Founder Of Church Research Articles

Paul, Founder of Churches: A Study in Light of the Evidence for the Role of “Founder-Figures" in the Hellenistic-Roman Period. WUNT 292

Paul, Founder of Churches: A Study in Light of the Evidence for the Role of “Founder-Figures" in the Hellenistic-Roman Period. WUNT 292

Book Review: A Hellenistic Basis for Paul as Founder of Churches: James Constantine Hanges, Paul, Founder of Churches: A Study in Light of the Evidence for the Role of “Founder-Figures” in the Hellenistic Roman Period

Book Review: A Hellenistic Basis for Paul as Founder of Churches: James Constantine Hanges, <i>Paul, Founder of Churches: A Study in Light of the Evidence for the Role of “Founder-Figures” in the Hellenistic Roman Period</i>

15. Female Church Founders : The Agency of the Village Widow in Late Byzantium

Open Access15. Female Church Founders : The Agency of the Village Widow in Late ByzantiumSharon E. J. Gerstel, Sophia Kalopissi-VertiSharon E. J. GerstelSearch for more papers by this author, Sophia Kalopissi-VertiSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:Jan 2019https://doi.org/10.7767/wjk-2012-0119SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail About Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Download book cover ISSN: 0083-9981eISSN: 2307-2962HistoryPublished online:January 2019 Information© 2014 by Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Co.KGThis work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.PDF download

New Dimensions in Nigerian Women's Pentecostal experience: The Case of DODIM, Nigeria

ABSTRACT The place and role of women in Christianity have been marked by dynamic experiences in Nigeria. It is suffice to note that the gender paradigm at the advent of Christianity in Nigeria is no longer tenable. This is due mainly to the influence of culture as a potent negotiating tool for women in the church. Presently, women have gained remarkable visibility in the church in Nigeria through roles including presiding clergy, church founders, choir leaders and church council members to mention a few. However, a new dimension to the experience of women in their interaction with the divine is the Daughters of Deborah International Ministry, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. The ministry provides avenues for women from the three broad divisions of churches in Nigeria to access the divine. These classifications of churches are: Orthodox/Mission, African Independent, and Pentecostal/Charismatic churches. DODIM as the ministry is known creates forum of meetings for women from these different churches in a non-structural setting. Again, these forums are managed by women for women focussing mainly on women issues. This provides a rare opportunity for women solidarity, networking and experience sharing in Christianity. Methodology for this paper will be phenomenological with interviews and participant observations as tools of research. This paper attempts to contribute significantly to literature on women in religion in Nigeria.

15. Female Church Founders : The Agency of the Village Widow in Late Byzantium

15. Female Church Founders : The Agency of the Village Widow in Late Byzantium

Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China by Lian Xi (review)

