Master of Arts in Humanities Capstone Project

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Browsing Master of Arts in Humanities Capstone Project by Author "Edmondson, Todd"

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    Evangelicals, the Gnostic Impulse, and the Natural World
    (2021-12-09) Rice, Trey; Edmondson, Todd
    Dualism between between the body and the soul has become a prevalent view in the evangelical community. This said view bears a passing resemblance to perspectives rejected as heresy within the early Church, such as gnosticism, which produces political implications. For example, the implication that the created world is evil and without value - as gnosticism asserts - would result in a lack of care for the natural world among those who hold these beliefs. In making these observations, this paper explores how and why the majority of evangelicals have moved to political positions that are indifferent of hostile to the care of the natural world. Over time, the religious evangelical community has constructed a theology that is particularly anthropocentric, hyper-individualistic, and apocalyptic to provide cover for these presupposed political biases and decisions. Said construction has been enabled by theological illiteracy, allowing false orthodoxies to spread in Evangelicalism which share more similarities to gnostic approaches than they do with historical Christianity. This adoption of a rewritten orthodoxy then guides new generations in the direction of the political positions this orthodoxy was created to justify, producing an ideological feedback loop.
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    The White House with Red Shutters: Liturgy, Narrative, and Incarnation in the Everyday
    (2020-05) Hook, Elijah; Edmondson, Todd
    The primary goal of this project is to understand the ways in which formal liturgical worship and narrative theory interact with and inform one another. I achieve this in three ways. First, the application of narrative theory to liturgy reveals that liturgy, at its most basic form, is the reenactment of various stories. Each piece of liturgy may be understood as a depiction of a particular narrative that relates either to our understanding of God or the Church body. Second, it follows that the practice of liturgy should promote and inspire the creation of further narratives as a form of creative response. The creative works of Madeleine L’Engle and Wendell Berry display this principle well, and analysis of their works punctuate the conversation throughout as a means of displaying various elements of liturgical theology through story. Lastly, I engage both narrative and liturgy in my own creative pieces. These short works of creative non-fiction move through the spaces of my grandparents’ home, viewing them through the lens of basic liturgical structures. In doing this, I hope to show not only that narrative may enhance our understanding of liturgy, but that liturgy can also help us to clarify and reimagine our own narratives.