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1
Benitez, John. "Hispanic Religious Outreach in the Upper U.S. South: Missionary Outreach, Strategies, and Institutional Praxis Among Mainstream Denominations." UKnowledge, 2015. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/geography_etds/39.
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Hispanic religious ministry provides a way for long established mainstreams to stay afloat in the face of the demographic realities in the U.S. today. Unfortunately, the lack of literature, particularly in geography, precludes the examination of elements of contemporary Hispanic religious outreach, including such considerations as strategies, their effectiveness, and institutional praxis among mainstream religious denominations in the U.S.
Using a hybrid methodology that relies on several techniques, I examine Hispanic religious ministry in the Upper U.S. South, which geographers tell us is America’s newest Hispanic destination. I, thereby, develop and present here a case study to compare Hispanic religious ministry in Kentucky’s Inner Bluegrass metropolitan region, which has recently been attracting Hispanics. I use three mainstream denominations including the Roman Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention to examine the relationships of religious polity, outreach practices, and disparate strategies among these three denominations.
Strategies of Hispanic religious ministry among religious organizations associated with the Roman Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention; reflect many similarities, while simultaneously exhibiting much variation throughout the Inner Bluegrass. Similarities in outreach praxis seem to be predicated on tactics wherein agencies have come to dominate the cultures of contemporary mainstream religious denominations, while polities, historically structured to differentiate religious traditions and doctrines within a continuum of congregational versus connectional organization, seemed to account for much variation among these disparate denominations. While Hispanic outreach in the Inner Bluegrass mostly follow national-level plans or strategies, the Roman Catholic denomination seems most efficient and effective in managing new Hispanic ministries in the Inner Bluegrass today.
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Boyd, Craig. "Natural Law & Right Reason in the Moral Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas." TopSCHOLAR®, 1990. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2157.
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A major problem with current discussions on the moral theory of St. Thomas Aquinas is the fact that many interpreters present Thomas's thought as a natural-law morality. While natural law is an element of Thomas's moral theory, it plays a subordinate role to the virtue of prudence.
The natural law interpreters of St. Thomas's moral theory hold that (1) natural law is the dominant element, (2) natural law can be treated in isolation from Thomas's account of virtue, and (3) the principles of natural law make Thomas's moral theory abstract and deontological. These interpretations rarely consider the virtue of prudence.
Natural law, in Thomas's moral theory, makes general statements about human nature and also sets the parameters for morally good human activity. However, it fails to function adequately on the level of an agent's particular moral problems. The general precepts of natural law do not function as proximate principles of human action. But the special function of moral virtue is to provide the agent with the necessary proximate principles of human action.
Virtue is an acquired disposition of the soul that functions as a proximate principle of action. Holding a special place in Thomas's moral theory, prudence is primary among the moral virtues. It is defined as "right reason concerning things to be done." Prudence holds a middle place between he intellectual virtues and the moral virtues. It requires right thinking about moral matters, but it also requires the possession of a right appetite.
This essay includes some discussion of human nature, as ethics is subordinated to psychology. Furthermore, we must show how the human agent engages in moral activity, and this requires discussing the psychological processes involved in human action.
It is my purpose to explore the functions of natural law and virtue and to take account of the relationship between them in Thomas's moral theory. After establishing a proper understanding of Thomas's view, it will be clear that the natural-law interpreters have missed a crucial element in his ethical theory.
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Lippert, Jordan. "From Profane to Divine: The Hegemonic Appropriation of Pagan Imagery into Eastern Christian Hymnody." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/151.
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Spanning the first seven centuries of Christianity, this paper explores how Eastern Christian and Byzantine hymn chant was developed alongside pagan and Jewish worship traditions around the Near East. Comparison of hymns by Christian composers such as St. Romanos the Melodist and pagan poetry reveals many similarities in the types of metaphorical imagery used in both religious expressions. Common in Christian hymn texts, well-known metaphors, like the “Light of God,” are juxtaposed with pagan mythological gods, such as Apollo and Helios. This paper attempts to explain how and why Christians appropriated and adopted ancient pagan imagery into the burgeoning musical tradition of Christian hymn singing.
