Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Religious history|European history|Theology'

This dissertation investigates the role of El Censor, the essay periodical published in Spain from 1781 to 1787, in challenging government policies and church traditions during the Enlightenment. It argues that the editors and authors of the 167 discursos (essays) criticized social customs and institutions during the last two decades of the antiguo régimen while remaining firmly in their religious faith. The political and historical context of El Censor is presented against the backdrop of the absolutist policies of King Carlos III and the vigilance of the Spanish Inquisition. El Censor’s editors and publishers were Luis García Cañuelo and Luis Marcelino Pereira, who at first seemed enigmatic because of their political and religious views. Nevertheless, they and their contributors soon identified themselves as veritable enlightened men, who sought to modernize Spain and the Spanish Roman Catholic Church. In the weekly essays, they published their observations of everyday life and the iniquities that existed in the society of their time. Government authorities banned El Censor twice before shutting it down permanently. Afterwards, the Spanish Inquisition placed twenty-three of the discursos on the syllabus of forbidden books. This dissertation presents eight of the banned discursos with English translations and commentaries. More than two-hundred years after El Censor’s prohibition, the discursos continue to speak to twenty-first century readers about the absurdities and injustices of society and power. This dissertation gives credence to the study of the religious Enlightenment; it demonstrates that it was possible to be enlightened and a true Christian. It reveals that El Censor held onto idealist views and moral integrity while facing obstacles from government, church, and angry apologists. In the pages of the discursos, there are recognizable characters like Eusebio the pious hypocrite; Calixto the proud, lazy noble; Candido Zorrilla, the baroque fanatic; and Pedro Camueso y Machuca and el equívoco. This dissertation reveals several unexpected discoveries that challenge long-held notions about the Enlightenment, the Roman Catholic Church, and Spain.

A central feature of Christianity is the observable historical fact that the gospel of Jesus travels across cultural and geographic boundaries, influencing and transforming each new culture and place it touches. Postcolonial migration, urbanization, and the simultaneous development of global communication and transportation technologies have radically increased the frequency and duration of cross-cultural contact worldwide.

This study explores hybrid identity construction in a multicultural church in the Paris Region in order to understand the influence of the gospel within transnational French-speaking networks. I found that French hegemony, historically rooted in the colonial project, contributes both to the cohesion of multicultural churches and to the cross-cultural spread of the gospel within French-speaking networks.

Cultural hybrids serve as bridge people within transcultural, transnational, French-speaking networks. They maintain identities and social networks on both sides of given cultural, linguistic, geographic, and national frontiers. Unique hybrid identities offer equally unique opportunities to influence for Christ on both sides of a given boundary.

Cultural hybridity can be a privileged in-between space where the distinct nature of Christian faith becomes manifest. When observing one’s original culture as an outsider and taking on a new culture as an insider, both cultures are relativized. This critical posture unmasks totalistic ideologies and sends the cultural hybrid in search of a coherent identity, which participants found in Christ and his church.

While transnational French-speaking networks and cultural hybridity contribute providentially to the spread of the gospel, they can also be pursued as strategic resources for the mission enterprise. Transnational French-speaking social links can be intentionally followed across missional boundaries. These networks take many forms, each pregnant with unique opportunities. Cultural hybrids can lead strategically between diverse peoples for specific missional purposes within transcultural and transnational French-speaking networks. Hybrid leadership stands on a two-way bridge, bringing diverse peoples across in both directions for reconciliation, for cross-cultural collaboration, and to announce the good news where Jesus is not yet known.