Bachelor of Science (BS), Ohio University, 2014, Journalism

The news industry is changing to meet market demands, just as religion is growing in importance in the public sphere. As a result, religion journalism -- the secular coverage of religion, faith and values topics -- is an evolving field. This scholarly essay overviews the history of religion journalism since the 1700s, explores how religion coverage is constructed and provides original qualitative analysis on the current state of religion reporting and multimedia. With the support of the Religion Newswriters Association, the author has conducted 14 in-depth interviews with religion reporters from prominent national and international news outlets. Ultimately, the scholarship's goal is to answer the questions : How do you tell an important story about a phenomenon whose tenants are personal and unverifiable? How are reporters using technological advances in audio, video and visualization to tell an archaic story of things unseen, laden with ritual and intimacy? Upon exploring these concerns, this scholarly essay will depict the process of creating and publishing a professional project -- a hyperlocal, nonsectarian news site for students and community members of Athens, OH entitled Athens Beyond Belief.

Bachelor of Arts, Ohio University, 2024, History

Do extreme religious groups develop in a vacuum due to the leaders desire for power and the followers' ignorance? Or are there larger forces at play? The United States in the 1970s saw a rise in extreme religious groups characterized by charismatic leaders and catastrophe. Much of the American public believed these groups were formed because of their leader's desire for money and power. However leaders were often motivated by other forces, and followers were typically well educated and middle class, with no obvious reason to join these communities. If this is the case, what other explanation is there for the formation of extreme religious groups? In the case of the 1970s, this was due to the larger pressures of the “Me Decade.” The me decade was characterized by poor domestic conditions in the US, resulting from inflation, stagnation, fuel shortages and government scandal. As the quality of life for average Americans deteriorated, they lost faith in their government to solve these problems, and turned to other solutions. Oftentimes these were attempts at self improvement, hoping for personal improvement if the problems of society couldn't be solved. In other cases, new religious communities were formed, providing spiritual solutions as an alternative to political ones. An example of one such religious group was the Rajneesh, a spiritual community founded in central Oregon known for their 1984 bioterrorism attack. The “Me Decade,” as well as its impact on the Rajneesh can be seen through a number of sources, including the Rajneesh's newspaper, other local newspapers, and essays by writers of the time on the phenomenon of the me decade. In this way, extreme religious groups in the 1970s were not formed by the leader's desire for money and power, but due to larger political and cultural pressures, particularly in the case of the Rajneesh.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, Greek and Latin

Throughout the corpus of texts scholars have decided to call the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM), most simply defined as a “recipe-book” for ancient magicians, there are many spells describing the manufacture and use of sacred images that, by the end of the ritual actions incorporated throughout the spell, become invested with essences and traits that are not necessarily ontologically apparent or natural. For example, there are statues invested with social agency that can perform all manner of fantastical feats. There are engraved rings that are ritually invested with great powers and come to be specifically described in terms of adjectives such as “beneficent,” “ merciful,” “sexually pleasing,” and so forth. This dissertation takes a close look at the specific ritual actions that allow for objects in the profane world – such as clay or stone, for example – being ascribed these kinds of powers and abilities. For this purpose, I use cognitive and semiotic frameworks to draw out deeper meanings, analyses, and typologies of ritual action. I use the PGM as my primary source, although part of the semiotic theory that I incorporate also involves looking at how these images fit into a wider conception of the portrayal of divine interaction in literature and iconography in the ancient world. A second important aspect of this dissertation is a closer look at the practitioner of magic himself as a figure who also has (or comes to have, through the course of the ritual action) an inner essence that bestows upon him special and divine powers. An essential contribution of semiotic domain theory to this topic is the manner in which it allows us to analyze the practitioner of magic as a “specialist” thinker within the domain of religion. In this way the practitioner of magic can be compared to other “specialists” who also create new content within the semiotic domain of religion, such as the figure of the poet. Both of these figures create new content, however one happens to create ve (open full item for complete abstract)

