Atlantic School of Theology Masters Theseshttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/248532024-03-29T11:22:42Z2024-03-29T11:22:42ZStairway to heaven or highway to hell? : the potential missiological efficacy of liturgical rock music in Canadahttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/296172023-11-29T13:49:03Z2021-03-21T00:00:00ZStairway to heaven or highway to hell? : the potential missiological efficacy of liturgical rock music in Canada
Music is a sacred language that facilitates divine encounter. The church has developed a unique musical language which is distinct from other contemporary genres. This thesis explores the efficacy of liturgies that use vernacular, functional, and communal forms to fulfill a missiology of radical welcome. Living in the midst of a consumer-driven environment, the church can employ popular forms to facilitate life-changing encounters with the living God, but it also must wrestle with a populace who has been raised to believe that relationality is expressed transactionally. Contemporary rock artists have already been authentically grappling with this reality for decades, making their music an ideal liturgical choice to facilitate contemporary peoples' encounter with the paschal mystery which is the eternal rhythmic heart-beat of Christ's living Body.
1 online resource (v, 108 pages); Includes abstract.; Includes bibliographical references (pages 99-108).
2021-03-21T00:00:00ZReconceptualising health : a conversation between quantum science, energy medicine and mystical theologyhttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/289312023-11-29T17:02:17Z2018-02-14T00:00:00ZReconceptualising health : a conversation between quantum science, energy medicine and mystical theology
This study addresses the importance of reintroducing the transcendent into the western concept of health and proposes that energy medicine has relevance for biomedical health services. Energy medicine supports wellness by attending to body, mind and spirit, as components of a full human life. It is validated by quantum science theories of the universal energetic field and supports the concept that human beings are comprised of more than their material bodies.
Furthermore, the theory and practice of energy medicine finds its completion in the spiritual writings of Christian mystics, revealing knowledge of progress towards transcendence through the subliminal bliss body.
Drawing from the literature and clinical studies of those dually-qualified scientist-philosophers, ecologists, theologians, and alternative health practitioners, this study demonstrates that energy medicine and Christian mysticism offer a similar transcendental context, whereby this energetic and conscious universe is available to those who wish to experience the spiritual or the divine.
1 online resource (ix, 126 pages); Includes abstract.; Includes bibliographical references (pages 118-126).
2018-02-14T00:00:00ZGrace filled moments : creative arts and pastoral care with patients living with dementia in the hospital settinghttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/270552023-11-29T18:14:58Z2017-04-03T00:00:00ZGrace filled moments : creative arts and pastoral care with patients living with dementia in the hospital setting
This thesis describes the creative arts therapies being implemented throughout Canada and in two major areas in the United States. Creative art therapies include art, music, poetry, dance and movement therapy, improvisation and life review. I conducted phenomenological research on spiritual/pastoral care providers that worked in acute care hospitals in long-term facilities to ascertain their experience in using creative art therapies. The information gathered will hopefully assist clinical pastoral education (CPE) students, parish nurses, spiritual/pastoral care providers, chaplains, theology students, recreation therapists, social science students and other populations that wish to implement creative arts therapies. The research revealed unique insights into the inner experience of the spiritual/pastoral care providers and indirectly into the hospitalized clients living with Alzheimer’s. The research provided an opportunity for spiritual/pastoral care providers to express themselves and an opportunity to share their creative art therapies with many cultures thus supporting community and healing. The question of this thesis is how do spiritual/pastoral care providers assist this population and what creative art
therapies are being implemented.
1 online resource (110 p.); Includes abstract and appendix.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-110).
2017-04-03T00:00:00ZThe United Church of Canada in Canadian literaturehttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/270532023-11-29T18:47:16Z2016-03-01T00:00:00ZThe United Church of Canada in Canadian literature
This thesis traces the relationship of The United Church of Canada to the development of Canadian national identity in the years prior to Church Union, and in the first forty years of the denomination's history, with particular attention to the literary witness to this relationship manifest in a number of key works of Canadian literature. Major historical events and trends are surveyed in the history of the country and denomination in each of three historical periods -- from Confederation to Church Union, the Depression and Second World War, and 1945-1965 -- followed by an analysis of the way in which references to the United Church in various novels of each period reveal and reflect the denomination's changing influence on and relationship to Canadian identity.
1 online resource (iii, 74 p.); Includes abstract.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-74).
2016-03-01T00:00:00ZFaithful expressions of singleness and the divorced ministerhttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/270522023-11-30T16:10:51Z2016-12-21T00:00:00ZFaithful expressions of singleness and the divorced minister
This thesis explores faithful expressions of singleness for divorced United Church clergy as defined by those clergy members, and how these expressions are perceived by the church. Using the qualitative research method of narrative inquiry, Rachel Anne Campbell interviews seven United Church Ministers, from eastern, western, and central Canada, to delve into experiences and perceptions of building intimate relationships after divorce among a research cohort of divorced ministers within The United Church community. Through literature reviews, data analysis, and the information given by participants, this thesis reveals how The United Church of Canada has responded in the past and how it might better respond to its divorced single clergy in the future. A key component of this thesis focuses on lifting up and revising past United Church expressions of sexuality to aid in better understanding a more modern sense of sexuality and faithful expressions of singleness.
