Religious Studies Faculty Publications
The University of Dayton Department of Religious Studies is a community of scholars serving the University, academic and local communities through teaching, research, prophetic criticism, and action.
Faculty scholarship addresses religious experience, expression and thought, with special emphasis on the Roman Catholic tradition and in dialogue with other Christian traditions and other world religions. Faculty in the department are committed to lifelong growth through effective learning.
This collection provides a sampling of the scholarly work of the department’s faculty.
Submissions from 2023
Healing and Exorcism, Meghan Henning
Submissions from 2022
Holy Impairment: The Body as the Nexus of Apocalyptic Ekphrasis in Acts 2:1–13, Meghan Henning
Tears & Ashes: Three Ways of Looking at the Recent Wildfires in the West, Vincent J. Miller
Guns and Practical Reason: An Ethical Exploration of Guns and Language, Mark Ryan
Looking for Good Work: From Matthew Crawford to Pope Francis via Wittgenstein, Mark Ryan
Submissions from 2021
The Traditional Latin Mass Movement and the Unity of the Church, Dennis M. Doyle
American Gun Culture Encounters Christian Ethics: A Clash of Narratives, Mark Ryan
Submissions from 2020
A Cathedral Not Made by Hands, Vincent J. Miller
Business Ethics as a Form of Practical Reasoning: What Philosophers Can Learn from Patagonia, Mark Ryan
Submissions from 2018
Hell as ‘Heterotopia’: Edification and Interpretation from Enoch to the Apocalypses of Peter and Paul, Meghan Henning
Submissions from 2017
Lacerated Lips and Lush Landscapes: Constructing This-Worldly Theological Identities in the Otherworld, Meghan Henning
Niedergestreckt und zerstört: Strafwunder und ihre pädagogische Funktion, Meghan Henning
Weeping and Bad Hair: The Bodily Suffering of Early Christian Hell as a Threat to Masculinity, Meghan Henning
Learning While Teaching: Disability and Religion in the Classroom, Meghan Henning and Kirk VanGilder
American Gun Culture Encounters Christian Ethics: A Clash of Narratives, Mark Ryan
American Gun Culture Encounters Christian Ethics: A Clash of Narratives, Mark Ryan
The Bible and Creationism, Susan L. Trollinger and William Vance Trollinger
Submissions from 2016
New Evangelization, New Families, and New Singles, Jana Marguerite Bennett
Communion Ecclesiology, Dennis M. Doyle
Chreia Elaboration and the Un-healing of Peter's Daughter: Rhetorical Analysis as a Clue to Understanding the Development of a Petrine Tradition, Meghan Henning
Narrating the Future, Meghan Henning
Questions of Self-Designation in the 'Ascension of Isaiah', Meghan Henning and Tobias Nicklas
Hurry and the Willingness to Be Creatures, Kelly S. Johnson
Jesus and the World of Grace, 1968-2016: An Idiosyncratic Theological Memoir, William L. Portier
Response: A Scary Resurrection, William L. Portier
Teaching the Common Good in Business Ethics: A Case Study Approach, Mark Ryan
A Balancing Act: Reading 'Amoris Laetitia', Peter Steinfels, Paige E. Hochschild, William L. Portier, Sandra A. Yocum, and Dennis O'Brien
Righting America at the Creation Museum, Susan L. Trollinger and William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism', William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'What Would Jesus Read? Popular Religious Books and Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century America', William Vance Trollinger
Submissions from 2015
Spiritual But Not Religious: What Faith Formation Means in the Age of ‘Nones’, Jana Marguerite Bennett
We Do Not Know How to Love: Observations on Theology, Technology and Disability, Jana Marguerite Bennett
Extraordinary Love in the Lives of Lay People, Dennis M. Doyle
Otto Semmelroth and the Advance of the Church as Sacrament at Vatican II, Dennis M. (Dennis Michael) Doyle
Otto Semmelroth, SJ, and the Ecclesiology of the ‘Church as Sacrament’ at Vatican II, Dennis M. (Dennis Michael) Doyle
Vatican II and Intellectual Conversion: Engaging the Struggle Within, Dennis M. (Dennis Michael) Doyle
Devil, Meghan Henning
Hell, Meghan Henning
Paralysis and Sexuality in Medical Literature and the 'Acts of Peter', Meghan Henning
Visions, Meghan Henning
A Member of No Community? Theology after Wittgenstein, Brad Kallenberg
Some Practices of Theological Reasoning, or, How to Work Well with Words, Brad Kallenberg
Ecclesial Practices, Colin M. McGuigan and Brad Kallenberg
Practicing to Aim at Truth: Theological Engagements in Honor of Nancey Murphy, Ryan Newson and Brad Kallenberg
Newman, Millennials, and Teaching Comparative Theology, William L. Portier
Interreligious Dialogue in 'A Secular Age', Mark Ryan
Narrative, Social Identity and Practical Reason: On Charles Taylor and Moral Theology, Mark Ryan
Review: 'Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction', Mark Ryan
