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Religious Studies Research

Religious Institutions and the Directional Flow of Changing Social Norms

Winner of the Rowland A. Sherrill Prize in Religious Studies: Essay Contest Award, this paper was the result of the final project for my Religious Studies capstone course during my senior year. The subject focused on religious responses to the current social issue of same-sex marriage in Finland and the United States. My hypothesis states that over time religious institutions must adapt to changing social norms in order to maintain relevancy thereby contributing to the evolution of their characteristics.

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Examining the Comparative

Ethics of Gandhi

Of all the religious figures I have studied, Mohandas Gandhi is one of the most intriguing. In this paper I highlight Gandhi's ethical approach to various issuses as they relate to his religious beliefs. Using Gandhi's set of ethical beliefs, I illustruate his tendency to appropriate specific religious ideas to serve his purposes and in the process deliberately jettisons other ideas that do not meet his needs. I propose that Ghandi's religious behavior is common and should be not seen as a pejorative trait but a crucial component of building a religious identity.

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Functions of Creation Stories within the Hebrew Bible

A large part of my interest in religion is the functions it serves for communities and individuals. On a broad level it may seem obvious that one function of religion is simply to promote group solidarity, however, I enjoy digging deeper by probing the psychological and physiological roots of the religious mind.

This paper explores the multiple creation stories contained within the Hebrew Bible and emphasizes similar themes found in each of them that are not commonly discussed outside of academic circles. I hypothesize that Hebrew creation stories served to order the percieved chaos of the world around the ancient Israelites. A common theme for many of the Hebrew creation stories is their attention to natural disasters brought on by large bodies of water. This fear of water can also be seen in the creation stories of other social groups of that region during that time period such as the Babylonian epic the Enûma Eliš.

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