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Chad, Bretton. "Compounding the Sacred and the Profane: How Economic Theory Brings New Insight to the Growth and Decline of American Protestantism." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2016. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1263.
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In this thesis, economic theory and models will be used to analyze trends of religious growth and decline within the United States. These theories and models, such as Rational Choice Theory, will be applied in order to better understand and gain new insight into shifts and changes within the religious landscape of the United States. Recent trends of growth and decline within Protestantism, the most prominent Christian tradition in America, will be the focus of the investigation. As its main focus, this thesis will ultimately demonstrate that the trends of decline in the mainline Protestant tradition opposed to the trends of growth in the evangelical Protestant tradition can be best understood by focusing on the unique relationship between a religious organization’s degree of tension with society and that organization’s congregational attendance.
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Kacarab, Katherine Elizabeth. "A Burkean analysis of Jehovah's Witness apocalyptic rhetoric." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2011. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3315.
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This thesis uses principles from Burke's Rhetoric of Identification to examine how apocalyptic prophecies foster and maintain an apocalyptic group identity. Jehovah's Witnesses were used as a sample apocalyptic group because they comprise a group with a heavy textual and symbolic focus on the apocalypse.
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Moser, Tim. "The Pulpit and the People: Mobilizing Evangelical Identity." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3348.
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Using ten sermons from five prominent and politically active evangelical megachurch pastors taken from the 2016 presidential campaign season, this case study utilizes frame analysis to understand the political relevance of modern evangelical sermonizing. An inductive frame analysis allows the concept of a collective action frame to be observed as a process and for patterns to emerge from the source text. Within these sermons, ministers offer self-identifying evangelicals a vocabulary with which to understand and describe their own identity. In this context, the Bible is a powerful cultural symbol that represents an allegiance to traditions that are framed as the bedrock of American exceptionalism. The boundaries that are drawn and vociferously maintained in this sample emphasize exclusion over inclusion, especially in terms of salvation and righteousness, which can emotionally motivate action. In an election year, this sample demonstrates how evangelical identity is mobilized as an electoral force.
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Geiger, Kari J. "How You Have Fallen: Exploring the Benevolence of an Early Christian God as Seen Through a Progressively Embodied Satan." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/263.
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This paper attempts to explore the creation of Satan as an embodiment of evil in Early Christian theodicy. I use Greco-Roman myth and the Old Testament Book of Job to explore "duality," a system in which good and evil are encapsulated in gods or God. I attempt to trace the trajectory of a shift from this duality to a system of Christian cosmic "dualism," in which good and evil are separated as opposing forces. This shift is explored through the intertestamental Pseudepigrapha of 1 Enoch and Jubilees, towards the New Testament story of the Temptation of Christ in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Finally, exploring post-New Testament Christian ideas with Origen's seminal work On First Principles and the martyr text of Perpetua to investigate the Early Christian community's ideas of good, God, evil, and Satan.
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Connor, Lena R. "Justified By Faith: The Upper Susquehanna Lutheran Synod and the Pennsylvania Natural Gas Fracking Controversy." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/83.
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An exercise in applied Christian ecotheology, this thesis focuses on a community of Lutheran church bodies (ELCA) in North Central Pennsylvania as they grappled with natural gas hydraulic fracturing in the summer of 2012. In the paper, I employ a combination of theological, environmental, historical, and ethnographic research methodologies to ground my analysis of how this synod of Lutherans to date has approached the fracking boom. My primary research question is: How might the Upper Susquehanna Synod of the ELCA--as a representative body of 131 Lutheran churches that are steeped in tradition--use its history, community involvement, theology, and church structure to address an ecological quandary like fracking? I answer this question in four sections, with each chapter focusing on a different thematic sub-question. Though I borrow techniques from the social sciences, I have written this thesis as a narrative, in order to draw the reader into this fascinating community. Instead of separating my literature review from my ethnographic data, I blend the two together in each chapter, weaving together quotes from synod members with secondary source material. Embedded throughout the report are also maps that I have produced using a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technique to give the story a spatial dimension. Additionally, I use photographs of the synod counties to enhance the reader’s understanding of the region’s ecological and cultural landscapes.
