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The Holy Spirit in the Ontogeny of the Body of Christ
No full textThis is a proposal to enrich a tried-and-true spiritual gifts workshop typically offered by Episcopal parish clergy for discerning New Testament spiritual gifts that may be seeking expression in parishioners' lives. They are fine as far as they go, but simply do not go far enough. This proposal suggests an introduction that could be used for any spiritual life workshop whether it is for New Testament gifts; theological virtues; character education (cardinal virtues), or centering prayer. All of them need each other for the full spiritual maturation of the Body and bodies of Christ.The Rev. Dr. Robert Davis Hughes III, School of Theolog
Harmony House: Stories
No full textAttached file includes abstract only.The collection of stories in Harmony House is linked by setting and characters. A vintage house in New Orleans is converted into four apartments rented by young professionals who grapple with problems that often trouble young adults.
In “Encore” Celeste Tyler Percy, an intellectual and ballerina in graduate school in Maryland, returns to New Orleans during her mother’s illness. Celeste and her father dodge old tensions, and Celeste again is vexed by a former high school rival. Facing trouble with family and the old nemesis, Celeste struggles over whether she and her husband should stay up East or return home after his Air Force tour. Her father befriends a boisterous contractor who is renovating an old house on Harmony Street.
“The Wench Upstairs” treats romantic complications. Kevin Kennan, a young lawyer unlucky in love, rents a unit in the renovated house after his wife leaves him. Devastated, he soon falls for an exchange student, while sparring with a feisty hippie neighbor, Meara Burke. Kevin’s romance with the French student Monique craters. He and Meara share mutual attraction and interests, but both are opinionated and stubborn. Meara fears that dating Kevin will force her to join a circle of snobs, while Kevin worries that blunt Meara will alienate his friends.
In “Somebody to Lean On,” Robin Woods Wright left a job she loved when her husband Adam secured a transfer to New Orleans. Though she empathizes with Adam’s need for distance from his father, a wealthy planter and prominent state legislator, Robin is so bored in New Orleans that she takes a job with an arrogant lawyer. He tries to seduce, then rape, her. Adam Wright is a former all-SEC fullback with a white knight complex. Ignoring all advice, Adam evens the score with the would-be rapist and is arrested. Robin is torn over whether to seek the Senator’s help as, pregnant, she doubts Adam’s readiness for parenthood.
In “Ritornello” Celeste and Eugene Percy return to New Orleans. A promised job falls through, and the now-unemployed musician and ballerina live with her parents. Celeste learns that her high school enemy caused Eugene to lose his teaching position. Regretting their return, the couple work at menial jobs and lament the loss of friends and independence. Reconnecting with a Creole friend, Celeste and Eugene seek acceptance into a new group and a niche in her home town.
In “The Names of Saints” medical intern Sam Wright and his writer-wife Katie Kennan have a young son. Katie wants a daughter, but a medical condition precludes more children. Sam, a devout Catholic, finds a baby girl in a hospital dumpster. A chaplain wants to “help” Sam adopt, but Sam has deep misgivings, and he fears the girl as a rival to his son. Katie battles maternal guilt and anger at God, while Sam debates whether he is “supposed” to adopt an injured Asian-American baby.
More than an address links the characters. Robin befriends Meara. Katie is Kevin’s sister and Robin’s best friend. Adam and Sam are cousins. The Creole musician Martine knows Celeste from high school and Katie from graduate school. Kevin and Eugene bond over music, and Katie and Celeste over literature. Celeste and Meara’s dads are friends. Participating in one another’s stories, the young adults share challenges, uncertainty, and healing which, like all human healing, is partial and makeshift, as fragile as human hope
Wareware to wa Bessekai: The evolution, inhibition, and cultural prohibition of public male-male sexual identities in contemporary Japan
Get PDFPre-19th century Japanese society expected its members to engage in both hetero- and homosexual acts. However, while Westerners may view Japan as sexually progressive, or even bizarre, today’s Japan is notably conservative in regards to issues of sexuality. Few people publicly display an identity based on sexuality despite the adoption of sexual identity as the primary mode of discourse.
In the late 1800s, Western cultural ideals began holding greater influence over the region. As the islands of Japan nationalized, the new Emperor-centric government adopted legal and social policies encouraging exclusive heterosexuality and eventually villainizing homosexuality through medical research, pseudo-religious racial purity propaganda, and adoption of Victorian-style laws.
