J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies

It's our country and it's our cathedral : Sajūdis and the Lithuanian Catholic Church.

Cruz, Miranda Zapor. (, 2014-06-11)

Lietuvos Persitvarkymo Sąjūdis, ‘Lithuanian Movement for Perestroika’, was the popular nationalist movement that led Lithuania toward independence from the Soviet Union on 11 March 1990. In order to gain the Lithuanian ...

A question of balance : a study of legal equality and state neutrality in the United States of America, France, and the Netherlands.

Norton, Brenda J. (, 2013-09-24)

Western liberal democracy has a dual foundation of limited government implementing the will of the majority and protecting individual autonomy within a sphere of fundamental rights. This foundation is implemented through ...

From separationism to theocracy : how the domestic relationship between religion and state conditions the salience of religion in foreign policy.

Kent, Jennifer M. (, 2013-09-24)

The study of international politics has undergone a profound re-consideration of disciplinary assumptions about religion since the end of the Cold War. From Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations to Peter Berger’s ...

Soviet religious samizdat as a powerful weapon of Soviet religious dissent : a comparative study of Baptist and Orthodox samizdat publications from the early 1960s to the late 1980s.

Seago, Larisa G. (, 2013-09-16)

In the Soviet Union where government controlled every written and spoken word the sole way of communicating uncensored information was samizdat – a system of underground publication which existed in the Soviet Union from ...

Competing schemas within the American liberal democracy : an interdisciplinary analysis of differing perceptions of church and state.

Holzer, Shannon. (, 2013-09-16)

The current understanding of liberal democracy in many academic circles includes a set of restraints on the types of justification that are accepted for the creation of coercive legislation. There is much debate over which ...

Baptist environmentalisms : a comparison of American Baptist and Southern Baptist attitudes, actions and approaches toward environmental issues.

Weaver, Aaron Douglas. (, 2013-09-16)

This dissertation articulates how and why Southern Baptists and American Baptists have addressed environmental issues during the critical second and third waves of environmental history. With the birth of the modern ...

Freedom in the thought and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Emblem, Erik Steven. (, 2013-09-16)

The purpose of this dissertation is to discover Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s interpretation of freedom. King’s life was dedicated to a pursuit of freedom for African Americans, the poor, and unfree people around the world. ...

Multiple modernizations, religious regulations and church responses : the rise and fall of three “Jerusalems” in communist China.

Zhong, Zhifeng. (, 2013-09-16)

There is an extensive literature on modernization, regulation and religious change from a global perspective. However, China is usually understudied by the scholars. Numerous studies tackle the puzzle of the rising of ...

An evaluation of the conceptual similarities and differences between the strategic logic of the religiously motivated suicide attacks of Tokkotai kamikaze and al-Qaeda shahid.

Mizuta, Jonathan Juichi. (, 2013-09-16)

What motivated members of al-Qaeda to hijack commercial airliners and crash them into the sides of buildings? Is it similar to what motivated Japanese fighter pilots to crash their jets into the sides of American aircraft ...

Lone wolves : an assessment of the ideology behind homegrown Islamist individual terrorists.

Peery, William Joseph. (, 2013-05-15)

Lone wolf terrorism is an increasing threat in the United States. However, there is little information available that examines the nature of lone wolf terrorism. This thesis interprets the available literature regarding ...

From Neo-orthodox theology to rationalistic deism : a study of the religious influences on the development of John Rawls's political philosophy.

Kim, Keeho, 1967- (, 2013-05-15)

The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that John Rawls’s early religious beliefs guided the development of his later political philosophy. By first analyzing A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith, I ...

International politics, American Protestant missions and the Middle East.

Barrett, John C., 1973- (, 2013-05-15)

American Protestant missionaries have been active in the Middle East since the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th Century. Their presence has had a notable impact on international relations. Prior to World War I, ...

Roman Catholic Hegemony and Religious Freedom : a Seventh-day Adventist assessment of Dignitatis Humanae.

Cook, Edwin A. (, 2012-11-29)

Roman Catholic Hegemony and Religious Freedom sets forth the “Catholic hegemony” thesis, meaning the Church applies Dignitatis Humanae in different ways, depending upon extant political and religious conditions in a given ...

Dynamic civil religion and religious nationalism : the Roman Catholic Church in Poland and the Orthodox Church in Romania, 1990-2010.

Tarţa, Mihai Iustin. (, 2012-11-29)

This dissertation addresses the association of national identity and religious tradition of the Polish Roman Catholic Church (PRCC) in Poland and the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Romania, and analyses the evolution ...