Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item From Islamic Exceptionalism to Universal Religious Categories: Reconceptualizations of Dīn and Millet in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire(2024) Agalar, Saban; Karamustafa, Ahmet T.; Zilfi, Madeline C.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the transformation of the Islamic category of religion through a conceptual history of dīn (often translated as “religion”) and millet (often translated as “community”) during the Ottoman Empire from the late sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries. Arabic and Turkish world histories, which flourished during this period, exhibited a significant expansion in geographical and cultural scope compared to earlier examples and rarely focused on the House of Osman or Islamic history. I argue that these world historians similarly presented dīn as a universal analytical unit, challenging traditional Islamic scholarship that had reserved dīn for Islam or other monotheistic faiths. By presenting Islam as one dīn among many, these authors viewed dīn as a universal social phenomenon comparable to other domains of human life, although differing perspectives persisted among legal scholars, polemicists, and heresiographers. These world histories, along with a growing body of literature on non-Muslim faiths and scriptures, were also characterized by a more detached and analytical approach to their subjects. The dissertation links these conceptual and historiographical shifts to changes in Ottoman self-perception amid increasing awareness of cultural diversity and declining imperial power. This reconceptualization of dīn coincided with debates on the related term of millet, traditionally associated with monotheistic communities, as scholars explored its broader applicability to various religious groups. In addition to a close reading of historical and religious works, the dissertation employs computational tools to analyze substantial volumes of Ottoman texts, including court records and Evliyā Çelebi’s Seyāḥatnāme, to trace how millet was used in both official and literary contexts. For world historians, millet generally implies a shared confession, which is not always monotheistic. In the Seyāḥatnāme, millet typically refers to Christian communities within the empire while excluding Jews, whereas in court records, it primarily signifies the Muslim community, with occasional references to non-Muslim groups.While focusing on native concepts as understood by the Ottomans themselves, the dissertation also draws parallels with Protestant approaches to categorizing religion, noting similar efforts to develop comprehensive taxonomies in both contexts. At the same time, it underlines key differences: while the Protestant model prioritized creed as the central feature of “world religions,” Ottoman world historians embraced a broader understanding of dīn and millet, which included beliefs, acts of worship, belonging to a confessional community, and sometimes customs and morality. These Ottoman historians did not often exclude polytheistic communities as their Protestant counterparts did. Beyond offering an overlooked conceptual history expressed in an understudied historiographical genre in the Ottoman Empire, this dissertation’s potential contributions extend to the broader fields of Islam and the study of religion. By challenging narrowly defined and ahistorical Islamic conceptualizations of religion and non-Muslim faiths, it aims to expand the current understanding of Islam, moving beyond the traditional focus on the Quran and a few medieval classics. Additionally, the study engages with broader theoretical debates on the nature of religion, questioning the universality of post-Enlightenment European models by exploring non-Western religious categories in early modern history.Item Supernatural Ties: Religious Beliefs and Practices and Commitment and Cohesion in Politics(2024) Rao, Sean Christopher; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I propose a general mechanism of religion in politics which is not limited to the use of violent tactics or a particular religious background: religious belief and practice generate strong mutual commitment among individuals in a group and this commitment can, in turn, create political cohesion. This process gives a strong organizational resource to political actors who can successfully link political goals to religious commitment and illuminates three puzzles: first, why do some organizations persist in demanding autonomy or independence for decades while others cease after only a short time? Little is known about the persistence of contentious actors, violent and nonviolent, who may eventually become rebels in a civil war. Linking research on civil war duration, nonviolent contention, and the club model of religion with novel cross-national time series data from a sample of self-determination organizations in Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, and Canada, I find some evidence that organizations based on religion or religion-like ideologies in the sample are more likely to persist. I find stronger evidence that organizations persist when they encourage membership practices (such as religious study or dress codes) through which individual members demonstrate public commitment to the group. Second, why do some politicians offer an overt religious basis for their policies? Overt religious rhetoric can harm a politician’s standing with less religious voters in the United States, and positive stereotypes of religious people are diminishing. Still, even politicians who depend on less religious voters sometimes use overt rhetoric instead of subtler religious cues. In two survey experiments, I find that religious rhetoric does not increase the level of a voter’s confidence that a politician is committed to a noncontroversial policy in an undergraduate sample nor to a controversial policy in a national sample in the United States, but it does increase the probability that a voter becomes completely convinced of a politician’s