HDS Student Papers

This thesis is a study of m. nourbeSe philip’s 2008 long poem Zong! and Torkwase Dyson’s 2025 sound pavilion Akua. In this study, I pay attention to how each woman discusses and (de)constructs the colonial archive through their commitment to care and communion in communal engagement and through the formal properties of the poetry, performance, sound, and design that comprise their work. Engaging their projects individually, in tandem, and with discourses from archival theory, Black religious studies, Black feminist thought, critical theory, and Black visual studies, I grapple with the possibility and ethics of their projects of spiritual care for the living and the dead. Writing from my experiences of these artists’ works, I present black archival spiritual care, art-centered spiritual communion, and compositional abstraction as analytics through which to critically read the ministerial connotations of their projects.

The paper examines various models of co-leadership or other forms of collaborative shared ministry among Unitarian Universalist (UU) religious professionals, evaluates both the potential positive and negative impacts of such models, and outlines best practices for how to establish, embed and maintain them.

The author analyzes the models within the specific polity and theological heritage of Unitarian Universalism, including the ways that that heritage has historically both enabled and challenged systems of oppression. He contends that current leadership structures in UU congregations often perpetuate and enable paradigms of patriarchy and white supremacist culture which exclude people of color, queer people, and other historically marginalized people, and so inhibit further growth and diversity in the faith. In order to address various financial, demographic, and governance challenges that Unitarian Universalism currently faces as well as more profound religious and moral issues of equity and inclusion, it is necessary to challenge and deconstruct those paradigms, and erase false preconceptions as to what may be possible within the inherited structures of the denomination.

Theologically, the paper also evaluates the implications of UU values and principles for leadership models among religious professionals. The author argues that alternative leadership structures are fully compatible with the newly articulated Shared Values of Unitarian Universalism, and will help promote and expand Beloved Community.

If properly implemented, new models for ministry and leadership can inspire UUs to imagine a brighter and more optimistic future for their faith – and by extension for the culture, politics, and socio-economic dynamics of the wider society.

A collection of poetry examining themes of violence, trauma, tenderness, interconnection, transformation, mercy, and the miracles of ordinariness.

This thesis examines how Bishop Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate (1871–1930), founder of The Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, headquartered in Nashville, TN, constructed holiness as a system of knowledge that integrated theology, gender, and institutional life within the early twentieth-century Holiness movement. While most studies of early Black Pentecostalism have centered on male founders, charismatic revivals, or external views of Pentecostal denominations as cultic movements, Tate’s writings, hymns, and denominational records reveal a sanctified epistemology, a way of knowing God through embodied discipline, institutional order, and communal survival. Drawing on primary sources such as the Year Book of the Church of the Living God (1922–23) and The Constitution and Government of The Church of the Living God (1915), and secondary works by Anthea Butler, Judith Casselberry, Delores Williams, and others, this thesis interpreted Tate’s holiness tradition as an early articulation of womanist theology. Her vision of sanctification transformed motherhood, administration, and spiritual labor into sacred modes of knowing. By reading Tate within the intellectual history of Black religious modernity, this study reframed holiness not as ecstatic piety but as an epistemic project that authorized Black women’s leadership and sustained their institutions amid the racial and gendered constraints of Jim Crow.

Luo Rufang (1515–1588) was a very active and influential Confucian scholar and lecturer during his lifetime. In Luo’s work, we can find three main points regarding Shangdi: First, Shangdi is not an abstract principle. Shangdi is a personal deity who generates the myriad things and humans. Shangdi is always monitoring the behaviors of humans and giving corresponding rewards and punishments. Second, Shangdi grants humans a nature that is the same as Shangdi’s own nature. We, as humans, may therefore experience Shangdi’s presence by watching and finding this Heavenly bestowed nature. We should thus be fearful and reverent in feeling the presence of Shangdi, restrain ourselves from misbehavior, and diligently practice moral cultivation to achieve a complete realization of manifestation of the heavenly nature granted by Shangdi. And third, eventually, all our thoughts and deeds will become reflections of Shangdi’s mind. We will then return to oneness with Shangdi. When Luo talks about Shangdi, his ultimate concern is the moral cultivation and spiritual transformation of humans. Shangdi is important only in relation to humans. Further examinations will demonstrate that his idea of Shangdi is almost entirely rooted in the ancient classics and contemporary neo-Confucian thought. Luo’s case may provide us with a new historical and intellectual resource for the study of Ming Confucianism and its dialogue with Catholicism.

