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.

Computer-Mediated Communication and Ecclesiological Challenges To and From the Reformed Tradition

Communities of faith have appeared online since the inception of computer -­ mediated communication (CMC)and are now ubiquitous. Yet the character and legitimacy of Internet communities as ecclesial bodies is often disputed by traditional churches; and the Internet's ability to host the church as church for online Christians remains a question. This dissertation carries out a practical theological conversation between three main sources: the phenomenon of the church online; ecclesiology (especially that characteristic of Reformed communities); and communication theory. After establishing the need for this study in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 investigates the online presence of Christians and trends in their Internet use, including its history and current expressions. Chapter 3 sets out an historical overview of the Reformed Tradition, focusing on the work of John Calvin and Karl Barth, as well as more contemporary theologians. With a theological context in which to consider online churches in place, Chapter 4 introduces four theological themes prominent in both ecclesiology and CMC studies: authority; community; mediation; and embodiment. These themes constitute the primary lens through which the dissertation conducts a critical-­confessional interface between communication theory and ecclesiology in the examination of CMC. Chapter 5 continues the contextualization of online churches with consideration of communication theories that impact CMC, focusing on three major communication theories: Narrative Theory; Interpretive Theory; and Speech Act Theory. Chapter 6 contains the critical conversation between ecclesiology and communication theory by correlating the aforementioned communication theories with Narrative Theology, Communities of Practice, and Theo-­Drama, and applying these to the four theological themes noted above. In addition, new or anticipated developments in CMC investigated in relationship to traditional ecclesiologies and the prospect of cyber-­ecclesiology. Chapter 7 offers an evaluative tool consisting of a three-­step hermeneutical process that examines: 1) the history, tradition, and ecclesiology of the particular community being evaluated; 2) communication theories and the process of religious-­social shaping of technology; and 3) CMC criteria for establishing the presence of a stable, interactive, and relational community. As this hermeneutical process unfolds, it holds the church at the center of the process, seeking a contextual yet faithful understanding of the church.

Reading Between the Lines: The Potential of Popular Young Adult Fiction in Adolescent Spiritual Formation

Popular culture is a powerful, shaping force in the lives of teenagers between the ages of fourteen through eighteen in the United States today. This dissertation argues the importance of popular fiction for adolescent spiritual formation and it investigates that importance by exploring the significance of narrative for theology and moral formation. The dissertation employs mythic and archetypal criticism as a tool for informing the selection and critique of narratives for use in adolescent spiritual development and it also incorporates insights gained from developmental psychology to lay the groundwork for the development of a curriculum that uses young adult fiction in a program of spiritual formation for teenagers in a local church setting. The dissertation defends the power of narrative in Christian theology and concludes that narrative shapes the imagination in ways that alter perception and are important for the faith life of teenagers in particular. I go on to argue that not all narratives are created equal. In using literary myth criticism in concert with theology, I use the two disciplines’ different aims and methods to fully flesh out the potential of theologies intrinsic to works meant for a largely secular audience. The dissertation compares various works of young adult fiction (M.T. Anderson’s Feed and Terry Pratchett’s Nation in dialogue with a theology of creation; Marcus Zusak’s I am the Messenger and Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl in dialogue with salvation and saviors; and the four novels of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga in dialogue with a theology of hope (eschatology). The dissertation explores how each theme surfaces (even if only implicitly) from both literary and theological standpoints. The dissertation concludes with a sample four-week lesson plan that demonstrates one way the theological and literary critique can be formed into a practical curriculum for use in an adolescent spiritual development setting. Ultimately, this dissertation provides a framework for how practitioners of young adult formation can select, analyze, and develop materials for their teenagers using new works of popular young adult fiction. The dissertation comes to the conclusion that popular fiction contains a wealth of material that can challenge and shape young readers’ own emerging theology.

Practices of Ministerial Leadership of Korean-American United Methodist Clergywomen; Toward a Wesleyan Ecclesiology in a Global Context