commitment to a controversial policy, though not among Democrats, nor does visible participation in a congregation affect this signal. Third, what keeps some civil wars from resuming after violence has stopped? Previous research has shown religious civil wars are likely to recur due to time-invariant factors of issue indivisibility and information uncertainty. Using existing data on secessionist rebels from 1975 to 2009, I find evidence that recruitment from religious networks drives recurrence. Giving religious constituencies equal access to political power and reaching formal ceasefires or agreements with territorial rebels discourages rebels from mobilizing that network for a return to fighting and makes them no more likely to return than nonreligious territorial rebels. These results identify a general process of religion applicable across different religious backgrounds and political contexts: cohesion from practices, often related to religion, which allow individuals to signal their commitment to a group. Identifying this process makes the study of religion in politics less context limited giving a starting point for future research.Item “PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD”: A MIXED-METHODS EXPLORATION OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY WITHIN FORMERLY INCARCERATED PEOPLES’ DESISTANCE PROCESS(2024) Dougall, Mansi; Morgan, Dr. Amy A.; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research on the relationship between religion and spirituality in promoting desistance among the formerly incarcerated remains mixed. Certain studies indicate a negative correlation between religiosity and criminal behavior (Johnson, 2011; Levitt & Loper, 2009), whereas others report no significant link between religion and post-release conduct (Giordano et al., 2008; Stansfield et al., 2017). To advance this body of literature, the present mixed-methods cross-sectional study examined the association between religion and spirituality on self-reported instances of almost re- offending among formerly incarcerated individuals utilizing secondary data analysis. Additionally, perceptions on how religion and/or spirituality contributed to formerly incarcerated individual’s desistance process was explored, sensitized by Family Systems Theory. The sample consisted of n = 191 formerly incarcerated individuals who were released from a carceral setting two or more years ago, and reported successfully desisting from further criminal behavior. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics and logistic regression to examine the relationships between religion, spirituality, and self-reported reoffending. Thematic analysis was used to analyze participants’ qualitative responses of how religion and spirituality contributed to the desistance process. The present study contributed to the advancement of knowledge in desistance processes, with implications for criminal justice rehabilitation to guide efforts in supporting the successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals into societyItem Religious belief, religious minorities, and support for democracy(2023) Overos, Henry David; Birnir, Johanna K.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the last two decades, the intersection of religion in politics and democratic backsliding has prompted questions about public support for democracy. This study investigates the link between individual-level religious beliefs, religious minority status, and support for democracy. It presents a modified authoritarian personality theory, proposing that higher religious commitment correlates with stronger support for authoritarianism and weaker support for liberal democracy. This hypothesis is tested using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and validated through the World Values Survey data. A survey experiment in Indonesia in 2022 examines the impact of minority status on views regarding liberal democracy. The findings indicate that religious commitment is associated with reduced support for liberal democracy, and minority status can affect perspectives on democracy under specific political contexts. Additionally, this research pioneers a large-scale approach to measuring religious experience through clustering analysis. It underscores the need to explore how democracy is perceived differently by diverse segments of the population, adding depth to the study of democratic support.Item UNA MODERNIDAD TENSIONADA: LA PRENSA CATÓLICA DE LOS AÑOS 20 EN BUENOS AIRES(2022) Maurette, Sofia; Demaria, Laura; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Según la Pew Foundation, Latinoamérica es uno de los continentes más religiosos del mundo, con más del 90% de su población identificándose como parte de una religión organizada. Sin embargo, la religión latinoamericana no ha recibido una atención equivalente a sus números. Mi investigación analiza el campo poco estudiado de la religión latinoamericana a través de la lente de su producción cultural, combinando los campos de los estudios religiosos con los estudios literarios y culturales latinoamericanos. En mi trabajo afirmo que definiciones estrechas sobre la Modernidad e ideas normativas sobre el lugar de la religión en la esfera pública moderna, uno de los postulados de la "teoría de la secularización", han resultado en una lectura sesgada de los movimientos y textos religiosos latinoamericanos, generalmente considerados incompatibles con sus aspiraciones modernas.En mi tesis me centro específicamente en las revistas católicas argentinas y su compromiso con las consecuencias del proceso de modernización del país a principios del siglo XX. Para una de estas revistas, Criterio (1928-presente), esto significó elaborar un lenguaje que adoptó la retórica de los movimientos de vanguardia para atraer a la élite intelectual a la que deseaban convertir. La revista femenina Noel (1920-1939), por otro lado, al contrastar la construcción tradicional de género dentro del catolicismo con las nuevas definiciones de feminidad adoptadas por los movimientos feministas