1 online resource (89 p.); Includes abstract and appendices.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85).
2016-12-21T00:00:00ZVoices in Tolkien : Aquinas, The Lord of the Rings, and true myth in the twenty-first centuryhttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/270512023-12-11T19:18:25Z2017-01-01T00:00:00ZVoices in Tolkien : Aquinas, The Lord of the Rings, and true myth in the twenty-first century
J. R. R. Tolkien in his writings both in fantasy literature and critical reflections clearly shows his passionate religious faith, deep knowledge of mythology and the significance of language in understanding cultural formation. His Catholicism links him to the great transmission of Church teaching most notably that of the foremost medieval philosopher and
theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. It is not surprising therefore to find that Tolkien’s masterpiece The Lord of the Rings [1954/55] resonates in accordance to his religious world view. Primary importance can be ascribed to the Thomist discourse on the Virtues [the four cardinal and
three theological virtues] and the concept of the Good. This study undertakes to explore how the Virtues and the Good are realized in the main personages of The Lord of the Rings, and how these are transmitted in film and associated adaptations by way of the Internet to a wide-spread
audience. The answer is sought as whether the voices in Tolkien are being heard in the Twenty-First Century.
1 online resource (211 p.); Includes abstract.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 204-211).
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZColonial exile : place and biblical faith in North Americahttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/265042017-07-19T17:11:30Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZColonial exile : place and biblical faith in North America
This thesis is an exploration of how Christian communities ought to imagine themselves vis a vis their inhabited landscapes, as well as how the Biblical text (especially the Old Testament) can serve to root communities in their respective geographical places. I argue that North Americans are only tenuously connected with their places, a result of the history of colonialism, and that as a result the biblical text, which is itself a reflection on the experience of exile and homelessness, confronts North Americans in a profoundly relevant way. I also explore how Christians in North America might develop resources from within their tradition to reclaim a sense of rootedness, including disciplines of presence taken from the Old Testament and Christian “theologies of place,” the latter of which in particular having become a topic of increased attention in recent years.
1 online resource (96 p.); Includes abstract.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-96).
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZJulian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the tradition of affective pietyhttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/265032017-08-25T18:04:23Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZJulian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the tradition of affective piety
The writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe attest to a common origin in the medieval devotional tradition known as affective piety. Chapter One suggests that to read either Kempe or Julian is to see the influence of this tradition in the affective responses of both writers to the passion of Christ in particular and to the “homely” love of God in general. In Chapter Two it is argued that Kempe’s record of her protagonist’s intimate encounters with the divine and of her various spiritual gifts speak to an effort to produce a work of auto-hagiography. As Chapter Three demonstrates, however, the Showings of Julian of Norwich takes the form of a theological treatise in which Julian addresses the retributive theodicies of Augustine and his medieval successors and seeks to offer her readers comfort and hope by assuring them of the capaciousness of God’s love for humanity.
1 online resource (v, 102 p.); Includes abstract.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-102).
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZThe experience of international volunteers doing liberation theology in the Occupied Palestinian Territorieshttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/265022019-05-06T21:01:19Z2014-01-01T00:00:00ZThe experience of international volunteers doing liberation theology in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
The objective of this research is to describe how the experience of working for social justice in the context of occupied Palestine, from the point of view of a sample of international volunteers, is aligned with the Palestinian liberation theology of Naim Ateek and the Palestinian contextual theology of Mitri Raheb. This paper begins by summarizing the historical trends and antecedents of liberation theology and the development of liberation theology in Latin America. This paper then outlines key aspects of the historical, social, psychological and religious contexts of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as well as unique aspects of Palestinian liberation and contextual theologies. The paper then presents the results of interviews with seven international volunteers who participated in various forms of non-violent resistance and witness activities in occupied Palestine. The theologies of Ateek and Raheb are used as tools for discussing the results of the interviews.
1 online resource (iii, 165 p.) : ill., col. maps; Includes abstract and appendix.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 150-163).
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZUneasy partners : a theological dialogue with Daniel Dennett’s philosophy of mindhttp://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/258852018-10-18T13:02:37Z2014-01-01T00:00:00ZUneasy partners : a theological dialogue with Daniel Dennett’s philosophy of mind
The thesis sets out the goal of isolating Daniel Dennett’s multiple draft model of consciousness from the rest of his theory of mind. This is done because while his eliminative materialism is obviously not compatible with Christian Orthodoxy the polyvalent mind that it supposes is ripe for theological interpretation. Dennett’s theory of the mind encountered serious criticism from Maxwell Bennet and Peter Hacker in their book Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience and the debate between Dennett and these authors is examined with the author ultimately siding with Dennett. Turning to Christian accounts of the self it is proposed that the use of the multiple draft model as hermeneutic device is extremely helpful in reading scripture, especially in the polyvalent conception of the self as found in the writings of Paul.
1 online resource (66 p.); Includes abstract.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-66).
2014-01-01T00:00:00Z