Memorial Services in honor of the late John B. Finch

Various memorial addresses.

Our missions in India 1834-1924 , by Rev. E.M. Wherry.

http://www.archive.org/details/ourmissionsinind012419mbp

Japanese women speak : a message from the Christian women of Japan to the Christian women of America / by Michi Kawai, Ochimi Kubushiro ; cover design and frontispiece by the Japanese artist Rokuyåo.

http://www.archive.org/details/japanesewomenspe032256mbp

Coming conflicts for liberty : a Thanksgiving sermon, preached November 30th, 1899, at a Union service in the First Baptist Church of Fall River, Mass.

The print copy of this sermon is held by Pitts Theology Library. The Pitts Theology Library's digital copy was produced as part of the ATLA/ATS Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative (CDRI), funded by the Luce Foundation. Reproduction note: Electronic reproduction. Atlanta, Georgia : Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, 2003. (Thanksgiving Day Sermons, ATLA Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative, CDRI). Joint CDRI project by: Andover-Harvard Library (Harvard Divinity School), Pitts Theology Library (Emory University), and Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries.

Living with Jesus: Practical Christologies in Two Boston American Baptist Churches

This dissertation, an exercise in practical theology, undertakes two tasks. First, it examines how the story of Jesus is appropriated and embodied in the corporate practices of worship and mission (congregational christology) and in the daily lives of ordinary believers (everyday christology) at First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain and Ruggles Baptist Church in Boston, Massachusetts. Second, it places these practical christologies in dialogue with the academic christology of James McClendon to see what creative and critical insights emerge. A key assumption of the study is that doctrinal reflection is precipitated when the story of Jesus interacts with human stories in both autobiographical and public domains. "Living with Jesus" contends that the understandings of Jesus present in the everyday lives of believers and in a congregation's worship and mission merit the attention of scholars in the disciplines of sociology and theology. This dissertation demonstrates that scholarly research on the visible church, everyday religion, and Christian doctrine pays limited attention to the theologies operative in the everyday lives of believers and congregational practices. A gap exists in scholarly knowledge, which "Living with Jesus" attempts to redress. The empirical results of qualitative research fieldwork are set in the context of historical overviews and contemporary snapshots of First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain and Ruggles Baptist Church. "Living with Jesus" identifies three types of practical christology operative across the two congregations in corporate practices and the everyday lives of individuals: evangelical christology; exemplarist christology; and prophetic christology. The empirical research shows that for a significant minority of people in the sample, the prevailing understanding of Jesus can best be described as a hybrid christology. By paying attention to McClendon's treatment of the Jesus story and placing the three identified practical christologies in dialogue with his christology, it becomes apparent that each practical christology is simultaneously liberating and limiting. This dissertation argues that evaluating a particular practical christology in relation to the Gospel requires an intentional and disciplined effort on the part of congregations, ordinary believers, and theologians. Questions are proposed to assist further christological reflection on worship, mission, pastoral care, and Christian education.

An Address delivered in the Mercer Street Church at the funeral of the Hon. Benjamin Franklin Butler

Address

A Second Easter: A Celebration of Presence

sermon text; MS Word document

Catholic grievances in relation to the administration of Indian affairs : being a report presented to the Catholic Young Men's National Union, at its eighth annual convention, held in Boston, Massachusetts, May 10th and 11th, 1882

http://www.archive.org/details/catholicgrieva00mealrich

A Catechumenate for the Korean Methodist Church: Ressourcement, Formation and a Response to Secularism and Korean Traditional Religions

Research by Korean sociologists of religion indicates that Korean Protestantism has lost much of the spiritual vitality of preceding generations and that it increasingly shows the influences of Korean shamanism, Neo-Confucianism, and Western secularism and consumerism. Suggestions in the areas of homiletics and Christian social ethics have been offered to help steer the Korean Protestant churches away from these worldviews toward a more biblically-based course. Drawing upon and expanding these earlier studies and proposals, the current work recommends another method for developing a biblically-based, spiritually-revitalized, baptismally-shaped and ministry-committed Protestantism in Korea: a pre-baptismal adult catechumenate, in this case one designed for the context of the Korean Methodist Church. In order to produce a renewed catechumenal structure for Korean Methodism, adult catechumenal processes as well as baptismal theologies and rites are examined and analyzed from three principal sources: the first five centuries of the Christian church, and especially the mystagogical literature of the fourth century; the Roman Catholic Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults developed after the Second Vatican Council; and the United Methodist Church in the United States, both texts officially authorized by the denomination's General Conference and unofficial materials, among them resources for an adult catechumenate in the Come to the Waters series. In addition, previous and current practices of preparation for baptism in the Korean Methodist Church are identified and critiqued. From these findings a set of principles is put forward that guide the proposed catechumenal structure.