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Scheuren, Acevedo Sonia M. "The Opposition to Latin American Liberation Theology and the Transformation of Christianity, 1960-1990." FIU Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2454.
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This thesis aims to explore the political, social and religious opposition to Liberation Theology in Latin America during the 1960s to 1990s, and the transformation of Christianity. During this period, most Latin American countries underwent social struggles and political repression in which opposition and persecution arose from dictatorial and military governments who labeled those committed to the poor as communists. Liberation Theology emerged as an ecclesial and theological trend committed to the poor, in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in Latin America. This thesis traces the origins, development, expansion and repression of Liberation Theology. This work maintains that under the Cold War context and the National Security Doctrine, Liberation Theology became a target of political repression because its commitment with the poor placed it as subversive and communist. This research reveals how it was repressed with violence and the promotion of counteracting religious groups, leading to changes in Christianity.
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Haynie, Kathleen Louise. "A Good Mormon Wife." PDXScholar, 2012. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1119.
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Within the Mormon culture, women are expected to marry, raise children, and be a "helpmeet" to their husbands. Both men and women are taught that they cannot attain the highest degree of heaven unless they are married in a Mormon temple, where they have been "sealed for time and all eternity." Although neither one can achieve this lofty goal without the other, and although there are some aspects of the Mormon culture in which there is a fair degree of equality between men and women, there is no denying that this is a patriarchal culture. Men hold the priesthood and they preside in their homes. The woman is the man's companion and counselor. Kathy Haynie converted to Mormonism when she was just eighteen, and she met and married her husband only two years later. She is committed to her religion and to her new family, and so she is as surprised as anyone when she begins to chafe under a manipulative and controlling husband. She is naive and credulous, and so she assumes that she needs to pray more, keep her mouth shut, and endure to the end. All of that changes when she attends a week of outdoor training for Boy Scout leaders, where she is one of only a handful of woman, and the only woman in her training patrol. Near the end of the week, Kathy realizes that she has been ignoring a self she has held within for fifteen years. Torn between her love of her children and her commitment to stable family life, and the increasing need she feels for genuine companionship, Kathy navigates the uncertain realm of friendship with one of her scouting friends. We watch her blossom as she gains confidence and skills to take her family out into the wilderness at the same time that she is deluding herself about her involvement with her friend. Family, faith, and friendship collide in this memoir of a Mormon wife and mother.
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St, John David. "Non-Ownership Principles as Understood by Lay Practitioners of Jainism and Quakerism." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3205.
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This thesis examines how lay members of the Jain and Quaker traditions understand and navigate ideals of non-ownership. The tenets of aparigraha (non-ownership) and the testimony of simplicity are explored to show how interpretation of sacred texts leave open the possibility for financial success.
Through interviews with members of Jain and Quaker communities in the US, and textual research, I assert that proper methods for earning, maintaining and using capital in each tradition transcend prohibitions against excess accumulation. Following Foucault and Weber, I show that proper ethical ways of earning and spending money depend on community-based interpretations and self-policing.
My research suggests that lay members focus on ethical ways to earn and spend money rather than the amount of wealth they possess. Due to these foci, transgressions of ideals are viewed within community-established norms, which maintain high levels of engagement with both the capital world and their own religious tradition.
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Hunniecutt, Jeni R. "Infidelity and Identity: Cheating, Children, and the Church." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2013. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1165.
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When children grow up in a Christian home they learn fidelity is essential in a relationship. The inconsistency of biblical messages and parental infidelity is identity altering for children. In this study I use autoethnography to explore how my parents’ infidelity collided with religious teachings to shape my identity and influence my interpersonal relationships. I also use narrative interviewing to identity the ways my siblings were affected by the same experience and how such discrepancies in our home influenced their identities. The theory of narrative inheritance (Goodall, 2005) serves to be a source of empowerment as well as a contributing factor to definitions of infidelity. Familial roles are illuminated as I explore how my siblings and I negotiated cognitive dissonance that resulted from the conflicting narratives of Christianity and parental infidelity.
13
Perry, Clifton Scott. "Developing denominational identity in the youth of an Air Force chapel community." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1990. http://www.tren.com.