118 Journal of Chinese Religions category “belief” the base upon which so many descriptions of religiosity are built? While Early Chinese Religion does not answer these questions, it is nevertheless a superb collection of essays that will shape the field for years to come. MICHAEL J. WALSH, Vassar College Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China LIAN XI. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. xiii, 333 pages. ISBN 9780 -300-12339-5. US$45.00, £30.00, hardcover. Lian Xi 連曦 has written an unusual book in that it makes an academic study of popular Christianity in China. A number of church publications have described individual Chinese church leaders and revival movements, but hardly any comprehensive academic works have dealt with this topic. Lian contributes not only to Chinese church history with this book, he also adds new dimensions to modern and contemporary general Chinese history through his analysis of several important individuals and his description of indigenous movements with a large following. All too often religious factors in social change are played down in historical analysis, and this is generally also the case with regard to China. In the introductory chapter Lian defines the framework for his book and gives a brief historical overview, beginning with Catholic efforts at indigenization. He continues with a chapter on early 19th century developments such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom 太平天國 and Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全, as well as “The Overcomer of Demons,” Xi Shengmo 席勝魔. Here Lian sets the tone for the whole book by linking Christian developments with the context of popular Chinese religion while also noting their disassociation from missionary Christianity. Subsequent chapters are arranged more or less chronologically and deal with the True Jesus Church 真耶穌教會 (Zhen Yesu jiaohui), the Jesus Family 耶穌家庭 (Yesu jiating), John Sung (Song Shangjie 宋尚節), Wang Mingdao 王明道 and Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng 倪柝聲), respectively. There are also separate chapters on larger revivals primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, the situation of the indigenous churches during the civil and external wars in 1930s and 1940s, and a final chapter on popular indigenous movements during the People’s Republic. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 34. Book Reviews 119 Lian Xi has done meticulous research on the described individuals and movements, and even for an initiated reader the book presents a number of new facts and interesting details. He has used archival material in China and abroad, conducted many interviews and accessed the most current Chinese research on these topics. Lian tells full stories of these revivals and their leaders, also pointing out individual shortcomings and failures, including serious financial and sexual errors. The accounts of lesser known preachers and leaders such as True Jesus Church founder Wei Enbo 魏恩波, or Jing Dianying 敬奠瀛 of the Jesus Family, and the analysis of the influence of Witness Lee (Li Changshou 李常受) on Watchman Nee sets a high standard for research on Christianity in China. However, here and there Lian Xi seems to lose something of his objective historian’s gaze, falling into more subjective assessments and repeating accusations by others that the book would have fared better without. Both the chapter “The Smitten Land” and the chapter on Wang Mingdao give the reader some contrast to the fiery revivals and sweeping movements around charismatic leaders as described in other parts of the book. Here we meet some alternative figures such as the Norwegian woman missionary Marie Monsen, who led a revival in Shandong in the late 1920s and early 1930s, “the Christian General” Feng Yuxiang 馮玉祥, and also theologian and church leader Zhao Zichen 趙紫宸. Lian presents this wider context as an important backdrop to the popular movements, and shows how the urge for salvation of both people and country, focusing on indigenous expressions, would take quite different paths. The chapter on developments during the early years of the People’s Republic, the Cultural Revolution, and after mentions all the major revivals and movements of the period. As a historian, Lian’s focus is naturally not primarily on the contemporary scene, but considering his capacity for detail I would have liked to have seen more on very recent developments. As it is, this chapter gives inspiration for others to continue the work, but it would...

Rubrics in Education: Old Term, New Meanings

The term is used widely in education. In classroom, rubric may mean set of categories, criteria for assessment, and gradients for presenting and evaluating learning. grading student's essay, for example, teacher may apply rubric for its quality of organization, giving 3 for Advanced Proficient, 2 for Proficient, and 1 for Partially Proficient. Other criteria that could be rubrics include use of examples, paragraph structure, grammar, and overall quality. Yet, like many terms in education, meaning of rubric is confusing. For example, Wiggins defines rubric of basic tools in assessor's kit ... telling us what elements matter most (1998, p. 153). Schmoker states that rubric simply means rule or guide ... by which students' performance or product is judged. It nails down criteria, making them available to schools, teachers, parents, and students and providing clear direction and focus (2006, pp. 70-71). And Guskey explains that rubrics specific guidelines that can be used to describe students' work in reading, writing, mathematics, and other content areas (1994, p. 25). The term, apparently, can refer to almost anything: rule, guide, criterion, or description that is used to assess progress of students in their academic subjects, well grading system for assessing each criterion. The term rubric has been used in English since 1400s, making it old it is interesting. The root of rubric refers to color red or red earth. The Oxford English Dictionary gives an example of term used in 1607: marrow of deer in sheep's milk with rubric and soft pitch, drunk every day, helps digestion and obstructions. Another meaning, closer to how it is currently used in education, is heading of chapter or division of book, written or printed in red ink or underlined in red for emphasis. In 1658, Phillips stated that rubric is a noted Sentence of any Book marked with red Letters. The Catholic Church has long employed term for directions for conducting Mass, which are printed in red and inserted into liturgical books. Foxe in 1583 explained that rubric is part of the whole Canon of Masse, with Rubricke thereof, it standeth in Masse/booke. John Wesley, founder of Methodist church, stated that as Minister, I teach her Doctrines. I use her Offices. I conform to her Rubricks. And in law, rubric is heading or title of statute or section of legal code (again, originally printed in red ink). In 1634, Kirk explained that When this Act came to be heard in open Parliament, his Majestie gave orders to read only rubricks of it. Red delineations, headings, and divisions--the term rubric has long and interesting history. APPLYING RUBRICS Educators today use rubric to refer to category of behavior that can be used to evaluate performance. The term is currently so popular that no one writing funding proposal would ignore laying out rubric for evaluating program's success. Today's rubrics involve creating standard and descriptive statement that illustrates how standard is to be achieved. For example, rubric for judging an essay would list everything student needs to include to receive certain grade on that essay. Generally, rubric also would specify what is needed to achieve different levels of performance, such what is needed for an A, B, etc. In addition to helping students know what they need to do to achieve certain grade, rubrics have other benefits: 1. A rubric can help teachers think carefully and critically about what they are teaching and what students need to learn. The rubric is predetermined set of categories. Whatever subject or project for which it's used, rubric will help teachers consider what's important for them to teach and how to determine level at which students have learned what's been taught. …