BA, Oberlin College, 2011, Religion

This study examines manifestations of Christian faith found along the highways of the United States, particularly in the form of truckstop chapels. Through ethnographic research and social-historical/theoretical analysis, this study seeks to explore the ways in which Evangelical Christianity, when combined with certain cultural and social particulars of the trucking profession, may be markedly re-contextualized, giving rise to distinctive approaches to ministry, worship, and religious life. By identifying widespread and often codified specializations among trucking ministries and examining the ways in which the trucking-specific evangelism of such ministries may be applied and lived out by individual drivers of faith, this study asserts that trucking ministry is a concrete and unique social, cultural, and religious formation, the existence and properties of which allow many drivers to pursue and understand faith and profession in a seamless and unified manner.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2013, American Culture Studies

Scholarly writing on the conflation of sport as a religion regularly concentrates on the historical and institutional parallels with the religious dimensions of sport, focusing on ritual, community, sacred space, and other categories more traditionally associated with religious life. Instead, this study redirects focus toward the neo-religious nature of modern spirituality; that is, the fulfillment of Thomas Luckmanns prediction that a significant aspect of modern spirituality would concern the need to construct a self, the constantly shifting work of forming personal identity and enhancing self understanding. As such, internal commitments and intense devotion may perform as a de facto invisible religion in the lives of people. As popular culture provides useful texts toward satisfying this ongoing work, professional sports can act as a conduit of both personal and collective self understanding for highly identified fans, subsequently operating as an invisible religion within their lives. This study investigates the nature of fandom among a sample of Cleveland professional sports fans. Using a semi-structured interview format, it explores the lived world of patrons of the Parkview NiteClub, a long standing Cleveland sports bar/blues club, asking, How might the experience of this group of highly identified fans in Cleveland constitute a kind of invisible religious experience that both shapes their view of themselves and influences how they journey in this life? Using Edward Baileys tripartite implicit religion rubric to assess commitment, integrating foci, and intensive concerns with extensive effects, formal interviews with fifteen Parkview patrons took place over six months, using a semi-structured questionnaire to explore the contours of their devotion to the Cleveland teams. The interviews reveal that the co-mingling of civic history, existence of the teams, and personal life narrative of the fans themselves are intimately interwoven, producing a relationship b (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Greek and Latin

This project uses mythology as a heuristic tool to enrich our understanding of the ancient female body and its processes. Alongside the important and necessary implications afforded by Greco-Roman myth, each of my chapters works through the prominent tripartite biological statuses of the ancient woman that appear in the surviving Greco-Roman gynecological documents—post-natal care, pregnancy/birth, and virginity. By approaching the material from three separate angles, my dissertation explores the complex relationship between medicine and mythology. In each life stage of an ancient woman, I reveal how “irrational” myth and “rational” Greco-Roman medicine support one another in the reckoning, mechanisms, and actions of the female body. Each chapter utilizes Soranus' Gynecology to commence an analysis of each life stage because, as a document speculated to be a manual for midwifery, it offers a viable proving ground due to its range of topics from virginity to raising children.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1950, English

Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2021, Humanities

This study examines the racial, socio-economic, and political factors that shaped The House of Yisrael, a Black Nationalist community in Cincinnati, Ohio. The members of this community structure their lives following the Black Hebrew Israelite ideology sharing the core beliefs that Black people are the "true" descendants of the ancient Israelites of the biblical narrative. Therefore, as Israelites, Black people should follow the Torah as a guideline for daily life. Because they are the "chosen people," God will judge those who have oppressed them. This ideology, which began in the U.S. during the nineteenth century, has recently been growing more momentum since the rise of Black Lives Matter activism and President Donald Trump's election. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Black Hebrew Israelites are listed as one of the violent Black nationalist communities on the rise ("Return of the Violent Black Nationalist"). In exploring this community's practices as forms of interpretivism, self-determination, and cultural nationalism, Critical Race Theory and Conflict Theory will act as the theoretical lens for examining their beliefs in a time of social and racial upheaval.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Comparative Studies