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Powell, Joshua McKay. "THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT OF JUSTINIANIC RELIGIOUS POLICY PRIOR TO THE THREE CHAPTERS CONTROVERSY." UKnowledge, 2017. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/history_etds/48.
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The emperor Justinian's religious policy has sometimes been characterized as haphazard or incoherent. This dissertation examines religious policy in the Roman Empire from the accession of the emperor Justin to the inception of the Three Chapters controversy in the mid 540's AD. It considers the resolution of the Acacian Schism, Justinian's apparent ambivalence with regard to the Theopaschite formula, the attempt to court the anti-Chalcedonians in Constantinople in the period leading up to the Council of 536, and the relationship between the genesis of the Three Chapters and Second Origenist controversies.
Even during these seemingly disparate episodes, this dissertation argues that it is possible to account for the apparent incoherence of this period. To do so, we create an account which includes and appreciates the embeddedness of imperial policy within a social context with two key features. First, we must bear in mind the shifting interests and information available to the individual agents through and over whom the emperor hoped to project influence. Second, we must identify the shifting and hardening symbolic and social boundaries established through the interactions of these same, competing agents. These form the basis for in- and out-group categorization. The individual interests of individual people—whether Justinian, Vitalian, Dioscorus, Leontius, Eusebius, Theodore Askidas, or Pelagius—within complex networks must always be accounted for to give a complete picture. When this social context is accounted for, Justinian's approach appears as that of a rational actor, having incomplete information, with consistent policy goals, working within inconsistent constraints to achieve those goals.
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Lanier, Ryan David. "The Catholic Church's approach to restoring its image in the face of the sexual abuse crisis." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2002. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2076.
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The public relations response of the church to the sexual abuse malady is the focus of this project. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the discourse and actions of the church according to image restoration theory.
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Maxwell, Lindsey Brooke. "The Pneuma Network: Transnational Pentecostal Print Culture In The United States And South Africa, 1906-1948." FIU Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2614.
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Exploding on the American scene in 1906, Pentecostalism became arguably the most influential religious phenomenon of the twentieth century. Sparked by the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, the movement grew rapidly throughout the United States and garnered global momentum. This study investigates the original Los Angeles Apostolic Faith Mission and the subsequent extension of the mission to South Africa through an examination of periodicals, mission records, and personal documents. Using the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa as a case study, this study measures the significance of print media in the emergence and evolution of the early Pentecostal movement.
Based on historical analysis of more than 260 issues of the mission’s periodical, “The Comforter and Messenger of Hope,” this dissertation demonstrates how the publication served a variety of functions critical to the establishment of Pentecostalism in South Africa. As a work of cultural history, it situates the periodical within larger trends in South African culture and society. It illustrates how the periodical functioned simultaneously at the local and international level to standardize Pentecostal discourse and formulate an early Pentecostal identity. Finally, this dissertation argues that Pentecostal periodicals formed a transnational network of Pentecostal thought, connections, and support in the early twentieth century that influenced the development of Pentecostalism in the South African context.
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Slaven, Craig D. "Southern Transfiguration: Competing Cultural Narratives of (Ec)centric Religion in the Works of Faulkner, O’Connor, and Hurston." UKnowledge, 2016. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/31.
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This project explores the ways in which key literary texts reproduce, undermine, or otherwise engage with cultural narratives of the so-called Bible Belt. Noting that the evangelicalism that dominated the South by the turn of the twentieth century was, for much of the antebellum period, a relatively marginal and sometimes subversive movement in a comparatively irreligious region, I argue that widely disseminated images and narratives instilled a false sense of nostalgia for an incomplete version of the South’s religious heritage. My introductory chapter demonstrates how the South’s commemorated “Old Time” religion was not especially old, and how this modernist construct of an idealized past helped galvanize Southern evangelicalism into a religion that more readily accommodated racial hegemony in the present. The following three chapters examine Faulkner’s Light in August, O’Connor’s Wise Blood, and Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Moses, Man of the Mountain. I find that each of these novels embeds traces of forgotten religious dissidence. The modern nostalgia for a purer old-time religion, my readings suggest, says less about the history of religion in the South than it does about New-South efforts to merge evangelical and “Southern” values, thereby suppressing any residual opposition between them.
