of Christians from the past who exemplified such qualities. I have included five chapters of an original workbook designed for small groups which help leaders teach the meaning of faith: (i) as defined by Søren Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling through the life of Abraham, and (ii) as was lived out by George Müller, both the real nineteenth-century man and the contemporary fictional character from my novel.  

Narrative identity is the process of discovering who we are by analyzing the stories that make up our lives and the stories of how we relate to the world around us. Unfortunately, this process is quickly derailed when unexpected events cause interruptions within the narrative and send our lives into unplanned directions. These interruptions could be tragic, welcome, or they could be anywhere in between. Regardless of the benefit or misfortune of these interruptions, they all require a re-calibration of our narrative to some degree.Just as individuals form their identities based on the stories contained within their own lives, communities are also shaped by their collective narratives, which are made up of shared accomplishments, struggles, and defeats. Each member of the community contributes to its unified story by allowing their own life to shape the communal narrative in some way. This is especially true within the community of a local church, where people share, not only their history, geography, and culture, but they also share a set of values and beliefs that they live out through the practice of corporal worship and collaborative mission. When the collective narrative of the faith community is not easily understood, or when it is interrupted by circumstances that challenge the identity of the community, it is necessary for the community to recalibrate once again proclaiming who they are, what they believe, and why they believe it. Since the days of the early Church, the process of narrative identity has been developed by the telling, hearing, and exchanging of personal testimonies— individual stories of how the community’s shared faith has made an impact on a particular individual’s life. In the case of Pierce Chapel Methodist Church, the church I currently serve as Senior Pastor, the community has been faced with several challenges in the last few years. These challenges include, but are not limited to: a deep divide over how to return from the COVID shutdown, the retirement of two long-tenured pastors, and disaffiliation from a denomination that the church had called home since 1968. In the wake of these events, I have challenged the church to re-discover their communal identity by encouraging them to hear and tell their individual stories. In the summer of 2023, I preached a sermon series called Storied People. The theme of each individual sermon is reflected in each respective chapter of this thesis. After each sermon was preached, I collected the stories of individual members from the congregation as they shared their own testimonies and experiences with each other. And, since this sermon series also took place in the weeks leading up to and following Pierce Chapel’s Heritage Sunday celebration, I conducted interviews for a narrative-based video presentation, to be shown that morning. I include many of the testimonies from that presentation in the following pages. Through this practice, I and the rest of the congregation found ourselves reexamining and better understanding our church's narrative identity.