Contemporary Japan has adopted the idea of sexual identity, but many of its male citizens choose not to publicly identify. This is not simply an artifact of the oppressive environment in the early 20th century, but rather a result of 1) a strong emphasis on homogeneity and group uniformity; 2) the overall level of candor afforded to expressions of sexual and & romantic relationships; 3) media treatment; 4) the historical and cultural importance of the family unit; and 5) an economic system that has made participation in a nuclear family a necessity for survival
Community and Communion: A Comparative Analysis of Jean Vanier and Stanley Hauerwas on Theology and Disability
Get PDFOver the last four decades, Jean Vanier and Stanley Hauerwas have continued to be
leading voices in the field of theology and disability. As Vanier reflected on his experiences at
L’Arche and as Hauerwas included the mentally handicapped in his theological project, they both
gave voice to the spiritual and theological dimensions of intellectual disability. This thesis is a
comparative analysis of Vanier’s and Hauerwas’s writings regarding people with intellectual
disabilities with particular focus on their relationship to the church. By comparing each writer’s
methodology, anthropology, and ecclesiology, I argue that Vanier and Hauerwas share both an
Incarnational anthropology as well as a sacramental ecclesiology. Because their methodologies
are reversed, however, their Incarnational anthropologies and sacramental ecclesiologies are not
identical, especially regarding the importance of the visible church. Where Hauerwas and Vanier
agree, however, is their shared belief that people with intellectual disabilities have the unique
ability to show us the face of God and so change the lives of “normal” people who enter into
community and communion with them.
In the chapter on methodology, I suggest that Hauerwas’s and Vanier’s methodologies
face in opposite directions because of the nature of their work. Vanier’s retrospective theological
realism comes from his experience of living, eating, working, and praying with the residents at
L’Arche and is grounded in his spiritual journey. Hauerwas, on the hand, uses the mentally
handicapped as part of his theological agenda which argues that the narrative-based Christian
ethic stands in opposition to the project of modernity which values individualism and autonomy.
Through their experiences of being with (as opposed to doing for) people with intellectual
disabilities, Vanier and Hauerwas began to see how important such lives are for the church as it
attempts to offer a unique vision of humanity, one based on the Incarnation of Jesus and not on
cognitive ability. The second chapter on anthropology explains the differences between Vanier’s
and Hauerwas’s understandings of humanity in relation to Jesus. Hauerwas bases the uniqueness
of humanity on the Incarnation because, in Jesus, God chose to become a human. The definition
of humanness, therefore, should not be based on criteria like IQ or rationality, but on what kind
of people we are. Vanier also bases his anthropology on Jesus’ Incarnation but sees the link
between Jesus and humanity in Jesus’ identification with the poor and weak. Because we have all
experienced feelings of fear, loneliness, and isolation at some point, Vanier believes all humans
are equal and, when we are able to encounter aspects of ourselves in people we see as “other,”
we can grow and become more fully human.
Hauerwas’s and Vanier’s similar Incarnational anthropologies contribute to their
understanding of the church as sacramental in nature. The way we are to become more human,
for Vanier, is to participate in what he calls the sacrament of encounter. Though Vanier is
grounded in his Catholic faith, as L’Arche began to grow it included other Christian
denominations and eventually other religious traditions. Vanier found that he encountered the
“other” most fully in the sacraments of baptism and eucharist, but since those sacraments were
unavailable or unappealing to some traditions, he came to see the sacrament of encounter, as
found generally in daily interactions and particularly in the act of washing one another’s feet, to
be a way of encountering the other for all. While this is a powerful premise, it is somewhat
frightening for Hauerwas who believes that the church, and the sacraments of eucharist and
baptism, must be visibly and recognizably Christian if they are to have the effect of embodying
Jesus’ presence and allowing the reality of God’s redemptive narrative to be made known.
Hauerwas’s ecclesiology is sacramental because he believes the sacraments play vital roles in the
sanctification of individual Christians, and because the church as a whole acts as a sacrament for
the world by showing what it looks like to follow Jesus. This is the point where Hauerwas and
Vanier diverge most, yet they both continue to come back to Jesus in their methodology,
anthropology, and ecclesiology.
Finally, this thesis will conclude by summarizing the major points and connecting them to
areas of further research as well as practical and personal applications, through which we might
experience the type of community and communion Vanier and Hauerwas have both found in
being in relationship with people with intellectual disabilities.Rev. Dr. Robert C. MacSwain and Rev. Dr. Robert Davis Hughes II
The Catholic Humanism of Rowan Williams
No full textProfessor Robert MacSwain; Professor Benjamin Kin
Green School: Furman University
Get PDFThis entry connects to a Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0CJ0y3MwTcThis video, made with support from an Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Blended Learning Grant (2013-2014), celebrates successes Furman University. It highlights local and global initiatives organized with support from students, faculty, staff, and campus administrators as well as environmental allies in the non-governmental and private sectors.
