Theses/Dissertations - History

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/2104/4785

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A prophet unwelcome : motive magazine, the Methodist Student Movement, and midcentury Methodism.
(2017-04-20) Ray, Skylar R., 1991-; Hankins, Barry, 1956-
motive magazine (1941-1972) was the official magazine of the Methodist Student Movement and, for several of its final years, for the University Christian Movement as well. Controversial from the beginning, motive stood apart from contemporary campus ministry publications with its featuring of avant-garde art, leftist political and social commentary, and engagement with radical theology. The narrative that has accompanied motive’s legacy tells of a progressive and prophetic publication that succumbed to the censure of an oppressive denominational governing board. This thesis, however, will argue that identity politics, organizational instability, and financial troubles were largely responsible for the magazine’s demise. This work will contend that by jettisoning faith as its distinguishing factor, motive ceded its unique status as one of the last bastions of faith-based, grassroots liberal activism and social commentary, and will suggest that this space would come to be filled by the evangelical left directly following the magazine’s undoing.
Abram Ryan, Orestes Brownson, and American Catholics during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
(2017-07-26) Roach, David E., 1993-; Parrish, T. Michael.
This thesis explores how American Catholics reacted to the Civil War and Reconstruction and how those reactions influenced Protestant perceptions of Catholics. Orestes Brownson, a famous Northern convert, polemicist, and supporter of the Union, and Abram Ryan, a Southern poet, priest, and proponent of the Lost Cause, serve as case studies. Analyzing their writing and their reception among Protestant Americans, this thesis demonstrates how religious, racial, political, and even transatlantic developments fueled a Southern and Northern critique of Reconstruction of which Brownson and Ryan were an important part. At the same time, Catholic participation in shared national and sectional reunion and reconciliation also facilitated Catholic's integration into American society. This work focuses on Republican newspapers' praise for Northern Catholic loyalty and Abram Ryan's nationally successful promotion of the Lost Cause. Catholic Civil War Era ideas and actions were emblematic of and crucial to American debates over Catholicism's influence and future.
“AD MAJORDEM DEI GLORIAM": Fr. Daniel Berrigan, Michael Novak & Catholic Identity in Crisis in Mid-Twentieth Century America
(2018-07-20) Bird, Prisca Y., 1986-; Hankins, Barry, 1956-
The 1960s were a time of great change in terms of Catholic identity and its relationship to American culture and politics. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-1965) deeply unsettled the American Catholic Church as its liturgical reforms posed a serious challenge to Catholicism’s status as a distinctive religious community in the United States. Two figures that embodied the struggle of American Catholics to connect their faith to politics in this period were Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J., and Michael Novak. This thesis explores the roots of the ideological break between these two Catholic intellectuals and what it says about the nature of the decline of the American Catholic left in mid-twentieth century. It contends that the decline was a direct byproduct of anxieties related to the loss of tradition in the wake of Vatican II and the failure of the Catholic New Left to gauge the needs of working class Americans. .
American Christianity in the maritime world : challenges to faith in the early national period.
(2012-08-08) DeShong, Thomas Allen.; Kidd, Thomas S.; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.
The stereotypical eighteenth-century sailor was a superstitious man with little concern for Christianity. While it is true that most mariners at this time practiced a syncretic faith, historians have minimized the influence Christianity had. This thesis analyzes various ideological and spiritual challenges unique to American Christians who lived in the maritime world during the early national period (1775-1815). The first chapter examines the relationship between American Christianity and Islam. The focus then shifts to American providentialism, the effort by American Christians to interpret what God’s will was in human affairs. The final chapter explores the roles of naval chaplains and the struggles they faced in fulfilling their spiritual responsibilities. This thesis is an attempt to re-examine sea-faring life through a religious lens. While Christianity certainly survived in this setting, it did not thrive. In many cases, the principles of Christianity were challenged or undermined by maritime culture.
An ancient faith for the modern South : southern Catholic writers and the making of the antebellum South, 1820–1861.
(August 2022) Roach, David E., 1993-; Parrish, T. Michael.