contemporáneos, se convirtió en un espacio seguro para sus autoras en el cual construir y realizar una comprensión del género que, si bien respaldaba explícitamente una cosmovisión patriarcal, reformulaba sutilmente el papel de la mujer dentro de ella.Item TERROR IN THE PYRENEES: RELIGION, REVOLUTION AND THE NATION IN SOUTHWESTERN FRANCE, 1789-1794(2022) Brower, Jonathan Christopher; Villani, Stefano; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the ways in which revolutionaries in France used religion to define concepts of citizenship, belonging, and identity between the years 1789 and 1794. It contends that the religious policies of the Terror (1793-1794), which it terms the “Sacerdotal Revolution,” were an attempt to construct a new imagined national religious community centered on the worship of the Supreme Being and the nation. It demonstrates that at the beginning of the eighteenth-century, French society was divided between two mutually complementary spheres of authority: the temporal realm of kings and the spiritual realm of Church. Over the course of the century, political and religious writers put forward arguments that essentially integrated spiritual institutions into the terrestrial world, thus paving the way for the formation of a national religious community embodied in the Constitutional Catholic Church of 1791. However, the failure the Constitutional Catholic Church to provide national religious consensus and the looming threat of war, polarized and politicized identities inside and outside the French Republic, and led some revolutionaries during the Terror to embrace a type of universal patriotic religion predicated upon an exclusionary national identity. As this dissertation maintains, at the heart of the debate over religion during the French Revolution was a tension between universalism and particularism, and the ways in which diverse religious and ethnic identities were able to relate to the universal category of French citizenship. This tension was most acute in the southwestern borderlands of France, which were characterized by ethnic and religious diversity. As a result, all those who fell outside the boundaries of the universal patriotic religion of the Sacerdotal Revolution were considered counterrevolutionary religious fanatics in need of regeneration. At the same time, the universalist discourse of the Sacerdotal Revolution also offered some ethno-religious minorities a chance to exercise their citizenship. Thus, by studying the religious debates of the French Revolution, this dissertation seeks to show how revolutionaries in southwestern France attempted to construct a new imagined religious community during a moment of religious conflict, political factionalism, and war.Item MINDING THE GOD GAP IN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS: HOW THE MEDIA FAILED TO COVER FAITH IN 2012 AND 2016(2022) Lee, Carole Caldwell; Oates, Sarah A; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent coverage of faith in the American political discourse has yielded a dominant image of American religion as increasingly polarized and defined by a few strident voices. In particular, the coverage of American political discourse in presidential campaigns fails to capture the diversity and depth of faith that pervades American life as well as misses an opportunity to elevate public debate. To analyze the extent to which presidential campaign news captures the varied expressions of faith represented in the United States, this study examines the coverage of candidate faith and religion as an issue in the two recent presidential elections of 2012 and 2016. Faith as expressed by the four final candidates in these elections differs in meaningful ways. Using content analysis of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, this study examines how the campaigns present candidates’ religious identities, how the candidates themselves portray issues of faith, and how religion emerges as an issue in campaign coverage. In addition, the study identifies and analyzes key frames used in news coverage of candidate faith in U.S. campaigns The analysis shows that political party plays a significant role in what little coverage a candidate’s faith receives. For Republicans, because candidate faith plays a more central role throughout the campaign and especially during the early primaries, the coverage reports extensively on candidates’ use of their religious identities to appeal to religious voters. In the coverage of Democrats, the discussion of religion more commonly emerges in relation to a news item, such as an approach to a contentious policy, that has a religious dimension. A common reality reflected in the coverage of both parties is that a candidate’s long-term authentic religious devotion does not translate into strong campaign strategy regardless of the party of the devout candidate. Overall, analysis of the coverage of faith in 2012 and 2016 reinforces the idea that religious expression and practice differ significantly along political party lines. By recasting campaign coverage to reflect more thoroughly on issues of faith, the media could improve voters’ understanding of religious pluralism as a founding American ideal and help raise levels of trust and interest across both party and religious lines. Deepened appreciation of religious pluralism could help revitalize the public forum to support competition among different ideas, value productive compromise, and reduce the determination of any single group to dominate.Item Sunday Morning Matters: The Production of Gendered Subjects in White Evangelical Life(2021) Michael, Kelsey Sherrod; Wong, Janelle; Padios, Jan; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As evangelical Christian demographics in the United States have increasingly diversified, pundits and scholars have sought to understand the persistent political power of white American evangelicals. This interdisciplinary dissertation argues that a key mechanism of the political formation of white evangelical Christians has been hiding in plain sight: The weekly