Teaching Method: This video shows the interdisciplinarity of sustainability as well as avenues for community outreach and broad student involvement
Class Rules: A Teacher Remembers
No full textAttached file is abstract only.This memoir collection centers on rules, work, and class divisions. The three pieces track a personal journey of learning the rules to ignore, the rules to break, and the rules to honor—all in the face of class rules that seem to hold firm.
The first piece centers on my family. My parents chose to ignore rules when they began their life of work. Like all children, I looked for rules to follow. I found the rules that mattered the most through the lives of my parents who owned small town newspapers in Alabama. My parents ignored the class rules that had taken hold even in Cullman, Alabama, as they worked. While there was never a hint from the two of them that success might be out of their reach, I remember gathering clues that friends had more money, more status; and therefore, more rules to follow.
The second writing honors the only teacher that brought discipline to my young life without rules. Once a week I pulled on a black leotard, pale pink tights, and black slippers to stand before Miss Anita in her weekly ballet class. After a four-year stretch of classes with the former Stuttgart, Germany, soloist, I automatically hold my arms in the slight curve of a ballerina decades later as I try to hold my balance in order to squat in a gym.
I am both a teacher and rule-breaker in the final piece of writing. But I am also a student. My teacher, Charles Marshall, a 15-year-old from Savannah, Georgia, helped me understand the reason he and my other students were dodging threats, police, and bullets on street corners. These young men were disciplined workers who tried to follow the severe rules of the drug trade, in hopes of a lifestyle that offered the comfort and luxury of the upper class.
Memories can be deceptive. As I was writing these pieces, I traveled back in time by visiting the key players in my stories. I pulled new information from my mother and siblings to understand the luxury of a childhood of freedom. I also shared my stories with Miss Anita, who did not recognize me but who could conjure my mother’s face. I then apologized to Charles for “not knowing how to reach him” in my middle school class.
I learned new information as I knitted my memories together. But I also took note of the emerging consistencies in my life: Work is important. Rules, if there are any, should center on fair and kind treatment to others. Children grow when they are creative. The grounding that work and creativity offer repair the damage that class rules can leave on the younger self because work and creativity offer the strength of self-reliance.Neil Shea, Dr. John Gramme
The Priest as Clinician: A Case for Intentional and Informed Involvement of Parish Clergy with Clinical Teams Caring for Parishioners
No full textA challenge for parish clergy is to minister to parishioners as they experience illnesses in such a way as to help transform the experience of being sick from one of objectification and isolation, to an experience that can be interpreted as part of their spiritual journeys. This thesis illustrates how barriers to spiritual care of parishioners during times of illness can be breached and parish priests can become full participants in the healthcare team. To be integral in the delivery of care, clergy must be intentional and informed.
Narratives of persons confronting illness while being objectified and isolated by the healthcare system are utilized to illustrate this thesis. These stories include early seventeenth century Anglican priest and metaphysical poet, John Donne; Sue Baier, who wrote about her experience of being paralyzed for weeks in a modern intensive care unit; the main character in Margaret Edson’s play about a Donne scholar with terminal cancer; and, stories adapted from the author’s ministry.
The divergent understanding of spirituality is problematic, but there is agreement among clergy and clinicians that spirituality understood in some fashion is important. This common ground can be an entry point for parish clergy who seek opportunities to interact with clinicians.
The medicalization of illness occurs when clinicians focus on treating the disease, i.e. curing or changing the course of the illness. This treatment is typically data driven, algorithmic and influenced by costs. With clergy involvement, all healthcare can be more holistic. The clinical term palliative refers to treatment that aggressively manages physical, emotional, social and spiritual symptoms and which addresses the patient and family as a unit of care. A palliative approach to episodic, chronic and terminal illness that involves a patient’s clergy and parish complements clinical interventions and may affect outcomes.
Anglican incarnational theology holds that God is with us in our suffering. The prayers of the Church include petitions for healing but there is no denial of death. The prayers for sanctification of suffering suggest that illness can be a part of our spiritual journeys. These theological and liturgical spiritual disciplines are suspect in clinical settings where spirituality is appreciated but not well defined and certainly not of primary importance to healthcare professionals. Parish clergy need not be daunted by the realities of the healthcare system or defeated by its clinical culture, language, social strata and rules. The key to becoming effective in clinical settings and integral to the care of sick parishioners is intentionality, information and focus, one soul at a time.Dr. Robert D. Hughes, III, School of Theolog
Interview with Bruce Stephenson
No full textThis interview with Dr. Bruce Stephenson, Professor of Environmental Studies at Rollins College, features a discussion of the planning and construction of the new SunRail station in Winter Park, Florida in 2014.
Teaching Method: An excellent real-world example to accompany a discussion of urban planning and transit systems.Associated Colleges of the Sout