This dissertation seeks to understand how a conservative religious community in a slaveholding region, southern Catholics in the antebellum United States, understood their place in the modern world. While historians of the South have increasingly interpreted southerners as quintessentially modern and American, scholars of American Catholicism have often stressed the differences between nineteenth-century Catholics and other Americans. Integrating these scholarly conversations, this dissertation investigates an important question: how modern were Catholics in the antebellum South? To find an answer, this study examines the writings of southern Catholic authors before the Civil War—novels, newspapers, monthlies, poems, histories, almanacs, pamphlets—in an effort to understand how these writers understood their place in their region and nation. Scrutiny of these sources reveals a number of important themes that link these Catholics to modernity. For one thing, progress permeated their thinking, inclining them to assume the near ascendancy of their faith in the United States. For another, Catholics also engaged with Romanticism, whose aesthetics shaped their literary culture and whose particularism wended its way into Catholics’ republicanism and nationalism. Turning to the issue of slavery, Catholics had, on account of their hierarchical theology, some affinities for the hierarchies embedded with the slave South, yet they hardly styled slavery as antimodern. Slavery, they believed, was a vehicle for progress, though Catholics in the Lower South believed it more fundamental to a well-ordered society than fellow communicants in the Upper South, who imagined a future without enslavement. Fundamentally, though, their defenses of slavery were always defenses of private property, with the most important southern Catholic apologia for slavery being a Christian defense of the interstate slave trade. This defense of individual property rights, combined with their difficulty understanding problems within slaveholding as systemic issues, allowed Catholics sincere in their commitment to paternalism to justify the slave trade at the heart of the South’s capitalist economy. Thus, Catholics maintained their distinctive religious beliefs even as they adopted new technologies, embraced progress, interacted with Romanticism, defended individual rights, and supported slavery’s capitalism. In all this, they were not only Catholics but also modern southerners.
An examination of English Catholic preaching under Queen Mary I, 1553-1558.
(2020-08-03) Wilson, Eric Joseph, 1996-; Barr, Beth Allison.
An examination of English printed sermons during the reign of Queen Mary I, showing their similarities to other Catholic Reformation sermons and demonstrating their place in the evolution of English homiletics.
An examination of women’s piety as depicted in medieval and early modern stained glass.
(2016-07-29) Henley, Annelise A., 1992-; Barr, Beth Allison.
This thesis explores the impact of gender and religious piety on expressions of women’s agency in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Chapter One introduces Oxfordshire stained glass as the area of inquiry, with the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (CVMA) database serving as the primary source reference. Both the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York and the British Academy collaborate on this database. The next three chapters investigate portrayals of donors, biblical figures, and non-biblical figures. Each chapter demonstrates that depictions of women and men generally remain uniform across time. That said, the chapters also show that depictions of women changed in small ways that images of men did not. Subtle changes reveal that gender forced Late Medieval and Early Modern women to be creative with their religious expressions, while piety provided women an internalized outlet to express their agency within the church.
Asad’s Syria : the key to the perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict 1973-1984.
(2019-04-17) Burke, Anabel Glynn, 1995-; Gawrych, George Walter.
Syrian President Hafez al-Asad strove to lead Arab resistance against Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. When Egypt made peace with Israel in the 1970s, Asad had an opportunity to assume the leadership position Egypt vacated. He joined the Arab-Israeli conflict alongside Egypt in the October War of 1973, but now he picked up the mantle of Arab resistance and carried it into the Lebanese Civil War and the Arab alliance known as the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front. Through these endeavors, in alliance with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Asad’s Syria became the leader and perpetuator of the Arab-Israeli conflict during the years 1973-1984.
August Sebelin's Civil War : a German sailor in the Union Navy, 1861-1865.
(2011-12-19) Bishop, Ronald R.; Rust, Eric C., 1950-; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.
From 1861-1865, the United States of America was in the grip of a civil war. It was fought on land and at sea. One participant was August Sebelin, a young German sailor. Sebelin entered the war to enhance his navigational skills in order to to Germany someday and better serve his country. Sebelin's wartime experiences the U.S.S. Connecticut are recorded in a diary he kept while in service. It is observations which are the basis for this study. This thesis examines and analyzes everyday life of this German sailor while operating as a part of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during America's Civil War.
Between isolation and engagement : the history of the Dutch Calvinist school movement in the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada.
(2010-06-23T12:25:41Z) Sikkema, David A., 1984-; Hankins, Barry, 1956-; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.
Over 200,000 Dutch immigrants have settled in Canada since the end of World War II. The Dutch Calvinists within this larger body have largely maintained their distinct religious and ethnic identities through the establishment and maintenance of separate civic institutions. The purpose of this thesis is to trace the historic development of one institution in particular, the separate school. The underlying motivations behind the creation of separate schools in Canada are rooted in a century long struggle in the Netherlands known in Dutch parlance as the schoolstrijd where the Dutch fought to set up their own educational institutions and won financial equality with their secular counterparts. This thesis will also discuss two strains of Calvinism that emerged within the Reformed body, each having a significant impact on the schools' identity in the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada. Finally, the thesis will offer a case study of one particular school in Southern Ontario, Canada. As this school emerged from a schism within the church, it provides an opportunity to explore another stage in the development of Dutch Calvinist education.
