▼ Often when words like Evangelical and global climate change are found in the same sentence, they are accompanied with words like hoax or liberal. This thesis explores the involvement of Evangelical Christians in the ongoing public discourse about the negative consequences of human action towards the environment. A growing number of Evangelicals (a demographic that voted George W. Bush into office by a margin of four to one) are speaking out in favor of environmental protection. Human-induced global climate change is posited as an issue of immediate concern to this growing movement which has come to be known as Creation Care. Despite this trend, the Creation Care movement is not without critics from within the Evangelical community. This thesis argues that this contention is more political than it is theological and that both sides justify their claims by employing familiar frames that resonate with Evangelical voters. Advisors/Committee Members: Williams, Peter.

▼ The pneuma is the dominant intangible entity in the collection of early Christian writings compiled in the New Testament, most often translated as “spirit.” Laying aside the interpretive aid of the doctrine of the Trinity, this research seeks to investigate the nature of the pneuma based on the historical context which produced the writings in the New Testament and especially from close textual and linguistic study of the Greek text. After close study of pneuma in the context of the New Testament, a different picture of the spiritual world presented in the gospels, epistles and other Greek writings emerges. Many spirits interact with the personalities in the New Testament, including “unclean” spirits and the one entity explicitly referred to as “The Holy Spirit,” but the most common ethereal entity is simply referred to as pneuma. This particular spirit is the focus of this investigation in terms of its role in the early Christian community. Advisors/Committee Members: Hanges, James C.

▼ Mary Magdalene has left her mark. She has been represented in many disparate ways since ancient times, yet no one knows who she really was. The Magdalene is mentioned in the New Testament gospels, and in other, non-canonical ancient texts, but there is not nearly enough material in these sources to produce an historical account of what Mary was like. The Magdalene has been used by many different groups of people to advocate certain stances about women and religion. When seen as a prostitute, Mary has often been used to dismiss women’s religious participation. Yet, she has also been depicted as the “apostle to the apostles,” who announces Jesus’ resurrection to his disciples. As “apostle to the apostles,” the Magdalene is once again being used to advance women’s leadership opportunities in churches. These two main visions of Mary Magdalene, and many more, have contributed to how women are viewed in Christianity. The vacuum left by scarce historical information has been filled by all manner of content, making various points about women and religion. Thus, depictions of the Magdalene provide a good lens into the continuing question of where women stand in religion. Advisors/Committee Members: Bidmead, Julye.

▼ THE MYTH OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM: DEFINITIONS, PRESUPPOSITIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS IN THE WORK OF THREE CONTEMPORARY SCHOLARS BY ADAM N. UTLEY It is not my purpose, in presenting the “Myth of Religious Pluralism,” to suggest that religious pluralism is a falsehood. On the contrary, if religious pluralism is the confluence of multiple religions in a single system, this fact is undeniable in a time when airplanes, cars, cell phones, the internet, and other forces of globalization are bringing the whole world closer together, across lines of difference. Religious pluralism must first be understood as a fact of life. It should be considered, secondly, as an ideal, and thirdly, as a problem. This discussion will focus on authors who have conceived of religious pluralism as both a fact of life and as an ideal: a solution with which to address injustice. As you will see, this ideal is better understood by contrast to the notion of religious pluralism as a problem. The current inquiry will focus on pluralism as a religious response to global injustices including exploitation and other forms of violence. By examining three authors who are simultaneously scholars of religion and practitioners of religious faith, and by offering a comparative analysis of their work, I will begin the task of characterizing the phenomenon of religious pluralism as an ideal. Having created this comparative analysis from a small sample of a few authors’ works on religious pluralism, I offer my own creative interpretation of the analysis of each author by composing narrative allegories. I then compose a fourth story that incorporates the themes of all three authors. The act of writing such stories is inspired by the work of Wendy Doniger who identifies myth as the premier comparative genre. These stories are meant first as a discovery tool that has aided the process of comparison necessary to uncover and articulate the analysis of religious pluralism. Secondly, these stories serve to illustrate the thrust of my analysis. I’ll also show that this sample of religious pluralism is motivated by the purpose of confronting religious ethics with the problem of violence, in as much as such violence is motivated by exclusivist conceptions of religious truth. In developing this process of comparison, I will prove that the phenomenon of religious pluralism found within the work of William Schweiker, Omid Safi, and Amir Hussain is marked by humanism, theology, and the comparative mentality. Advisors/Committee Members: Colby, Frederick S.