Past Comps Titles – Religion

2022 Comps Titles

The Ibra in Usāmah ibn-Munqidh’s Kitāb Al-Itibār
Can Exodus Be a Unifying Myth?
LO AND BEHOLD! Limits and Uses of Linguistic Perspectives on Mantra Use in Tantric Sādhana Deity Meditations
Syncretism as a Flexible Analytical Tool for the Study of Christianity in Ireland
Performing Agency: Juanita Bynum, Neo-Pentecostalism, and Black Female Sexuality

2021 Comps Titles

Secularization and Discourse in the Public Sphere: An Examination of Jeffrey Stout’s Democracy & Tradition
Sexual Regulation: Blurring the Line Between ‘the Religious’ and ‘the Secular’
Devadasis and Bharata Natyam
¿Cristo al Servicio de Quién?: Evangelicalism, Liberation Theology, and Freedom
Mental ~~Illness~~ Wellness: Examining the Intersections of Buddhism and Mental Health Treatments in the United States and Tibet
Giving Words to the Wordless: A Philosophical-Theological Approach to Anxiety and Depression
Dangerous Devotees: Women and the Battle for Sabarimala
Healing Suffering with Actionable Love and Compassion in Christianity and Buddhism: A Comparison of Contemporary Thinkers Rita Nakashima Brock and Thich Nhat Hanh’s Theologies
Climate Change and the Battle to Save American Christianity: Religious Motivations of Climate Skepticism among Evangelicals

2020 Comps Titles

Sacrality of the Mosque of Cordoba during the Muslim Caliphate
“Become Black with God!”: A Black Theological Response to afropessimism
Coffeehouse and Counterpublics: An Exploration of Da’wa
(Re)making the Man: Hindutva Ritual Masculinity as Mutable Schema
Completely Sincere, Completely Pragmatic: Apocalyptic Imagery in Daesh’s Online English Language Media
I’m 1 & Allah 1 & no want to give up’: Lived Religion Among Refugees Seeking Asylum
Defining Rob Bell and the Emergent Church
The Lynching Ritual: Violence as Ritual Empowerment and Social Consumption
iBelieve: Religiously-Infused Consumerism in Apple’s ‘Think Different’ Campaign
(Dis)Respecting Difference, An Examination of Christian Pluralism
Sacred Face: El Capitan as Sacred Space

2019 Comps Titles

Realizing the Really Real: Spirit Possession and Schizophrenia in a Traditional Indian Healing Temple
Queering Catholic Iconography: The Icon, Power and Meaning-Making
Invented Tradition and Authentic Ayurveda: Integrative Medicine in the West
Modern Muslims: Rethinking conversion in the autobiographies of Malcolm X and Muhammad Asad
Achievements of Dependency: The Pieties of Stout and MacIntyre
Defining Religious Persecution in U.S Asylum Law
A Tibetan Buddhist View on Death and Dying: The Heart-Mind’s Role in a “Good” Death
Till Death Do Us Part: Contextualizing Citizenship and Same-Sex Marriage in the United States AIDS Epidemic
Suburban Holy Lands: The Battle for Hindu Presence in Suburban New Jersey
Walking to a New Self: An Ethnography of Spiritual but not Religious Pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago
When Athletic Practice Meets Religious Practice: The Power of Practice Based Spirituality
Community-Based Indigenous Tourism: An Exercise of Self-Determination
The Ritualization of Colin Kaepernick: Exposing the Emptiness of American Ideals by Taking a Knee
The “Anti Modern” Revolition: Robert Orsi’s Real Presence and Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism in Conversation with Jordan Peele’s “Get Out”

2018 Comps Titles

Sallekhanā, Suicide, and Selfhood: Constituting Religious Freedom in a Secular Indian Nation-State
Ahmed Deedat: Using Da‘wa to Defend and Define a Muslim Identity in South Africa
(In)sanity as Fiction: Exploring Alterity in A Question of Power
William James, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Religious Freedom: The Twelve Steps as an American Religious Movement
On the Far Right Side of History: Reconciliation and Redemption in White Evangelical Depictions of Race
Anime, Manga, and “Religion” in Modern Japan
Women in Pain: How Narratives of Pain and Sacrifice Complicate the Debate over the Catholic Provision of Obstetrical Care
The Divine Feminine on Earth: A Comparison of Two Contemporary Avatāras of the Goddess
Thai-American Thervada Buddhism: Making Merit Across the Pacific
Tragic Myth and the Blues
The Process of Soteriological Ontology Through the Hermeneutics of Nāgārjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakārikā
Confronting Black Suffering, Resisting Systemic Violence: An Anabaptist Theology of Racial Justice
Saints Alive: Devotion and Destruction Through Kinetic Sculpture

