Date of Award

8-2023

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

English

Committee Chair(s)

Afsane Rezaei

Committee

Afsane Rezaei

Committee

Lynne McNeill

Committee

Kyle Bulthuis

Abstract

This project examines omen-seeking practices within Protestant Christianity in the U.S. Intermountain West. It collates and analyzes the results of ethnographic research into the ways that mainline Protestants experience, interpret, and talk about their personal spiritual experiences. The project finds that divinatory and other omen-seeking practices exist in this context but are not recognized or discussed as divinatory due to the conflation of divination with sortilege and the prevalence of prayer as the primary solicitation method for Protestant forms of augury. Emic categories of omen are distinguished not through generation method (such as the solicited/unsolicited distinction proposed by Tom Mould), but through reception method and the emotional and physical impact of the experience. Additionally, ominous experiences are the subject of narratives which are told in particular contexts by practitioners: the narratives are used primarily within the religious community as ways to encourage, uplift, and bolster the faith of listeners who are expected to share the teller’s understanding of how the experiences are received and interpreted, and the act of telling the stories serves to express and reinforce a theological worldview in which God is an active force in the lives of His worshippers.

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