This study documents, analyzes, and interprets Korean American United Methodist (KAUM) clergywomen‘s experiences in and understandings of the church. It examines contributions these (and potentially, other) clergywomen might make to Wesleyan ecclesiology generally, and particular ways United Methodists live out their faith in transitional, diverse, and global contexts. The project attempts to re-vision existing Wesleyan ecclesial discourse in the United Methodist Church (UMC) by recognizing and incorporating the contributions of racial-ethnic clergy as expressed through their leadership and practices of faith. A "practice-theory-practice" model of practical theology was used to pay systematic attention to the practical locus of the inquiries. Twenty Korean American United Methodist clergywomen were interviewed by telephone, using a voluntary sampling technique to ascertain how they both experienced the church and understood and lived out various practices of faith, including preaching, participation in and administration of the sacraments, preparation for ordained ministry, and other spiritual practices such as prayer, worship, retreats, and journaling. The dissertation summarizes those findings, provides contextual and historical interpretation, and then analyzes their responses in relation to Wesleyan theology, MinJung (mass of people) theology, and the theology of YeoSung (women who display dignity and honor as human beings). This study identifies the extraordinary call of the KAUM clergywomen interviewees to be bridge builders, strong nurturers, wounded healers, committed educators, breakers of old stereotypes, persistent seekers to fulfill God‘s call, and ecclesial leaders with ―tragic consciousness‖ who can disrupt marginality and facilitate the creative transformation of Han (a deep experience of suffering and oppression) into a constructive energy capable of shaping a new reality. According to this study, KAUM clergywomen‘s experiences and practices of faith as ecclesial leaders strengthen Wesleyan ecclesiology in terms of the UMC‘s efforts to be an inclusive church through connectionalism, and its commitment to social justice. MinJung theology and the theology of YeoSung, in their respective understandings of the church, broaden Wesleyan ecclesiology and enable the Church to be more relevant in a global context by embracing those who have not been normative theological subjects.

STAIR: Practical AIMD Multirate Congestion Control

Existing approaches for multirate multicast congestion control are either friendly to TCP only over large time scales or introduce unfortunate side effects, such as significant control traffic, wasted bandwidth, or the need for modifications to existing routers. We advocate a layered multicast approach in which steady-state receiver reception rates emulate the classical TCP sawtooth derived from additive-increase, multiplicative decrease (AIMD) principles. Our approach introduces the concept of dynamic stair layers to simulate various rates of additive increase for receivers with heterogeneous round-trip times (RTTs), facilitated by a minimal amount of IGMP control traffic. We employ a mix of cumulative and non-cumulative layering to minimize the amount of excess bandwidth consumed by receivers operating asynchronously behind a shared bottleneck. We integrate these techniques together into a congestion control scheme called STAIR which is amenable to those multicast applications which can make effective use of arbitrary and time-varying subscription levels.

Basis Token Consistency: A Practical Mechanism for Strong Web Cache Consistency

With web caching and cache-related services like CDNs and edge services playing an increasingly significant role in the modern internet, the problem of the weak consistency and coherence provisions in current web protocols is becoming increasingly significant and drawing the attention of the standards community [LCD01]. Toward this end, we present definitions of consistency and coherence for web-like environments, that is, distributed client-server information systems where the semantics of interactions with resource are more general than the read/write operations found in memory hierarchies and distributed file systems. We then present a brief review of proposed mechanisms which strengthen the consistency of caches in the web, focusing upon their conceptual contributions and their weaknesses in real-world practice. These insights motivate a new mechanism, which we call "Basis Token Consistency" or BTC; when implemented at the server, this mechanism allows any client (independent of the presence and conformity of any intermediaries) to maintain a self-consistent view of the server's state. This is accomplished by annotating responses with additional per-resource application information which allows client caches to recognize the obsolescence of currently cached entities and identify responses from other caches which are already stale in light of what has already been seen. The mechanism requires no deviation from the existing client-server communication model, and does not require servers to maintain any additional per-client state. We discuss how our mechanism could be integrated into a fragment-assembling Content Management System (CMS), and present a simulation-driven performance comparison between the BTC algorithm and the use of the Time-To-Live (TTL) heuristic.

Practical assessment of hardware limitations on power aware wireless sensor networks - An anti-windup approach

This work considers the effect of hardware constraints that typically arise in practical power-aware wireless sensor network systems. A rigorous methodology is presented that quantifies the effect of output power limit and quantization constraints on bit error rate performance. The approach uses a novel, intuitively appealing means of addressing the output power constraint, wherein the attendant saturation block is mapped from the output of the plant to its input and compensation is then achieved using a robust anti-windup scheme. A priori levels of system performance are attained using a quantitative feedback theory approach on the initial, linear stage of the design paradigm. This hybrid design is assessed experimentally using a fully compliant 802.15.4 testbed where mobility is introduced through the use of autonomous robots. A benchmark comparison between the new approach and a number of existing strategies is also presented.

Managing diversity in practical ambient assisted living ecosystems

Though the motivation for developing Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems is incontestable, significant challenges exist in realizing the ambience that is essential to the success of such systems. By definition, an AAL system must be omnipresent, tracking occupant activities in the home and identifying those situations where assistance is needed or would be welcomed. Embedded sensors offer an attractive mechanism for realizing ambience as their form factor and harnessing of wireless technologies aid in their seamless integration into pre-existing environments. However, the heterogeneity of the end-user population, their disparate needs and the differing environments in which they inhabit, all pose particular problems regarding sensor integration and management

Practical wireless sensor networks power consumption metrics for building energy management applications

The power consumption of wireless sensor networks (WSN) module is an important practical concern in building energy management (BEM) system deployments. A set of metrics are created to assess the power profiles of WSN in real world condition. The aim of this work is to understand and eventually eliminate the uncertainties in WSN power consumption during long term deployments and the compatibility with existing and emerging energy harvesting technologies. This paper investigates the key metrics in data processing, wireless data transmission, data sensing and duty cycle parameter to understand the system power profile from a practical deployment prospective. Based on the proposed analysis, the impacts of individual metric on power consumption in a typical BEM application are presented and the subsequent low power solutions are investigated.