God Makes a World of Difference: The Dialectic of Motivation and Meaning at the Creation of an African Theistic Worldview

Worldview as a way to understand Christianity (Naugel 2002) and competing accounts of reality (Sire 1997, 2004) focuses on cognitive, rational structures of meaning. But how are worldviews created? What is the relationship of cognition to historical contingency and psychological motivation? To answer these questions, I present original research on the thoughts of Emilio Mulolani Chishimba, founder of Zambia's Mutima Church, and view them through the lens of Charles W. Nuckolls' (1996) theory of culture and myth formation. Missiologists are better prepared to engage the world when they understand the nexus of factors that create specific worldviews.

The Little “c” Catholic Organization: Ecumentalism and The Moral Order of Work

Catholic, “Big C,” is the institution formed in the 1st century AD from an amalgamation of Christian sects. “Little c”, catholic, is the church founders' pluralistic philosophy of inclusiveness-universal acceptance. We propose the struggle between “Big C” and “Little c” is emblematic of how an organization and organization theory confront ethical dilemmas. “Big C” organizations and organization theorists adjudicate hot, emotive issues through the cool, obfuscating language of high priests seeking resolution through participative decision-making. Alternatively, “little c” organizations and organization theory emphasize collective analysis that seeks mutual understanding through perspective sharing and praxis. In this paper we explore the dialectics of catholicsim (Big C and Little c) and critical postmodern theory (Big CT and little ct) through a dialogue between a neophyte practitioner and an erudite critical theorist seeking solutions for the ethical dilemma of international sweatshops. We conclude by recommending a pragmatic critical theory that moves beyond the participative workplace to create the ecumenical organization as the moral order of work.

Founder’s model: Representation of a maquette or the church?

The text deals with some terminological problems concerning the so-called founder?s model. Although it is commonly used to designate the depicted architecture in the hand of the church founder, the expression 'founder?s (ktetor?s) model' is often confusing and misleading. The main question is whether the Byzantine architects used actual model/maquettes for constructing their churches and if so, could these models/ maquettes have been used for the architecture depicted in founders? portraits? In other worlds is the representation in the donor?s hand the image of a built church or its maquette, produced as a project model? The different aspects of the problem we analyzed - the legal, technical and symbolic functions of these representations support our assumption that the architectural design model/maquette did not serve as a specimen for representations of architecture on founder?s portraits. This specific type of architecture depicted was created after the building itself was completed.

Mormon Town Planning: Physical and Social Relevance

The Plat of the City of Zion, designed in 1833, was the brainchild of Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It embodied the Mormons’ desire to build a new kingdom for their people, distinct from mainstream American culture. The resulting pattern is a unique combination of local and foreign precedents. Salt Lake City, a paradigmatic example of this scheme, became the model for surrounding settlements, defining the urban pattern of a segment of the West. The later explosive growth of Utah’s capital, and its departure from the original model, transformed one of the pioneering urban experiences of the United States. The physical boundaries of this planning tradition, and the limited general understanding of its use, make it still a rather unique urban phenomenon.

Conflict as context for defining identity: A study of apostleship in the Galatian and Corinthian letters

This article examines ways in which Paul defined the notion of apostleship in the course of conflict with rival authority claimants in the early Church. In Galatians Paul defines and asserts his apostolic self-identity in order to regain the oversight of the Galatian churches which he had previously exercised as an apostle of the church of Antioch. In 2 Corinthians Paul asserts his authority as church founder against rivals who recognise no territorial jurisdiction. No common agenda, theological position, or conception of apostleship can be identified. Rather, rival authority claimants based their legitimacy on different criteria in different situations.

