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.

Archbishop William King (1650-1729) and the Constitution of Church and State

Accepted Version

An Irish apostle: articulating and actualising apostolicity in the early Irish church

This thesis examines the earliest extant Latin Lives of Brigit and Patrick; Cogitosus’s Vita Brigidae and Muirchú’s Vita Patricii as evidence for a seventh-century debate on Irish apostolicity. While often dismissed as mere propaganda, this thesis shows they are highly sophisticated demonstrations of the continuing connection that Kildare and Armagh had to their patron saints and their authority. It examines the importance of this connection for concepts of ecclesiastical organisation, teaching authority and episcopal succession against the backdrop of the seventh-century Easter question in the Insular Church. This will show that apostolicity was considered to be intrinsically linked with orthodoxy and universality. A textual focus brings forth general patristic themes and ideas that Irish hagiographers evoked through specific words and phrases. The thesis contextualises hagiographical material using evidence from Hiberno-Latin and early Insular exegetical commentaries, referring to major patristic exegetes such as Origen, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great as support. The introduction discusses the importance of apostolic ideology for the seventh-century Irish Church, and outlines a methodology for examining such abstract themes. The first chapter looks at how developments in apostolic ideology led to ideas of apostolic primacy seen in the Insular material. Chapters two, three, and four examine metaphors of food and feeding, the fountain and the stream, and the head and the body, as significant articulations of apostolicity. Chapter five examines how corporeal relics were understood as the visible proof of this continuity and preserved a saint’s authority for their episcopal heirs. Chapter six looks at how Muirchú engaged with Patrick’s connection to the universal Church and his self-professed lack of disciplina to reconcile his apostolicity with seventh-century norms. Chapter seven places the issues considered thus far in a thoroughly Insular context by examining how the earliest English sources present the Irish legacy in Northumbria after the synod of Whitby. Chapter eight looks at how the text of Patrick’s Confessio in the Book of Armagh relates to a wider seventh-century campaign by Armagh to rehabilitate Patrick’s apostolicity. The conclusion briefly summarizes the thesis, and suggests further avenues for researching this topic in the Insular material

Northern Ireland, America and the emerging church movement: Exploring the significance of Peter Rollins and the Ikon collective

The Emerging Church Movement (ECM) is a primarily Western religious phenomenon, identifiable by its critical ‘deconstruction’ of ‘modern’ religion. While most prominent in North America, especially the United States, some of the most significant contributors to the ECM ‘conversation’ have been the Belfast-based Ikon Collective and one of its founders, philosopher Peter Rollins. Their rootedness in the unique religious, political and social landscape of Northern Ireland in part explains their position on the ‘margins’ of the ECM, and provides many of the resources for their contributions. Ikon’s development of ‘transformance art’ and its ‘leaderless’ structure raise questions about the institutional viability of the wider ECM. Rollins’ ‘Pyrotheology’ project, grounded in his reading of post-modern philosophy, introduces more radical ideas to the ECM conversation. Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ and ‘marginal’ location provides the ground from which Rollins and Ikon have been able to expose the boundaries of the ECM and raise questions about just how far the ECM may go in its efforts to transform Western Christianity.

Review of The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity, by Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel

Published Version

Deux théories convergentes des propositions relatives: Port-Royal et Z.S. Harris

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Site Report for Phase III Archaeological Investigations at Reynolds Tavern (18AP23), 4 Church Circle, Annapolis, Maryland. 1982-1984

This report details the archaeology completed at Reynolds Tavern in the years 1982,1983, and 1984. It was completed in 2013, nearly 30 years after the excavation took place, using archival materials such as the draft interim reports, unit summary forms, original notes and photographs which are currently stored in the University Archives at Hornbake Library, at the University of Maryland, College Park. This report has been a collaboration across time and space, drawing from preliminary reports written by Anne Yenstch and Susan Mira in 1982 and Joe Dent and Beth Ford in 1983, as well as original notes from students of the field schools held there during those years, various analyses by scholars from many universities (including the University of Maryland, University of Georgia, and the College of William and Mary), and historical research by Nancy Baker. Thomas Cuddy began the writing of this report in 2002, completing the first three chapters in addition to the artifact analysis that led to the postexcavation identification of the African bundles in the Reynolds Tavern basement. This remarkable discovery was made along with Mark Leone of the University of Maryland, founder and director of Archaeology in Annapolis, who also served as the Principle Investigator during all three years of the Reynolds Tavern excavations. Dr. Leone contributed the fifth and final chapter to this report, the Conclusions and Recommendations, during its final compilation in 2013. The final report, including the fourth chapter on the archaeology itself, was written in part and compiled by Patricia Markert of the University of Maryland in the spring of 2013. Reynolds Tavern has been part of the landscape of Annapolis for two-hundred and fifty five years (at the time of the publication of this report). It sits on Church Circle facing St. Anne’s Church, and is a beautiful example of 18th century Georgian architecture as well one of the defining features of Historic Annapolis today. It currently operates as a popular restaurant and pub, but has served variously as a hat shop, a tavern, an inn, a library and a bank over time, among other things. Its long history contributes to its significance as an archaeological site, and also as a historic marker in present day Annapolis. The archaeology conducted at Reynolds Tavern shed light on life in 18th and 19th century Annapolis, illuminating details of the occupants’ lives through the material traces they left behind. These include an 18th century cobblestone road that ran diagonally through the Tavern’s yard, telling of the movement through early Annapolis; a large and intact well, which was found ii to contain a 19 foot wooden pipe; a large, ovular privy containing many of the objects used on a day to day basis at the Tavern or the structures around it; a subterranean brick storage feature in the basement of the Tavern, which may have been used by Reynolds during his days operating a hat shop; and also in the basement, two African caches of objects, providing a glimpse into West African spiritual practices alive in historic Annapolis and the presence of African American individuals at the Tavern in the 18th and 19th centuries. The purpose of this report is to detail these archaeological investigations and their findings, so that a public record will be available and the archaeology completed at Reynolds Tavern can continue to contribute to the history of Annapolis.