Practical programming for static average-case analysis: the MOQA investigation

This work considers the static calculation of a program’s average-case time. The number of systems that currently tackle this research problem is quite small due to the difficulties inherent in average-case analysis. While each of these systems make a pertinent contribution, and are individually discussed in this work, only one of them forms the basis of this research. That particular system is known as MOQA. The MOQA system consists of the MOQA language and the MOQA static analysis tool. Its technique for statically determining average-case behaviour centres on maintaining strict control over both the data structure type and the labeling distribution. This research develops and evaluates the MOQA language implementation, and adds to the functions already available in this language. Furthermore, the theory that backs MOQA is generalised and the range of data structures for which the MOQA static analysis tool can determine average-case behaviour is increased. Also, some of the MOQA applications and extensions suggested in other works are logically examined here. For example, the accuracy of classifying the MOQA language as reversible is investigated, along with the feasibility of incorporating duplicate labels into the MOQA theory. Finally, the analyses that take place during the course of this research reveal some of the MOQA strengths and weaknesses. This thesis aims to be pragmatic when evaluating the current MOQA theory, the advancements set forth in the following work and the benefits of MOQA when compared to similar systems. Succinctly, this work’s significant expansion of the MOQA theory is accompanied by a realistic assessment of MOQA’s accomplishments and a serious deliberation of the opportunities available to MOQA in the future.

Depression and 'crises of meaninglessness' in the political-economic theology of the money-God

The thesis starts with a historical analysis of the development of depression as a concept. Through this inquiry, the controversies behind the apparent consensus about depression’s etiology and treatment are illuminated, suggesting that the understanding of the climbing rates of depression in contemporary Western civilization is still up for grabs. That’s what the thesis sets out to investigate. In order to accomplish this aim, the study builds upon the classical accounts of Georg Simmel, Émile Durkheim and the more contemporary ideas of Dany-Robert Dufour, in dialogue with an array of supplementary theoretical sources. Navigating through this ‘sea’ of extraordinary and different theories, a new avenue of reflections arises, contributing for the sophistication of the questions made about the phenomenon of depression’s rates. The fundamental argument emerging from this theoretical undertaking is that ‘crises of meaninglessness’ that pervade the collective body of Western contemporary societies have, as one of its consequences, the expansion of depression rates. Meaninglessness in contemporary times is the primary object of investigation of the thesis. The concept, in the context of this study, is not understood as merely an effect of the historical decline of shared social norms due to processes of individualization. Rather, it is claimed, it originates from and is reinforced by the ‘political-economic theology of neo-liberalism’ which becomes virtually generalized in the West, erecting money as a God. The study concludes that by undermining culturally established values, ideals, institutions and principles that may block the dissemination of commodities this new transcendence has been challenging the task of signifying life, potentializing – among other subjective difficulties – the diffusion of depression.

Identifying Barriers and Practical Solutions to Conducting Site-Based Research in North America: Exploring Acute Heart Failure Trials As a Case Study.

Although the prognosis of ambulatory heart failure (HF) has improved dramatically there have been few advances in the management of acute HF (AHF). Despite regional differences in patient characteristics, background therapy, and event rates, AHF clinical trial enrollment has transitioned from North America and Western Europe to Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia-Pacific where regulatory burden and cost of conducting research may be less prohibitive. It is unclear if the results of clinical trials conducted outside of North America are generalizable to US patient populations. This article uses AHF as a paradigm and identifies barriers and practical solutions to successfully conducting site-based research in North America.

Computing regular equivalence: practical and theoretical issues

Social network analysts have tried to capture the idea of social role explicitly by proposing a framework that precisely gives conditions under which group actors are playing equivalent roles. They term these methods positional analysis techniques. The most general definition is regular equivalence which captures the idea that equivalent actors are related in a similar way to equivalent alters. Regular equivalence gives rise to a whole class of partitions on a network. Given a network we have two different computational problems. The first is how to find a particular regular equivalence. An algorithm exists to find the largest regular partition but there are not efficient algorithms to test whether there is a regular k-partition. That is a partition in k groups that is regular. In addition, when dealing with real data, it is unlikely that any regular partitions exist. To overcome this problem relaxations of regular equivalence have been proposed along with optimisation techniques to find nearly regular partitions. In this paper we review the algorithms that have developed to find particular regular equivalences and look at some of the recent theoretical results which give an insight into the complexity of finding regular partitions.