Body, soul, and bible : a religious history of nineteenth-century physiological reform.
(2013-09-24) Riddle, Jonathan D.; Hankins, Barry, 1956-; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.
The nineteenth-century American physiological reform movement was deeply religious. While historians have noted the moral or religious imperatives intermingled with reformers’ dietary recommendations, few have examined why and how a movement to reform the body became religious and how that religious impulse manifested itself. This thesis therefore offers a close examination of the religious aspects of physiological reform, arguing first that a holistic or sympathetic theological anthropology undergirded the sacralization of bodily regimen. Second, this thesis demonstrates that physiological reformers relied on the Bible to promote their movement and that the Bible’s dietary teachings were a substantial point of conflict between the reformers and other Americans. Finally, this thesis analyzes the reformers’ hermeneutic, arguing that they read the Bible through the lens of physiology. They therefore clashed with the commonsense literalism with which their contemporaries read the Bible—a hermeneutical conflict the physiological reformers failed to win.
Caligula in Jerusalem : the hostile relationship between Emperor Gaius and his Jewish subjects.
(2012-11-29) Sturdy, Michael C.; Jones, Kenneth R.; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.
This thesis examines the relationship between Gaius (Caligula) and his Jewish subjects via unrest in Alexandria and the emperor’s decree that the Jerusalem Temple be converted into a pagan shrine. It is concluded that Gaius was a competent leader who intentionally asserted his power over the region of Judea based on his knowledge of the Jewish people based on their history and his relationship with Agrippa I. It is also concluded that the Jewish authors’ view of the emperor was tainted predominately by the Temple incident, which has shaped how historians have studied Gaius by focusing on his madness and immorality.
Confederate empire and the Indian treaties : Pike, McCulloch, and the Five Civilized Tribes, 1861-1862.
(2011-05-12T15:26:14Z) Fisher, Paul Thomas.; Parrish, T. Michael.; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.
From its beginning, the Confederacy looked to expand in power and territory by courting the Five Civilized Tribes away from the United States. To accomplish this, the Confederacy sent an unlikely pair of ambassadors: lawyer-negotiator Albert Pike and former Indian fighter Benjamin McCulloch. While Pike signed treaties with the tribes, McCulloch began organizing the Indians as Confederate soldiers. Pike took over equipping and training the various Indian units and led them to join the main Confederate army in Arkansas. This army, including Pike's Indians,suffered defeat in the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge. McCulloch's death in the battle, Pike's forced resignation afterward, and the defeat itself doomed Confederate efforts to dominate the frontier. Despite their substantial help to the Confederates, the Five Tribes received little help from Richmond, and paid a massive price for trying to get out of United States protection in unequal and unjust treaties after the war.
Crossing the color line.
(2011-09-14) Hash, Alisha.; Parrish, T. Michael.; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.
Miscegenation, a word not coined until the Civil War, has been an intrinsic part of American History. There is a rich field of scholars discussing the experiences of interracial couples from Colonial America through Reconstruction. Historically, most researchers focus on the earliest laws enacted in the colonies and how these laws were adjusted and applied. However, there has been very little work done on specific states with the exception of a few anomalous regions such as Louisiana. Although the contributions that have been made thus far have been invaluable, there is a hole in the research. There has been very little work done on the state of Texas. Only one author, Charles F. Robinson III, has explored the topic in depth, therefore, his work should be examined thoroughly and critically.
Cup of salvation : race, religion, and anti-prohibition in Texas, 1885-1935.
(2017-03-27) Payne, Brendan J., 1986-; Hankins, Barry, 1956-
The movement for the legal prohibition of alcohol, or simply “prohibition,” has attracted scholarly attention for its wide-ranging impact on culture and politics. Prohibitionist “drys” overcame anti-prohibitionists “wets” to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment banned the alcohol trade in the United States and took effect from 1920 until its repeal thirteen years later in 1933, though many statewide or local prohibition laws began earlier and lasted longer. Most studies of alcohol prohibition and religion in the United States have focused on religion as promoting prohibition rather than opposing it. The interplay of prohibition and race has also received some attention, though studies have frequently treated racial and ethnic minorities as peripheral or helpless in the contest. This dissertation examines the interplay of religion, race, and anti-prohibition, using Texas as a case study. This study covers the main years of activity in Texas on the issue of prohibition, including the first statewide vote on the issue in 1887, the imposition of statewide prohibition in 1919, and the repeal of prohibition in 1935. Throughout this period, racial minorities tended to oppose prohibition and occasionally cast pivotal votes on the issue, particularly African, German, and Mexican Americans. A range of religious traditions, notions, and practices bolstered the anti-prohibition movement. Even for prohibition, race and religion played on both sides of a major culture war issue that reverberates today.