Ethical Neo-Aristotelians hold that ethical standards are fixed by something’s end (telos). Moreover, they hold that such ends are inherent in nature. I argue that an end is normatively binding only if it is intended. Thus, I distinguish between “functional” ends (which are immanent in nature yet non-normative) and “purposive” ends (which are set by agential intentions and thus normative). The purposes of individual’s can fix normative standards, but these standards are relative. This raises the worry that teleological conceptions of ethics devolve into ethical relativism. I show how the charge of ethical relativism can be met by appeal to Christian theology. If a providential God exists, then God’s purposes for humans become an ultimate ethical standard. In order to know God’s purposes for humankind, we look to God’s revelation in Christ.

This thesis examines the significance of the pericope of Elisha’s axe head on the formation of the Gospels and the Christian theology of discipleship. By spotlighting the role of Elisha’s axe head in the medieval English liturgy for the ordeal by water, this investigation reveals the lasting significance of this otherwise slight narrative from 2 Kings 6:1-7 on the ability of a priest to effect a miracle. Previous scholarship on the ordeal by water ignores any theological explanation for the ritual of the ordeal by water, whereas this investigation does not resort to historicizing or moralizing what contemporary priests understood as a miracle. Instead, this thesis proposes that the manner in which the Elijah-Elisha narrative cycle of 1 and 2 Kings was subsumed into and transformed by the canonical Gospels resulted in a novel theory of discipleship by which the holy spirit passes from teacher to disciple in an apostolic succession. It is this succession which endows the medieval English priest with the ability to effect a miracle and ritualistically adjudge the guilt of an accused individual. This investigation also attempts to argue for the impact of the prophetic narratives of Elijah and Elisha in the Hebrew Bible upon the narrative, characters, and soteriology of the Gospels of Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John. Through comparative analyses of characters, narrative structures, and motifs of discipleship, the significance of the Elijah-Elisha prophetic cycle upon the composition of the Gospels is revealed. It is through the transformation of these elements, particularly through the depiction of the relationships between John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Disciples, that a novel theory of prophetic discipleship is expounded.

This paper outlines my Latter-day Saint ancestors’ struggle during the nineteenth century for the privileged status of whiteness and my family’s struggle during the early twenty-first century against systemic racism—a struggle that came to a head in June 2019 when my youngest brother, Jeremy Sorensen, was shot and killed by a white man who was not subsequently tried. Relating the experiences of my ancestors and of my immediate family, this paper demonstrates the devastating effect of racism in not only its intentional, explicit form, but also—and more importantly for this discussion—its unintentional, implicit form. This paper considers so-called colorblindness as an example of unintentional, implicit racism that perpetuates the disadvantages and disproportionate deaths that the black community in the United States continues to experience.

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988 was a major terrorism and mass murder event on par with 9/11 in terms of social and cultural impact. All 259 people onboard and 11 people on the ground were killed. The families and other loved ones of those on board created a new paradigm for victim-led advocacy for better treatment from the United States government and other responding organizations. It was also a turning point in the development of disaster spiritual care as a distinct discipline with its own best practices. Terrorism and other aspects of the story overshadowed the story of the disaster spiritual care response. This paper tells the story of the spiritual care response to Lockerbie, both as a social history and as guidance for disaster spiritual care professionals. It offers four main lessons: Be prepared; be ready for death care; the impact zone is endless; and it will change you.

This thesis argues that gentleness is the orientating virtue of Christian Ministry. It shapes and leads the other virtues into their proper application within a ministerial context. Gentleness is defined against trivializing conceptions of gentleness, and instead is rooted on a scriptural and theological basis. Gentleness is defined mostly as the restraint of our own power and strength over others. To demonstrate and define the role that this gentleness plays, a set of four narratives from the lives of specific exemplars are utilized, these being: Fred Rogers, L'Arche Communities, Etty Hillesum, and Martin Luther. This thesis follows the narrative virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre, adding also the theological anthropology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to show the importance of community, tradition, history, identity and faithfulness in the pursuit of Christian action. This project stands in dialogue with the socio-political climate found in 2020-2021, searching for a uniquely Christian ministerial voice within this ungentle time of violent crisis. It proposes an awareness that can generate reconciliatory, just and radical-faithful action from Christians.