Prayers in Stone: Christian Science Architecture in the United States, 1894-1930

The classical revival style of architecture made famous by the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago left its mark on one of the most sustained classical building movements in American architectural history: the Christian Science church building movement. By 1920, every major American city and many smaller towns contained an example of this architecture, financed by the followers of Mary Baker Eddy, the church's founder. These buildings represented a new, burgeoning American institution that appealed to business people and to young men and women working to succeed. Characterized by middle-class congregations that in the early part of the century were over 75 percent women, Christian Science suggested radical civic reform solutions based on an idealistic and pragmatic individualism. It attracted criticism from traditional churches and from the medical establishment due to its rapid growth and to its reinstatement of primitive Christianity's lost elements of physical healing and moral regeneration. Prayers in Stone spins out the close connections between Christian Science church architecture and its social context. This architecture served as a focal point for debates over the possibilities for a new twentieth-century urban architecture that proponents believed would positively shape the behavior of citizens. Thus these buildings played a critical role in discussions concerning religious and secular architecture as major elements of religious and social reform. Drawing on a wide range of documentary evidence, including material from the archives of the Mother Church in Boston, Paul Ivey uses Christian Science architecture to explore the social implications of architectural styles and new building technologies, to illuminate class-based notions of civic reform and beautification, and to investigate the use of architecture to bring about religious and social change. In addition, the book explores complex gender issues, including early attempts to define a professional space for women as Christian Science practitioners. Lavishly illustrated, Prayers in Stone focuses on four major city arenas of Christian Science building-Boston, Chicago, New York, and the San Francisco Bay area to demonstrate the vital intersection of architecture and religion at the so-called margins of American society.

Historical dictionary of the Baptists

The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Baptists expands upon the first edition with an updated chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on important events, doctrines, and the church founders, leaders, and other prominent figures who have made notable contributions. This volume commemorates the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Baptist movement in 1609.

Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy: Dominic of Sora and His Patrons by John Howe

Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy: Dominic of Sora and His Patrons. By John Howe. [Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1997. Pp. xxiii, 220. $37.50.) John Howe's study of hagiographical dossier of Dominic of Sora (d. 1032) is a superb example of how traditional strengths of medieval studies (close study and comparison of manuscripts, careful genealogical reconstruction) can be felicitously combined with new interpretive approaches. The result is a stimulating exploration of ecclesiastical reform in its social context based on a rigorously researched case study. The book opens with an evocative description of rugged geographical and social terrain of Abruzzi, Lazio, and Umbria in ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. After describing World, Howe sketches Dominic's career as a monk, a hermit, a reforming priest, a wandering preacher, a founder of churches and monasteries. The most interesting parts of study are its central chapters analyzing Holiness, his 'Benedictine' Monastic System, and his Patrons and Followers. Two closing chapters describe and analyze undoing of saint's life work and several appendices set out Howe's reconstruction of hagiographical dossier, genealogy of Counts of Marsica, and their patronage relations with Monte Cassino. The author arrives at several important conclusions. Howe's evidence adds to growing scholarly acknowledgment of well articulated reform ideals in early eleventh century and to relative unimportance of papacy to early formulation of reform program.Before there was a center, Howe pithily concludes,there was reform . (p. 160). Howe's emphasis on concrete character of Dominic's ecclesiastical work is also salutary. While historical narratives of reform era continue to stress rhetoric of investiture contest, theoretical foundations of papal authority, monastic spirituality, and legal formulation of reform principles, Church Reform places physical aspects of renewing religious life at heart of its story. Dominic builds churches and monasteries with his own hands, melting lime for mortar and placing stones. He physically traverses a harsh and impoverished landscape, bringing healing and prayer to remote communities. Dominic ministers to sinful elites, instructing them to give their wealth to endow churches and monasteries. As Howe rightly notes, this grubby accumulation of ecclesiastical property would make possible intellectual and spiritual achievements of later generations (p. 160). The concrete quality of Dominic's reform efforts also extends to his charisma. Rather than relying upon standard topoi of holiness and biblical allusions, Dominic's hagiographers locate his sanctity in minute articulation of specific deeds. Howe's application of ideas of Brian Stock to character of Dominic's monasticism should, moreover, command interest of scholars in religious studies and historians of monasticism. Dominic's interactions with monasteries he founded often contradicted letter and spirit of Rule, and yet he and his successors clearly considered these houses to be following St. Benedict's precepts. Howe suggests, invoking Stock, that the puzzling features of Dominic's 'Benedictinism' can be understood if his system and its counterparts are viewed as manifestations of a largely oral and customary monastic tradition, one for which Benedictine Rule was most authoritative supporting document but not an absolute guide (p. …