The #BlackLivesMatter Movement is one of the most influential Black political movements of the post-civil rights era. In popular and scholarly accounts, it has been characterized as “more secular” than and antithetical to the Civil Rights movement and “Black church” tradition, which, by contrast, are seen as emblematic of a larger tradition of Black religious protest. Contrary to these secularizing reductions and interpretations, this dissertation locates a politics of the sacred at the heart of #BlackLivesMatter, which is irreducible to a secular idiom. I consider the use of both spiritual and religious language and practices in the movement as a part of “sacred politics.” In what ways, I ask, do language and ideas of the sacred circulate through and inform the #BlackLivesMatter movement? How does the movement's insistence on the sacredness of Black life serve to collapse and undercut any sharp distinction between religious and secular politics? How might we understand this movement as a part of a larger history of Black religious protest for racial justice rather than defined against it? My research explores these questions by centering the voices of participants in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. I analyze the use of rhetorics of the sacred in memoirs and other autobiographical writings, alongside images and other digital artifacts (videos, tweets, etc.) as they circulate on social media (e.g., BlackTwitter, Vine, Instagram, YouTube). My analysis of this sacred discourse is informed by and in conversation with theories drawn from religious studies, political theology, Afro-American religious thought, and Black studies. My project seeks to bring the intersection of religion and this contemporary political movement into plain site to demonstrate how sacred politics is central and not peripheral to their work for racial justice. By looking for religion not in its institutional formations but as it is embodied in the rhetoric and repertoire of activist practices—on t (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2020, College of Sciences and Health Professions

The present study draws upon terror management theory (TMT) and cognitive science of religion (CSR) to investigate how religious believers and atheists motivational and cognitive processes might interact to affect the expression of religious intuitions and beliefs. TMT suggests the motivation to manage mortality-related concerns can lead to religious concepts, and CSR suggests religious concepts are highly intuitive but that individuals can sometimes engage in deliberate/analytical thinking to override them. The present research therefore proposes two theoretical ideas: 1) among religious believers, mortality awareness should increase the intuitive appeal of religious concepts, as well as the acceptance of those intuitions as expressed religious belief; and 2) among atheists, mortality awareness should similarly increase the intuitive appeal of religious concepts, but not expressed religious faith because (despite recognizing them as intuitively appealing) atheists may wield their available self-regulatory resources (e.g., analytic thinking) to over-ride those intuitions and thus abstain from expressing religious belief. Christians and atheists were recruited and randomly assigned to either a mortality salience condition or pain salience condition; then, each participant was asked to rate the extent to which they found religious concepts intuitively appealing and the extent to which they accept and express those concepts as religious belief. A 2 (between-subjects: Christian vs. atheist) x 2 (between-subjects: MS vs. pain) x 4 (within-subjects: want supernatural agents, believe in supernatural agents, want afterlife, believe in an afterlife) mixed-model ANOVA found the data patterns were consistent with hypotheses; implications are discussed.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Comparative Studies

Fan communities, once considered marginal, have become an object of study across many academic disciplines. While considerable energy has been devoted to studying fans' creative works, little work has attended to religiosity in fandom, beyond superficial comparisons of fan behaviors to religious ones. As yet, no one has produced an analysis of this relationship addressing the complexity of a subculture that behaves religiously (by any academic understanding) but does not usually identify itself as religious. This dissertation examines the religious nature of fan practices as seen in pilgrimages related to the mega- franchises Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and Sherlock. The aim is not merely to demonstrate that these pilgrimages are religious, but also to explicate how religiosity works in such non-traditional contexts--that is, through pilgrimages in commercial and ordinary spaces that make no claim to transcendent authority. This analysis questions assumptions about what makes a shrine a shrine, a community religious, or a narrative or ritual an expression of values and belief. This research examines seven fan pilgrimage sites using ethnographic data, including participant observation, surveys, and interviews. Sites include the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, FL; the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London: The Making of Harry Potter; Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station in London, UK; filming locations and sites that inspired the Harry Potter movies in Oxford, UK; the Doctor Who Experience, Cardiff, UK; Ianto's Shrine, Cardiff, UK; and the memorial to Sherlock Holmes at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, UK. Analysis focuses on three themes: creation of sacred space, imagined community, and emergences of belief in ritual and other actions common to fan pilgrimage and traditional religious pilgrimage. Drawing on studies of religion and popular culture, folk belief, fan culture, and narrative theory, this interdisciplinary investigation of fan pilgrimages adv (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2019, Theology