2017 Comps Titles

Christian Folk Art in Socialist Modernity: Visual Culture of China’s Protestant Revival
Superior Wisdom, Justified Disobedience and the Other: The Boy Jesus in Children’s Bibles (1870-1920)
Re-evaluating the Significance of Ethical Conformity in Early Sufism
How to Do Things with Sermons: Meister Eckhart and the Subject of Mystical Utterance
Buddhists Who Kill: Buddhist War Ethics in Sri Lanka

2016 Comps Titles

A Sideline Church: The Role of the Black Church in Social Movements and its Unfortunate Shift
Religious Narratives in Korean American Christianity
Embodied Sikhism: Hair and the 5 Ks in Sikh Diaspora
Maintaining Faith Despite Resistance: How the “Good Catholic Woman” uses Birth Control
Defending the Nuclear Family: Political Neo-Evangelicalism at Bethlehem Baptist Church
The Ultimate Question: A Nietzschean Critique of Paul Tillich’s Conception of Doubt

2015 Comps Titles

Concerning Virgins: A Critique of Idealized Asceticism
Should Jesus Walk with Me?: The Role of Black Jesus in Overcoming Oppression
Qur’an Schools: Agents of Qur’anic Embodiment, Rhetorical Training, and Pedagogical Preservation
Carrying the torch of the Columbine Martyrs: Narrative Construction in American Evangelicalism
From Sugar Plantations to a Temple in the Corn Fields: Female Leadership in a Minnesota Hindu Community
And God Becomes Chaos: Incoherency in Indecent Theology
“Here I am:” The Vulnerability of The Self and Language in Emmanuel Levina’s Ethics and Radical Feminist Discourse
Eve & Pandora: Comparing Gender Dynamics in Punished Worlds
Liminalizing the Erotic Encounter: Towards a Jewish Feminist Theology of Sex

2014 Comps Titles

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Vision for the Beloved Community: A Close Examination of the Shift from “Phase One” to “Phase Two”
Jewish Identities in Motion: New Holocaust Remembrance Rituals in the United States
Will the Revolution be “Spiritual?” Occupy, Spirituality, and Social Change
Vine Deloria on Indigenous Notions of Space and a Relational Universe
Beliefs and Culture: Clashing Definitions of Religion on the Supreme Court
Theology of the Mad Farmer: Stewardship in the Work and Life of Wendell Berry
“God is Not a God of Confusion”: Language Comprehension and Experience of God at a Haitian Immigrant Baptist Church
You Are What You Eat: Exploring the Construction of a Black Social Body through Elijah Muhammad’s Prescribed Rituals of Consumption
Summoning Sango: The Moving Body in Sango Spirit Possession
Mothers in Sin and Salvation: Examining Agency in Mizuko Kuyo and Women’s Use of Blood Bowl Sutra
Heirs of the Prophets: Knowledge and Authority in “Al-Jumuah” Magazine
An Ideal Order: Understanding Sayyid Qutb’s Definitions of the “Social” and “Social Justice” in Islam
Signs of Boundary, Signs of Change: Examining the Westhampton Beach Eruv
Prescribing Pranayama: The Integration of an Indic Breath Practice into American Biomedicine
Choosing Not to Be Chosen: Reconceptualizing Jewish Chosenness in Modernity

2013 Comps Titles

Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: Leo Tolstoy and Christian Anarchism
A Radically Traditional Approach: Using Dorothy Day and the Mystical Body of Christ to Redefine Tradition
The Postmodern Re-formation: Mark C. Taylor and the Poetics of A/theology
A Kaleidoscope of Liliths: The World’s First Woman and Her Dance with Tradition
Talk of Rites and Talk of Rights: Circumcision, Freedom and the Difficulty of Human Rights Discourse
“Patrilineal Descent” and the Sea Change that Wasn’t: An Exploration of its Intricacies, Implications, and Legacy
The Space Between: Bridging Difference and Oneness in Jewish Theology
Wholly Other, Other Holies: Rudolf Otto’s Religious Pluralism in Conversation with Contemporary Religious Studies Criticism
Reliving Toussaint: Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Historical Dialectic