Adam and Eve: Gender in the English Free Church Constituency

The vital contribution of women to the early development of English dissent, especially during the era of the Civil War and Interregnum, has received considerable scholarly attention since the appearance of Keith Thomas's seminal study in 1958. However, the focus of interest has chiefly been on the roles played by individual women as preachers or church founders, and no concerted attempt has yet been made to replicate analyses of New England Puritanism during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which have highlighted the disproportionate numbers of women in church membership. There has been a similar lack of effort to document the effects of gender in determining English religious practice in the period after 1700, despite the beginnings of academic preoccupation with women's experience of Christianity in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, and despite an abundance of evidence from sociologists and statisticians since the Second World War about women's greater performance on most indicators of religious belief and behaviour. This brief article therefore hopes to break new ground in assembling evidence about the strength of female support for Protestant Nonconformity in England from 1650 to the present day, using three distinct assessment criteria: membership, attendance, and profession.

"At Their Peril": Utah Law and the Case of Plural Wives, 1850-1900

Various studies have examined the politics, the sociology, the economics, and the evolution of the relationship between the Mormon church and the federal government attendant to the Mormon practice of during Utah's territorial history. A relevant but lesser known aspect of the subject is the impact of Utah's domestic relations laws on plural wives, as these laws were shaped by and the federal efforts to abolish it. While all polygamists were at legal risk, plural wives were vulnerable not only to criminal prosecution but also to permanent legal discrimination, because of their unorthodox marital choice. Joseph Smith, Mormon church founder, introduced the practice of plural marriage in 1843 as a restored biblical principle in Mormon theology.1 It was practiced privately until 1852, three years after the church settled in isolated Utah. Then it was publicly announced as a tenet of Mormon doctrine. While personal disputes arising from and within the practice were theoretically governed exclusively by ecclesiastical authority, the Mormondominated legislature sought to bring those issues under legal protection as well. Though never inserting the word polygamy into any statute, the Utah legislature framed laws that favored the practice without seeming unduly incongruent with the law in other states and territories, thus avoiding special scrutiny by the U.S. Congress. Initial efforts to legally safeguard the practice were generally successful for several reasons. When Utah obtained territorial status in the Com-

Evolutionary speculations on the oligarchic development of Mormon polygyny

Several techniques were used to analyze aspects of Mormon polygyny in an effort to show the relationship between polygyny and dominance of social and economic resources by a religious hierarchy. Of specific interest is the manner in which polygynous practice by the hierarchy enhanced the inclusive fitness of the church's founder, Joseph Smith. Although polygyny became an “open” practice among church membership in early Utah, it was nevertheless regulated by the hierarchy in a manner that further consolidated its control of local resources. Finally, it is argued that certain features of church doctrine provided proximal means for the reproductive differential associated with the polygynous hierarchy.

Lucius of Britain: Alleged King and Church Founder

(1979). Lucius of Britain: Alleged King and Church Founder. Folklore: Vol. 90, No. 1, pp. 29-36.

Restoration of a 15th-Century Romanian Court Garment

In the last third of the thirteenth century the region around the mouths of the Danube, including the prosperous town of Vicina, was one of the main markets of the Genoese cloth trade dealing in silks, cotton, wool fabrics and linen [2], mainly from Lombardy and Asia Minor. During the following centuries, as many works of art and written sources confirm, this trade was continued in Moldavia and Wallachia under increasingly difficult conditions, even during the time that the Black Sea ports were under the control of the Turks. The founders of churches represented in mural paintings of the period always wear slate-coloured robes made of Italian velvets. In some of these murals martyrs are represented wearing robes which, though of ancient cut, are of Italian cloth. Italian fabrics are also to be found in the embroideries and illuminated manuscripts of the time. THE BISTRITA VELVET