Research and locate one scholarly journal article for each the following three topics. (Please note! You should read onlythree articles, one for each of the three assigned topics. You are not doing a report on these topics that would require the use of more than one source for each topic.)
1. The conversion of Constantine,
2. The impact of the fall of the Western Empire on the church, and
3. The role of heretical Christianity on the advent of Islam.
Structure: Provide a bibliographical entry for each source using Turabian formatting. Then summarize the contents of each article in your own words in a one-paragraph summary.
• Use three different sources for the research exercises. Do not simply go to one website or journal or book and write three summaries from that same source. One of the intents of this assignment is for you to get practice doing research.
• The course textbook (Gonzalez) may not be used as a source for this assignment.
• Popular magazines like Christianity Today and Bible dictionaries or specialty encyclopedias (like Elwell'sEvangelical Dictionary of Theology) do not count as scholarly articles for this assignment. Articles in these sources are usually less than a page to a couple of pages. A scholarly article will usually be 5+ pages.
• Books such as Church History for Dummies would not be considered a "scholarly" book. Use good judgment on your sources.
• If you are using a scholarly book (rather than a journal article), you must read a chapter or section that is at least three pages long, and your citation must be correctly formatted to include the inclusive page numbers of that section; otherwise, no credit will be given for the source.
• Book reviews are not considered scholarly sources for any assignment in this course. You will not receive credit for your source if you use a book review.
• Do not use an abstract from a larger work. An abstract is a summary of a work and is not considered a "scholarly" source for the purposes of any assignment in this course.
• General websites (like Wikipedia, ReligonFacts, Theopedia, ask.com, blogs, or similar sources) are not acceptable sources for any assignment in this course.
• If you are having trouble finding appropriate scholarly articles, you might try Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.com) and JSTOR (www.jstor.org).
• If you have a question about whether a source is acceptable, contact your instructor.
Hint for Search Parameters: Many students struggle to find appropriate articles in the library database, but they are there. One hint is to refine your search using the following parameters: (a) Items with full text online; (b) exclude newspaper articles; (c) content type: journal article; and (d) language: English. There are check boxes on the left side of the screen when you begin your search process.
Content: For additional guidance, note the following instructions. (a) The summary should be a recap of the article in your own words. Do not merely copy the text from your source. In fact, you should include no quotes in your summary. Your score will be penalized if you copy information from the articles. The purpose of this assignment is for you to find good sources and practice summarizing them in your own words. (b) Do not merely summarize a couple of sentences from the articles. The idea is for you to read the articles with reasonable care and adequately summarize their contents in one paragraph. This summary does not need to be long but should be more than four or five sentences.