Princeton Theological Seminary

About: Princeton Theological Seminary is a education organization based out in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Cross-cultural psychology & Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. The organization has 230 authors who have published 527 publications receiving 3431 citations. The organization is also known as: PTS & Princeton Seminary.

A validated intrinsic religious motivation scale.

Abstract: Research on intrinsic and extrinsic religion has been troubled by conceptual diffuseness and questionable scale validity. Hunt and King have proposed greater specificity in conceptualization and measurement in future work. This paper attempts to specify and measure a single crucial dimension identified by Hunt and King, namely ultimate versus instrumental religious motivation. Two validation studies were done utilizing persons nominated by ministers as having either ultimate (intrinsic) or instrumental (extrinsic) religious motivation. A new 10-item Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale is proposed, and measurement problems are discussed.

Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865-1900

Abstract: The Grand Army of the Republic, the largest of all Union Army veterans' organizations, was the most powerful single-issue political lobby of the late nineteenth century, securing massive pensions for veterans and helping to elect five postwar presidents from its own membership. To its members, it was also a secret fraternal order, a source of local charity, a provider of entertainment in small municipalities, and a patriotic organization. Using GAR convention proceedings, newspapers, songs, rule books, and local post records, Stuart McConnell examines this influential veterans' association during the years of its greatest strength. Beginning with a close look at the men who joined the GAR in three localities -- Philadelphia; Brockton, Massachusetts; and Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin - McConnell goes on to examine the Union veterans' attitudes towards their former Confederate enemies and toward a whole range of noncombatants whom the verterans called "civilians": stay-at-home townsfolk, Mugwump penion reformers, freedmen, women, and their own sons and daughters. In the GAR, McConnell sees a group of veterans trying to cope with questions concerning the extent of society's obligation to the poor and injured, the place of war memories in peacetime, and the meaning of the "nation" and the individual's relation to it. McConnell aruges that, by the 1890s, the GAR was clinging to a preservationist version of American nationalism that many white, middle-class Northerners found congenial in the face of the social upheavals of that decade. In effect, he concludes, the nineteenth-century career of the GAR is a study in the microcosm of a nation trying to hold fast to an older image of itself in the face of massive social change.

Philosophy of the Arts: An Introduction to Aesthetics

Abstract: 1. Art and Pleasure: incl. Hume, Mill, Kant, Gadamer 2. Art and Emotion: Tolstoy, Croce, Collingwood 3. Art and Understanding 4. Music and meaning: incl. the implications of digital technology 5. From Painting to Film 6. Poetry and Paraphrase 7. Architecture as an Art 8. Evaluation and the Aesthetics of Nature 9. Theories of Art: incl. Marxism, Lukacs, Levi-Strauss, Derrida

Sources of Conflict Over Priorities of the Protestant Church

Abstract: Theor-etical approaches to internal conflict over priorities in the Presbyterian church are tested using surveys of laymen, ministers, and seminary seniors. Conflicts are greatest over the type and importance of church mission and outreach; there is little conflict over congregational life, religious education, or spiritual nurture. Path analysis shows that theological factors are intervening variables between all background variables and attitudes about church priorities. Orthodoxy and ethicalism act independently and in opposite directions. It is concluded that the conflict is largely theological, explained partly in terms of church-sect tension and partly by conflicting theological orientations in the denomination. Although conflict within the Christian church has been ever present, at times it has intensified when crucial debates came to focus. In recent years the conflict within American Protestantism has been intensifying with a heated debate about the priorities of the church and its proper role in society. The issue of church priorities has been the most important conflict in American Protestantism in the past decade. In the 1960s a complex of events and movements intensified feelings on the question. Prodded by the civil rights movement and the new youth culture, many church leaders have called for new emphasis on Christian social involvement, and this new call has ushered in the conflict about the proper functions and priorities of the church. Several American denominations are preoccupied with internal conflict in the early 1 970s, for viewpoints have crystallized and rival factions have organized themselves within them. This article discusses the conflict in one denomination, the United Presbyterian church in the U.S.A. Among Presbyterians the debate about church priorities has been growing since the middle 1960s. Many denominational leaders and ministers have strongly urged a more effective social witness, especially to combat the evils of racism in America. In opposition to them, a group of Presbyterian businessmen organized the Presbyterian Lay Committee in 1965, dedicated to moving the denomination away from social concerns and back to personal evangelism, maintenance of "scripturetaught moral standards," and religious nurture of individuals. It strongly argues that any social action should be done by Christian individuals, not by organized church bodies. The church should leave social, economic, and political issues to individual Christians with competence in such matters. During the past several years the factions in the United Presbyterian church have battled over mission hudgets, church union, reorganization of denominational boards, and other issues. THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO

Practical theology: A current international perspective

Abstract: Drawing on Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigms, this article explored two levels at which paradigms influence contemporary practical theology. The first level is reflective practice, where pastors and academics carry out the descriptive-empirical, interpretive, normative and pragmatic tasks of practical theological reflection on particular contexts. The second level is metatheoretical, where practical theologians make decisions about how they view the theory– praxis relationship, interdisciplinary work, the relative weight of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience and the theological rationale that justifies their approach. The article concluded by raising two challenges to the current paradigms of practical theology: the relationship between Christian particularity and the common good, and the wound of reason.