Measurement of the cross section and angular correlations for associated production of a Z boson with b hadrons in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV

A study of proton-proton collisions in which two b hadrons are produced in association with a Z boson is reported. The collisions were recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 7TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC, for an integrated luminosity of 5:2 fb-1. The b hadrons are identified by means of displaced secondary vertices, without the use of reconstructed jets, permitting the study of b-hadron pair production at small angular separation. Differential cross sections are presented as a function of the angular separation of the b hadrons and the Z boson. In addition, inclusive measurements are presented. For both the inclusive and differential studies, different ranges of Z boson momentum are considered, and each measurement is compared to the predictions from different event generators at leading-order and next-to-leading-order accuracy. Copyright CERN.

Measuring the comprehensibility of Z specifications

The effects of natural language comments, meaningful variable names, and structure on the comprehensibility of Z specifications are investigated through a designed experiment conducted with a range of undergraduate and post-graduate student subjects. The times taken on three assessment questions are analysed and related to the abilities of the students as indicated by their total score, with the result that stronger students need less time than weaker students to complete the assessment. Individual question scores, and total score, are then analysed and the influence of comments, naming, structure and level of student's class are determined. In the whole experimental group, only meaningful naming significantly enhances comprehension. In contrast, for those obtaining the best score of 3/3 the only significant factor is commenting. Finally, the subjects' ratings of the five specifications used in the study in terms of their perceived comprehensibility have been analysed. Comments, naming and structure are again found to be of importance in the group when analysed as a whole, but in the sub-group of best performing subjects only the comments had an effect on perceived comprehensibility.

Evaluating the effectiveness of Z: The claims made about CICS and where we go from here

There have been few genuine success stories about industrial use of formal methods. Perhaps the best known and most celebrated is the use of Z by IBM (in collaboration with Oxford University's Programming Research Group) during the development of CICS/ESA (version 3.1). This work was rewarded with the prestigious Queen's Award for Technological Achievement in 1992 and is especially notable for two reasons: 1) because it is a commercial, rather than safety- or security-critical, system and 2) because the claims made about the effectiveness of Z are quantitative as well as qualitative. The most widely publicized claims are: less than half the normal number of customer-reported errors and a 9% savings in the total development costs of the release. This paper provides an independent assessment of the effectiveness of using Z on CICS based on the set of public domain documents. Using this evidence, we believe that the case study was important and valuable, but that the quantitative claims have not been substantiated. The intellectual arguments and rationale for formal methods are attractive, but their widespread commercial use is ultimately dependent upon more convincing quantitative demonstrations of effectiveness. Despite the pioneering efforts of IBM and PRG, there is still a need for rigorous, measurement-based case studies to assess when and how the methods are most effective. We describe how future similar case studies could be improved so that the results are more rigorous and conclusive.

[Book reviews] Review of J. E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period and D. Sivan and Z. Cochavi-Rainey, West Semitic Vocabulary in Egyptian Script of the 14th to the 10th Centuries BCE

Reviews of: [1] James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, (1994), Princeton University Press. [2] Daniel Sivan and Zipora Cochavi-Rainey, West Semitic Vocabulary in Egyptian Script of the 14th to the 10th Centuries BCE, (1992), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press.

The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2014

The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2014 (IDP2014) is the first publicly available data product of the international GEOTRACES programme, and contains data measured and quality controlled before the end of 2013. It consists of two parts: (1) a compilation of digital data for more than 200 trace elements and isotopes (TEls) as well as classical hydrographic parameters, and (2) the eGEOTRACES Electronic Atlas providing a strongly inter-linked on-line atlas including more than 300 section plots and 90 animated 3D scenes. The IDP2014 covers the Atlantic, Arctic, and Indian oceans, exhibiting highest data density in the Atlantic. The TEI data in the IDP2014 are quality controlled by careful assessment of intercalibration results and multi-laboratory data comparisons at cross-over stations. The digital data are provided in several formats, including ASCII spreadsheet, Excel spreadsheet, netCDF, and Ocean Data View collection. In addition to the actual data values the IDP2014 also contains data quality flags and 1-sigma data error values where available. Quality flags and error values are useful for data filtering. Metadata about data originators, analytical methods and original publications related to the data are linked to the data in an easily accessible way. The eGEOTRACES Electronic Atlas is the visual representation of the IDP2014 data providing section plots and a new kind of animated 3D scenes. The basin-wide 3D scenes allow for viewing of data from many cruises at the same time, thereby providing quick overviews of large-scale tracer distributions. In addition, the 3D scenes provide geographical and bathymetric context that is crucial for the interpretation and assessment of observed tracer plumes, as well as for making inferences about controlling processes.