Wilfrid Ward's understanding of divine revelation appeared in three phases. In the first, Ward confronted "agnosticism" and "positivism," which resulted in an exploration into the nature of mysticism in the saints, as well as an explanation of the saints as an authority for the church's reception of divine revelation. Ward's second phase took place at the height of the modernist controversies, in which he was embroiled in disputes of George Tyrrell concerning the nature of the deposit of faith and our explication of the deposit and whether the initial revelation can be considered semper eadem. Ward's third, and final, phase of his theology of divine revelation returns in part to his interest in the nature of "imagination" and "conscience" and their role in the reception of divine revelation. Many of the questions concerning divine revelation that Ward expounds upon are still with us today. This dissertation looks at the foundational questions of Ward's theology of revelation, which includes his understanding of the reception of divine revelation by Christian subjects as it manifests within the context of his three theological phases.

PHD, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

Research on self and identity has a rich history in social psychology. A number of different conceptions exist that theorize the organization of the self. This dissertation focuses on the organization of self from the perspective of Identity theory. Identity theory can be broken down into three research programs; the structural, interactional, and perceptual control. Previous research in identity theory has focused heavily on the structural program's conception of identity salience as the main organization structure of the self-concept. In addition, research in identity theory has focused heavily on normative aspects of everyday life in terms of the identities explored. This dissertation discusses the challenge that counter-normative identities, or identities that individuals claim that are not what are expected in society, present for the structural research program of identity theory. The interactional research program within identity theory is discussed as one solution to the exploration of counter-normative identities. Using the identity set of religious and non-religious as an example, this dissertation examines the relationship between identity prominence and salience that has been empirically supported for normative identities. In addition, this dissertation incorporates context, a major focus of the interactional perspective of identity theory, in two ways. First, a new measure of context specific salience is developed and incorporated into analyses. Second, proximate social structure, or the structure within which individuals enact identities, is explored as a moderator of the effect between prominence and salience. The results begin to show how counter-normative identities differ from normative ones and highlight the importance of context and the interactional perspective of identity theory, especially when incorporating counter-normative identities.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1983, Graduate School

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2016, Leadership and Change

Negative attitudes toward racial minorities and consequent maltreatment of non-Whites continue to be a crisis in America. The crisis of racism is still realized in phenomena such as residential segregation (Bonilla-Silva, 2014), health disparities (Chae, Nuru-Jeter, & Adler, 2012; Chae, Nuru-Jeter, Francis, & Lincoln, 2011), and in the not-so-uncommon unjust arrests and imprisonment of persons of color (Alexander, 2012). Improvement in race relations through the development of meaningful cross racial relationships in racially integrated settings is one avenue that may lead to reduction of racism (E. Anderson, 2010; Fischer, 2011; Massey & Denton, 1993). Christian congregations are common settings in America, and Christian teachings are primary sources of Western ethics and moral values. Historically, Christian practices have affected American attitudes such as with regard to elder care, have influenced legislation such as child labor laws, and have even swayed the contents of the United States constitution. Yet, racial segregation has been the norm in Christian congregations from the end of American slavery until today. Since there may be a relationship between the persistence of segregation in Christian congregations and the persistence of racism in America, racial integration in Christian congregations may impact racial attitudes and relationships. Using Participatory Action Research, this study explored ways to improve racial integration and race relations in Christian congregations. This study utilized volunteers in a 30-day exploration of racial integration in a congregation, a small church in one of the two Cumberland Presbyterian denominations. Data from observations, interviews, racially integrated events, reflection sessions, and participant journaling were collected and analyzed. Intentionality in racial integration in one congregation resulted in cumulative positive change, at times difficult and incremental. Findings revealed that adaptive, proactive lea (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts, Ohio University, 2016, Classics and World Religions