Defining the Christian college : the Council of Church Boards of Education and American religious higher education, 1911–1950.
(2018-04-17) Leavitt, Benjamin Paul, 1994-; Turpin, Andrea Lindsay.
This thesis explores competing definitions of the “Christian” college in the early twentieth-century United States, particularly as articulated by mainline Protestants in two national organizations: the ecumenical Council of Church Boards of Education (CCBE) and the related Liberal Arts College Movement (LACM). It identifies two lines of thinking on Christian higher education, which it calls the “inclusive” and “distinctive” impulses. On the one hand, “inclusive” educators—many of them trained in modern universities—saw little spiritual difference between church-related and other forms of higher education, and so discounted any “secular” threat. On the other hand, “distinctive” educators defined the religiosity of intentionally “Christian” institutions against that of “secular” colleges and universities. These two perspectives came into conflict during the 1930s, and the latter won the day within the CCBE. In the post-World War Two era, however, both impulses persisted in fragile tension within the ecumenical project of mainline Protestantism.
Dissension within the Confederacy : the Tenth Legislature of Texas during the U.S. – C.S. War.
(2014-10-29) Bean, John Kenneth, 1985-; Kellison, Kimberly R.
At the time that Texas’ Tenth Legislature began their session in the autumn of 1863, the war between the United States and the Confederacy was in its third year. The Eighth and Ninth Legislatures worked to respond to the necessities of the state during the outset and first years of the war, often putting the war effort and the needs of the Confederacy first. Various issues such as state finances, state defense, and frontier protection demanded action. After the summer of 1863, as the war shifted in favor of the North, the newly elected legislature and new governor began to put the needs of Texas first. This caused some dissension between the state and the Confederate government.
Educating the Protestant International : the influence of Halle Pietism in eighteenth-century charity education.
(2020-07-02) Ortiz, Samantha L., 1995-; Kidd, Thomas S.
Scholars have accepted the general influence of August Hermann Francke and Halle Pietism among English-speaking Protestant groups in the eighteenth century. One of the institutional byproducts of Francke’s influence was the number of charity schools and orphanages that claimed to be imitating his famous orphan house in Halle. This study will assess the extent to which claimants succeeded or failed in following the Halle model. The examples studied here do not capture the entire geographical extent of the influence of Halle Pietism, as they are limited to the personal and institutional networks mediated through the British Empire that developed after the Glorious Revolution. Previous studies have confined analyses of these imitations of Halle to their own settings without global comparison. This study also seeks to continue the recent global turn within studies of international Protestantism by including the cooperative Protestant activity in India within its scope.
Evangelical Jeremiads and consuming Eves : the relationship of religion and consumerism in Eighteenth-Century Colonial America.
(2015-07-28) Mylin, Amanda S., 1990-; Kidd, Thomas S.
This thesis examines the commercial world of the American British colonies from the Great Awakening to the American Revolution through the lens of eighteenth century American religious history. It examines evangelical and Quaker responses to the consumer market through published sermons and other religious rhetoric. Colonial ministers discussed the dangers of consumerism through the format of jeremiads, seeing God’s punishment for indulgence in luxury through the turmoil of the eighteenth century. However, revival ministers also used commercial methods to spread the gospel. Additionally, women in particular were a focal point of religious discussion about consumerism. While many historians have focused on the consumer revolution, and many have focused on early American religion, little has been done to unite these threads. This thesis hopes to do that by showing that religious discussion was essential to the American tradition of participating in the marketplace.
The forest : a history of ideas : the movement for civil rights in suburban Madison, New Jersey 1955-1970.
(2013-05-15) Gaither-Çyrs, E.; SoRelle, James M.; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.
The ideas emergent from the movement for civil rights in the American South transformed suburban Madison, New Jersey, and its nearby townships in the span of one generation. Protests burgeoned from the largely one-dimensional, cyclical indifference, insularism and apathy of Drew University undergraduates in the mid-to-late 1950s, to the variegated prism of social and political interests and involvement of students, administrators, public servants, small business owners and everyday citizens engaging the movement on different fronts, from the early-to-mid 1960s. By the latter half of the decade, Madison activists had prompted the New Jersey Supreme Court to ban the practice of double service standards in places of public accommodation and the disintegration of older organizational allegiances became imminent. New race conscious and political factions eventually emerged to engender a more diverse assembly of voices in concert with and counterpoint to one another than ever in the history of the local community.

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