Narratives of Holiness Identity: The "Sanctified Person" in the Church of the Nazarene

This dissertation is an exercise in practical theology, which investigates and responds to the problem of changing holiness identity in the Church of the Nazarene. The first part of the study is an empirical investigation into the social context of contemporary Nazarene holiness identity and practices among Nazarenes in three congregations located in the Northeast United States. Previous research relied too heavily on secularization and sect-church theory to understand the dynamics of religious identity change among Nazarenes. The theological result was a pessimistic appraisal of the future possibilities of holiness identity and practice in the Church of the Nazarene. This study employs an alternative theory—Nancy T. Ammerman's theory of narrative religious identity—to understand the dynamics of lived religious life within these congregations and to identify the various holiness narratives at play. Ammerman's theory facilitates an empirical description of the multiple holiness identities emerging out of the social contexts of these Nazarene congregations and offers a way to account for identity change. At the heart of this research is the theoretical notion that a particular religious identity, in the case of the Church of the Nazarene, the "sanctified person," emerges out of a particular ecclesial context characterized by religious narratives and practices that shape this identity. Chapter one reviews the problem of holiness identity in the Church of the Nazarene and offers an analysis of recent sociological attempts to understand the changing identity among Nazarenes. Chapter two draws on sociological research to describe and depict the range of views of holiness held by some contemporary Nazarenes. Chapter three identifies the varieties of holiness identity within the three Nazarene congregations that are part of the study. Chapter four investigates the social sources that shape the various holiness identities discovered in these congregations. Chapter five is a description of the many ways religious narratives are enacted and engaged within these congregations. The second part of the study is a theological critique of contemporary Nazarene holiness identity. Chapter six draws on the theory of narrative identity proposed by Nancy Ammerman and outlines a theoretical model which describes the social conditions necessary to shape holiness identity, "the sanctified person," within the context of the local congregation. Finally, chapter seven draws on the theological resources of Mennonite scholar and historian John Howard Yoder to propose a way of construing and facilitating holiness identity formation that takes the ecclesiality of hoilness more seriously, emphasizes a clearer relationship between Jesus and the "Christlikeness" that is central to holiness, and highlights the importance of religious practices in the formation of a holiness identity.

Typability and Type Checking in the Second-Order Λ-Calculus Are Equivalent and Undecidable (Preliminary Draft)

We consider the problems of typability[1] and type checking[2] in the Girard/Reynolds second-order polymorphic typed λ-calculus, for which we use the short name "System F" and which we use in the "Curry style" where types are assigned to pure λ -terms. These problems have been considered and proven to be decidable or undecidable for various restrictions and extensions of System F and other related systems, and lower-bound complexity results for System F have been achieved, but they have remained "embarrassing open problems"[3] for System F itself. We first prove that type checking in System F is undecidable by a reduction from semi-unification. We then prove typability in System F is undecidable by a reduction from type checking. Since the reverse reduction is already known, this implies the two problems are equivalent. The second reduction uses a novel method of constructing λ-terms such that in all type derivations, specific bound variables must always be assigned a specific type. Using this technique, we can require that specific subterms must be typable using a specific, fixed type assignment in order for the entire term to be typable at all. Any desired type assignment may be simulated. We develop this method, which we call "constants for free", for both the λK and λI calculi.

A Direct Algorithm for the Type Interference in the Rank 2 Fragment of the Second--Order λ-Calculus

We study the problem of type inference for a family of polymorphic type disciplines containing the power of Core-ML. This family comprises all levels of the stratification of the second-order lambda-calculus by "rank" of types. We show that typability is an undecidable problem at every rank k ≥ 3 of this stratification. While it was already known that typability is decidable at rank ≤ 2, no direct and easy-to-implement algorithm was available. To design such an algorithm, we develop a new notion of reduction and show how to use it to reduce the problem of typability at rank 2 to the problem of acyclic semi-unification. A by-product of our analysis is the publication of a simple solution procedure for acyclic semi-unification.