If you were to visit New Vrindaban, West Virginia (or any number of ISKCON centers in the United States) in the late 1960s or early 1970s, you would have primarily encountered young, white, counter-culturists. These Americans, with their Sanskrit spiritual names and Indian garments, moved to the commune to live off of the land in exchange for their service to the community and to the growing movement. These devotees would have been intimately familiar with the teachings of their guru and ISKCON's founder, Prabhupada, and many would have denied a Hindu identity. If you visit the community today, you will discover a radically different scene. Driving up the long, winding road, you will pass a number of abandoned dormitories that are the only remaining vestiges of New Vrindaban's communal past. Devotees now own their own homes and generate their own incomes. If you enter the temple on a weekend or during a holiday, you will find that roughly ninety percent of those in attendance are Hindus of South Asian descent. This thesis explores the historical and social processes which have allowed for and informed such a profound demographic transformation. It argues that New Vrindaban's devotee and Hindu populations are strange bedfellows and, consequently, New Vrindaban's temple is a coterminous social space in which religious and ethnic identities are reinforced, resisted, and renegotiated.

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2015, History

This thesis argues that Fifth Monarchist ideas on gender were not easily categorized because of the active construction and negotiation of gender within their religious/political ideological framework and within Interregnum England. The study argues this through a series of cases studies of two male and two female Fifth Monarchists. This thesis contributes to the field with a gender analysis of the male Fifth Monarchists.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2015, Arts and Sciences: Sociology

Even though sociologists have researched religion for many years, the exact mechanisms involved in religious effects on adolescent outcomes remains unclear. In recent years researchers have turned to social capital, and more specifically religious social capital, in an effort to more accurately predict life outcomes. However, despite findings indicating that religious social capital improves behavioral outcomes and educational achievement, contradictory results have emerged due to methodological and measurement limitations. Therefore, using data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) survey I determined the factors associated with the accumulation of religious social capital and the effects of demographic and geographic factors on religious social capital. In addition, a new religious social capital measure was created and a more in-depth classification of religious groups was used in these analyses. Findings suggest that there are unique differences in the accumulation of and the effects of religious social capital on adolescent outcomes by religious groups with conservative Protestants experiencing the most beneficial effects of religious social capital. The results also indicate that the geographic location of a school and the religious composition of a given area created significant differences within and between religious groups. This dissertation advances the body of religious research on adolescents by adding a unique perspective to a crowded research area.

MA, Kent State University, 2013, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

Research in identity theory has previously explored a number of identities. A majority of these, however, have been identities that are socially desired and expected. This research seeks to explore a different type of identity, those that are counter-normative. The aim of this thesis is to begin the exploration of how individuals with counter-normative identities fit into the identity processes posited by identity theory. Using a nationally representative web-based survey, three groups of identities are explored. Within each group are three specific identities with varying amounts of normalcy. In order to examine the identity process across the three identities and the three sets, group structural equation modeling is used. The results examine the similarities and differences between each of the three identities with regard to the model of identity processes proposed by the structural identity theory research program. In addition, a relatively understudied component of self-esteem, authenticity, is included as an outcome of the identity model. The findings show that those individuals who claim counter-normative identities do, in fact, differ from those who claim normative identities in their experience of the identity process. These results suggest that the structural identity theory model may not carry over from normative to counter-normative identities. Future work should examine counter-normative identities more closely to determine whether a separate model is required for counter-normative identities.

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD), Wright State University, 2013, School of Professional Psychology

In response to an identified need in the psychological literature for research on minority religion, especially earth-centered religion, this dissertation was developed to 1) present an overview of the three main branches of contemporary earth religion, 2) illuminate the realities of minority religious identity in the United States of America, 3) collect data regarding the demographic and identity variables of devotees of earth centered religion, and 4) solicit feedback from the earth religious community regarding its understanding of psychological distress, preferred ways of coping with distress, and perceptions and experiences of professional mental health services. A total of 64 self-identified devotees of earth-centered faith completed an online questionnaire about their identity variables, experiences of psychological distress, ways of understanding distress, and experiences, perceptions, and fears pertaining to mental health services. The questionnaire was developed by the researcher based upon a literature review and consultation of the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology's developmental achievement levels in diversity. Descriptive and statistical findings pertaining to this religious population are detailed. Additionally, clinical and research implications of the results, as well as limitations and strengths of the current study are identified and discussed.