2011 Comps Titles

Skillful Hermeneutics: Power, Authority and Transgression in the Guhyasamaja System
A Mirror Every Moment Changing: The Poetics of Muslim Identity in South Asia
Illuminated Images: The Role of Stained Glass Windows in Marian Visual Culture at Chartres Cathedral
Voices from the Outside: An Appeal for a Radical Womanist Mariology
For Zion’s Sake I Will Not Keep Silent Christians United for Israel: A Conversation between Theology and Politics in Contemporary and Scholarly Wisdom
I”ll take you there: The Staple Singers’ Journey from the Sacred to the Secular
Translatable Traditions: Spaces for Moral Discourse in Pluralistic Societies
In Search of Tamar: An Investigation of Feminist Interpretations of 2 Samuel 13
I Sing the Body Contingent: The Place for Religion in Richard Rorty’s Liberal Utopia
Examining the Knowledge of Ibn al’Arabi
Seeking Health, Seeking God: The Role of Fatwas for the Devout Muslim in New Reproductive Technologies
Religious Citizenship, Nativism and the Midwest: A Study of the Response to Somali Muslims in St. Cloud, Minnesota

2009 Comps Titles

Metro-Evangelization: Faith, Religion, and Social Capital in American Metropolitan Politics
Mary Magdalene and Claims to Authority in Early Christianity
The Origins of Buddha Image in Early Indian Buddhism
The Bhikkhuni Debate in Sri Lanka
Faith in Suffering: Engaging James H. Cone and Delores S. Williams
Upright Before God: Seeking Job in the Protest Theologies of Elie Wiesel and David Blumenthal
I Heart Tibet: A Case Study of Modernity and Buddhist Pilgrimage
We Began to Live as Human Beings: Liberation and the Contemporary Ambedkar Buddhist Movement
Authority, Syncretism, and the Reconstruction of a Religion in Western Mongolia: An Exploration of Khoton Religion
Recycling the Myth: Orientalism, Buddhism, and a Modern Tibetan Identity
Ritual Ecstasy and the Shamans of Prehistory: An Archaeological Approach to the Study of Religion
Salvation dot com: Modern Paganism and Community Building in Cyberspace
The Deconstruction of the Imitatio Christi and the Obsolescence of Christian Martyrdom
A Comparison of Ecofeminist Theologies in Context: Rosemary Radord Ruether of the United States and Ivone Gebara of Brazil
Towards Christian Pluralism: Examining the Pluralist Theologies of Gordon Kaufman and John Hick
Shaheeds, Sannyasinis, and Self-Sacrifice: Applying Palestinian Suicide Bombing and Hindu Female Asceticism to Victor Turner’s Theory of Sacrifice
Missional, Incarnational, Communal: An Emerging Church Ecclesiology
Guadalupe: Devotion, Identity, and Power
Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age: An Analysis of Toshihiko Izutsu’s Sufism and Taoism
Jack Kerouac’s Contribution to American Buddhism

2008 Comps Titles

The Power of Seeing: The Evil Eye in Judaism and Orthodox Christianity
The Queen of Heaven Gave Birth in a Barn: Two Contemporary Approaches to the Symbol of Mary
Children of God, Descendants of the Dragon: Understanding the Protestant House Church Movement in China
Spreading the Gospel by Joining the Revolution: A Study of Christian Identity and Engagement
Old Earth, New Heaven: The Evangelical Mission and the Saving of the Environment
The World is at War: Examining Violence in Christian Identity
Calling on the Lord: An Analysis of the 700 Club Prayer Counseling Center
Who is Christ? Answers from Nineteenth Century Bengali Intellectuals
Bending Towards Justice: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Faith in the Beloved Community

