Browsing by Subject "Theology"

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    Christian Personalism and Human Rights Prior to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Philosophical and Theological Exploration
    (2024-12) Williams, Andrew Lloyd; King, David P.; Badertscher, Katherine; Haberski, Raymond J.; Steensland, Brian
    The high tide of modern transnational institution-building occurred in the immediate aftermath of two profound crises: the Great Depression and World War II. No document better captures the aspirations for a post-war era of greater human welfare than the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR elevated the rights of individual humans above the doctrine of state-sovereignty and embodied the burgeoning view that states have a responsibility to secure the welfare and rights of all persons. A “new” school of human rights historiography has shown that Christian personalists were among the few advocates of “human rights” in this period. Moreover, Jacques Maritain and Charles Malik, prominent Christian personalists, were directly involved in United Nations efforts to codify universal human rights. Yet new-school historiography has over-corrected for “classical” historiography’s penchant to rely heavily on arcane philosophical and theological developments dating centuries and even millennia into the past. New-school historiography deracinates Christian personalism form its nineteenth century forebearers: philosophical personalism, phenomenology, existentialism, and neo-classicism. It also underplays the orthogonal character of a movement that aspired to create a third way between established polarities. The very term “personalism” connotes a middle position between individualism and collectivism: individual human beings have inviolable dignity and are inherently relational. As such, the current picture of the advent of human rights discourse in the mid-twentieth century is incomplete. By connecting Christian personalism to its nineteenth-century philosophical roots and contextualizing its views of the relationship between the individual and the state in the crisis milieu of the transwar era, I fill an important gap in the history of “human rights” discourse in the buildup to the UDHR.
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    Social Entrepreneurship Among Protestant American Congregations: The Role, Theology, Motivations, and Experiences of Lay and Clergy Leaders
    (2019-08) Austin, Thad Stephen; King, David; Tempel, Eugene R.; Steensland, Brian; Burlingame, Dwight F.
    This qualitative dissertation contributes to the nascent literature on the study of social enterprise in American congregations through an examination of the role, theology, motivations, and experiences of Protestant Christian social entrepreneurs who are pursuing (or have pursued) social entrepreneurship in the congregational setting. These religious leaders engage the free market by establishing social ventures such as hotels, thrift stores, community development corporations, restaurants, retail outlets, publishing companies, and landscaping businesses among others. Drawing on forty-four in-depth, semi-structured interviews with lay and clergy leaders representing a diverse sample of twenty-six American congregations from four Protestant traditions and six geographic regions, this dissertation asks: Who are these congregational social entrepreneurs (their role and their theology)? Why do they engage in congregational social entrepreneurship (motivations)? And how do they go about establishing social ventures (experiences)? This study provides scholars and practitioners insights into the identity, motivations, and experiences of American religious leaders who are pioneering an emerging form of religious practice that blurs the distinction between the pastor and parishioner, the sacred and secular, and the instrumental and expressive. This dissertation offers contributions to both theory and practice. Instead of conceptualizing “social entrepreneurship” and “values and faith” as separate categories (as in prior research), this dissertation introduces a new theoretical paradigm with an intersecting model of instrumental and expressive rationales for nonprofit institutions. Transcending otherwise clearly defined boundaries, the study’s findings speak to the flexibility of social entrepreneurship to conform to the values of its leadership and the pervasive and permeating reach of faith within the context of human endeavor. Additionally, this research offers a constructive understanding of the role, theological tenets, and practical experiences of lay and clergy leaders.