church worship service in predominantly white congregations has provided remarkable continuity as a means of political formation for churchgoers, particularly through worship rituals indebted to ideologies of gender and race. Drawing on Black feminist thought, phenomenology, and the anthropology of religion, I describe the white evangelical church worship service as an axis of “haunting” across time and space, where patriarchal relations of power built on racialized discourses of manhood and womanhood continue to shape the everyday lives of churchgoing women. I rely on textual analysis of evangelical digital culture and original ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews, with churchgoing women in the southern U.S. to uncover how women’s experiences in church structure their consciousness in dimensions of their lives not often considered inherently “religious”—work and labor, sex and marriage, performance and material culture, and the knowledge and discipline of the self. In clarifying this phenomenological process by which churchgoing women become gendered and therefore political subjects, the project identifies the significance of the white evangelical church worship service to white evangelical subject formation and the implication of white supremacy in this process. More broadly, the dissertation calls for a reappraisal of the importance of religious ritual to the construction of identity and difference in and through white American Christianity.Item Translating Grace: Postsecularity in Twentieth-Century American Fiction(2021) Gonch, William; Mallios, Peter; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The early twentieth century saw the rise of new, secular ways of imagining and understanding religion, especially through social sciences such as psychology and anthropology. TRANSLATING GRACE: POSTSECULARITY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION investigates creative responses to this secular imaginary by novelists invested in religion’s continuing power. For the four primary subjects of this study—Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O’Connor, and Marilynne Robinson—secular ways of imagining religion were at once challenges and opportunities. They foreclosed conventional expressions of religious ideas, experiences, and narratives, but they could be used creatively to reimagine religious stories and symbols, giving them fresh life and applying them to new challenges. I propose the metaphor of translation to understand the creative exchange between secular and religious writing. Literary translation is a creative activity that stretches the boundaries of a target language so that it may mean things that it has never meant before; similarly, writing of religion in this period is a translational attempt to stretch secular categories. Novelists jettison conventional religious narratives and symbols and invent new literary forms to make religious experiences and beliefs register for new readers. In doing so, they create new ways of experiencing and reckoning with religion. Translating Grace reassesses accounts of religion and literature by emphasizing the creative potential of religious writing. Previous studies of this period theorize a crucial break around 1960. Before that point, literature secularizes; artists look to art as a substitute for religion and treat religion’s fading as inevitable. After 1960 there is renewed interest in religious narratives, symbols, and practices, but it is “weak” religion, shorn of doctrinal and metaphysical claims. In contrast, I propose that “strong” religion persists as an important creative presence in 20th century literature. Whether strong or weak, religion becomes more self-conscious about its need to make itself comprehensible. Writers engage, sometimes subversively, sometimes playfully, with secular imaginaries. In this way, fiction drives a wider transformation of life within religious communities as they reimagine their place within a now-more-secular culture and world.Item A New Race of Christians: Slavery and the Cultural Politics of Conversion in the Atlantic World(2020) Fischer, Matthias; Brewer, Holly; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is intended to fill a significant gap in the scholarship on slavery, race, and religion in the early modern Atlantic. Restoring a longue durée approach to the study of colonial history, it argues that there was a long, broad, and vibrant debate over the legitimacy of slavery and race. A central analytical tenet of this work is that religion and race were concepts linked from the early decades of colonization and developed in conjunction with one another. Enslavement predicated on heathenism brought baptism in particular to the center of the debate over whether African slaves could become free by adopting Christianity. Heathenism was central to early justifications of African slavery in the plantation colonies of the New World, and it also played a fundamental role in the construction, contestation, and articulation of racial categories, even if Christianity remained an important marker of colonial identity and social belonging.While the accommodation between the clergy and governors, planters, vestries, and colonial assemblies often conflated Christianity’s moral obligations with colonial self‐interest, religion and religious ideas also helped to challenge and undermine hierarchies based on race. Whether they were Jesuit priests, Anglican ministers, Quaker clerics, or Moravian evangelicals, missionaries of all backgrounds were able to provide a measure of spiritual and material relief to men and women who experienced human, material, and cultural deprivation on a massive scale. In these ways, enslaved and free people of African descent ascribed new meaning to Christianity that transcended narrow European definitions, challenging emergent notions of racial difference. Linking intellectual processes with social and political practices and institutions, this study attempts to resituate the Caribbean as foundational to the creation of a modern consciousness.