2007 Comps Titles

From Moses to Petrus: William James’ Theory of Conversion in Medieval Spain
Pigs, Purity, and Protection: Food Taboo in Hui Chinese and African-American Muslim Minority Communities
Bulldozers and Eco-Magic: Neo-Paganism and Environmental Activism
On Their Knees: Orthodox Women, Healing, and Spiritual Empowerment through the Mother of God
From Peru to Paris: Working Towards a New Jerusalem
“In the Name of Your Lord, Read!” Islamic Education in America
Job’s Brothers: Reconstructing the Jewish God in Post-Holocaust Era
How the Supreme Court Talks About Religions: Two Case Studies
Finding Truth in a Time of Doubt: Natural Law in Modern Christian Thought
Pointing at the Moon: Bhikkhu Buddhadasa’s Theravada Finger

2006 Comps Titles

Embracing Diversity within Christian Tradition: Medieval Voices Applied to Modern Challenges
Redeeming Despair: Concepts of Sin in the Writings of Existentialists Soren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich
Conservative Judaism and the Balance of Tradition and Modernity: A Case Study on the Permissibility of Homosexuality
Theologies of Depression: Christian Encounters with Depression and Antidepressants
Lessons from Terror: A Discussion of the Need of Religious Studies Perspectives on Al Qaeda
Religious Differences in India: Conflict and Coexistence at Hindu and Muslim Shared Sacred Spaces
Innocence and Apples: Evangelical Vegetarianism in Antebellum America

2005 Comps Titles

Three Views of Magic in the Gospel of Mark
Kabir: Hindu-Muslim Unifier or Critic of Normative Religion
Two choices, and a World to Apply Them To: The Role of Outgroups in the “Left Behind” Series and the Construction of American Evangelical Identity
Distilling Creationism our of Creation Science: Religion and Science Dance Together at the Grand Canyon
Who is ‘I’?: William James and the Buddha on the Nature of the Self (Distinction in Comps)
Richard Baker-roshi and Chogyam Trungpa Rinproche: Skillful Means or Abuse of Power?
Liberator or Oppressor: Exploring the Black Church and Homosexuality
Hinduism on Pleasure Island: Understanding American Hindus’ Negotiations of Identity as a Continuation of Attempts at Hindu Identity Throughout Modern History
Global Economy, Global Religion: The Vision and Influence of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International
Minority Buddhists and Race Relations in the Elite Convert American Buddhist Environment: Creating a New Space for Dharma
Contemporary Catholic Exorcism as Spiritual Healing: Examining the Exorcee in Light of William James’ Concept of Sick Soul
Aikido: Ritulization of ‘No-Mind’
The Hallajian Legend (Distinction in Comps)
Closer to God: Identity and the Life of Holiness in the Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus (Distinction in Comps)

2003 Comps Titles

Can the Arab Be Our Neighbor? Martin Buber and Marc Ellis on the Zionist Test of Jewish Values
Drug-Induced Mysticism: An Evaluation of the Debate Between Aldous Huxley and R. C. Zaehner
Rastafari Meditation Ritual as a Vehicle for Cultural Attitudes: Geertz, the Caribbean, Dirty Hair, Resistance, and a Chillum
Abdol Kareem Soroush: Faith and Reason in the Religious Democratic State (Distinction in Comps)
Modern God-Talk: Comparing a Spiritual Bestseller with a Contemporary Jewish Theology
How the Radical Feminist Jewish Theology of Judith Plaskow is Determined by Her Assumptions and Is Supported by Her Theology of Sexuality
Sayonara Aum: Dealing with Religious Violence and Criminal Religion in Contemporary Japan
God vs. Neighbor: The Politics of Soren Kierkegaard and Reinhold Niebuhr
Schools for Saints: Utah’s Mormon Civil Religion in Public Education in a Framework of Expanding Borders of Sacred Communities (Distinction in Comps)
Harmonious Movement in a Changing Universe: The Cosmology of the Yijing within the Art of Taijiquan
Acting with Conviction: Consistency in a Changing Catholic Worker Movement
Finding Ourselves in the Universe: Thomas Berry’s New Cosmology in Practice at Genesis Farm
The Importance of the Elihu Speeches in the Book of Job (Distinction in Comps)
Reexamining the Political Qualities of Religious Myth: Roland Barthes, Karl Marx, and South Africa’s The Kairos Document