Review: 'Sharing God's Good Company: A Theology of the Communion of Saints', Mark Ryan
Biology Textbooks and the Decentering of the Scopes Trial, William Vance Trollinger
Submissions from 2014
Not So Private: A Political Theology of Church and Family, Jana Marguerite Bennett
Americanized Catholicism? A Response to Thomas Schärtl, Dennis M. Doyle
Educating Early Christians through the Rhetoric of Hell: 'Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth' as 'Paideia' in Matthew and the Early Church, Meghan Henning
Eternal Punishment as Paideia: The Ekphrasis of Hell in the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul, Meghan Henning
Hauerwas on Hauerwas: Review of 'Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life', William L. Portier
Review: 'Chosen Nation: Scripture, Theopolitics, and the Project of National Identity', Mark Ryan
Review: 'Harold Frederic’s Social Drama and the Crisis of 1890s Evangelical Protestant Culture', William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism', William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s', William Vance Trollinger
Wonder-Worlds of Words, Sandra A. Yocum
Submissions from 2013
What Kind of Family is Needed for ‘Domestic Church’? A Mystagogy of the Family, Jana Marguerite Bennett
Hell, Meghan Henning and Carol A. Newsom
Jewish, Christian – or What? Questions of Self-Designation in the 'Ascension of Isaiah', Meghan Henning and Tobias Nicklas
By Design: Ethics, Theology, and the Practice of Engineering, Brad Kallenberg
Assembly Required: Christ's Presence in the Pews, William L. Portier
Here Come the Nones! Pluralism and Evangelization after Denominationalism and Americanism, William L. Portier
Evangelicalism and Religious Pluralism in Contemporary America: Diversity Without, Diversity Within, and Maintaining the Borders, William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement', William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century', William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'A Catholic Brain Trust: The History of the Catholic Commission On Intellectual and Cultural Affairs, 1945-1965', Sandra A. Yocum
Submissions from 2012
Imposter Happiness or the Real Thing? Marriage, Singleness and the Beatitudes in the 21st Century, Jana Marguerite Bennett
Stanley Hauerwas’s Influence on Catholic Moral Theology, Jana Marguerite Bennett
Women, Disabled, Jana Marguerite Bennett
Gerard Mannion’s Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: 'Exclusivism' and 'Neo-Exclusivism', Dennis M. Doyle
The Concept of Inculturation in Roman Catholicism: A Theological Consideration, Dennis M. Doyle
Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook, Brad Kallenberg
The Theological Origins of Engineering, Brad Kallenberg
Tradition-based Rationality, Brad Kallenberg
A Modus Vivendi? Sex, Marriage & the Church, William L. Portier, Nancy Dallavalle, Christopher C. Roberts, Tina Beattie, R. R. Reno, Patricia Hampl, Luke Timothy Johnson, Leslie Woodcock Tentler, and Paul Baumann
A Systems View of Time-dependent Ethical Decisions, Hamid A. Rafizadeh and Brad Kallenberg
Review: Darren Dochuk's 'From Bible Belt to Sun Belt', William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'Inventing the Holy Land: American Protestant Pilgrimage to Palestine, 1865–1941', William Vance Trollinger
Submissions from 2011
Character, D. Michael Cox and Brad Kallenberg
Jesus Founding the Church: A Perspective Drawing upon Loewe and Lonergan, Dennis M. Doyle
Technology, Derek C. Hatch and Brad Kallenberg
In Sickness and in Health: Ancient ‘Rituals of Truth’ in the Greco-Roman World and 1 Peter, Meghan Henning
God and Gadgets: Following Jesus in a Technological Age, Brad Kallenberg
The Master Argument of MacIntyre's 'After Virtue', Brad Kallenberg
Foreword to 'Sermons from Mind and Heart: Struggling to Preach Theologically', Brad Kallenberg and William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'Maurice Blondel, A Philosophical Life', William L. Portier
The Politics of Practical Reason: Why Theological Ethics Must Change Your Life, Mark Ryan
Virtue Ethics, Nikki Coffey Tousley and Brad Kallenberg
Portrait of a Nation: A Review of Claude Fischer's 'Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character', William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right', William Vance Trollinger
Review: 'Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us', Sandra A. Yocum
Submissions from 2010
Review: 'Racial Justice and the Catholic Church', Jana Marguerite Bennett
Singular Christianity: Marriage and Singleness as Discipleship, Jana Marguerite Bennett
Dynamical Similarity and the Problem of Evil, Brad Kallenberg
Murderous Nation: A Review of Randolph Roth's 'American Homicide', William Vance Trollinger