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Burns, Andrew R. "Confirmation of Prophecy by Proxy: Audience Anticipation and Reception of the 2014 Movie Left Behind and its Relevance to the Dispensational Premillennialist Worldview." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2015. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2019.
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Media has the potential to legitimize or spread a belief system to the general public. The 2014 movie Left Behind is an example of a deliberate attempt at promoting the belief system referred to as dispensational premillennialism (DPM), or belief in the imminent rapture of Christians. Producers of Left Behind (2014) sought to promote DPM to the general public, hoping for a mass conversion. Online discussion and interviews were gathered and interpreted qualitatively. Content analysis of audience anticipation and reception show believers were as concerned with the conversion of the general public via this movie than the movie itself. Differences between the text of the movie and discussion surrounding the film provide insights into the DPM worldview. Dispensational premillennialists are observed; rejecting earthly existence as counterfeit, asserting the general inerrancy of prophecy while rejecting “date setting” practices and using the effigy of the Antichrist to criticize perceived socio-political enemies.
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Stamper, Amber M. "Witnessing the Web: The Rhetoric of American E-Vangelism and Persuasion Online." UKnowledge, 2013. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/3.
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From the distribution of religious tracts at Ellis Island and Billy Sunday’s radio messages to televised recordings of the Billy Graham Crusade and Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, American evangelicals have long made a practice of utilizing mass media to spread the Gospel. Most recently, these Christian evangelists have gone online. As a contribution to scholarship in religious rhetoric and media studies, this dissertation offers evangelistic websites as a case study into the ways persuasion is carried out on the Internet. Through an analysis of digital texts—including several evangelical home pages, a chat room, discussion forums, and a virtual church—I investigate how conversion is encouraged via web design and virtual community as well as how the Internet medium impacts the theology and rhetorical strategies of web evangelists. I argue for “persuasive architecture” and “persuasive communities”—web design on the fundamental level of interface layout and tightly-controlled restrictions on discourse and community membership—as key components of this strategy. In addition, I argue that evangelical ideology has been influenced by the web medium and that a “digital reformation” is taking place in the church, one centered on a move away from the Prosperity Gospel of televangelism to a Gospel focused on God as divine problem-solver and salvation as an uncomplicated, individualized, and instantaneously-rewarding experience, mimicking Web 2.0 users’ desire for quick, timely, and effective answers to all queries. This study simultaneously illuminates the structural and fundamental levels of design through which the web persuades as well as how—as rhetoricians from Plato’s King Thamus to Marshall McLuhan have recognized—media inevitably shapes the message and culture of its users.
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Taylor, Faye C. "Miracula, saints' cults and socio-political landscapes : Bobbio, Conques and post-Carolingian society." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12805/.
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Despite the centrality of monastic sources to debates about social and political transformation in post-Carolingian Europe, few studies have approached the political and economic status of monasteries and their saints' cults in this context, to which this thesis offers a comparative approach. Hagiography provides an interesting point of analysis with respect to the proposition of mutation féodale, and more importantly to that of the mutation documentaire and its relation to monastic 'reform', which Part I discusses. Parts II and III consider Bobbio and Conques, and their miracula (dedicated to San Colombano and Sainte Foy) within their respective socio-political environments, since the best of the recent scholarship concerning the millennial period has emphasized the specificity of regional experience. At Bobbio the closeness of the king physically and some continuity in royal practices between the tenth and eleventh centuries shaped monastic experience. It directed and sometimes restricted monastic discourse, which maintained an older tradition of general service to the kingdom, although innovations in relic usage helped monastic negotiations with the sovereign. At Conques, the waning of royal control created space for literary and cultic advances that served to bolster the monastery's position within local power structures. In this landscape older forms of public authority were purposefully minimized and hierarchy and landownership were negotiated between aristocrats, including Sainte Foy at the head of Conques. Whilst the categories of the 'feudal transformation' debate can offer a useful framework for the analysis of two very different monasteries and their local societies, the comparison demonstrates that placing monasteries at the centre of our debate is crucial to understanding the documents they produce, and therefore questions the potential that these have to shed light on wider societal change. Concerns over land and autonomy were central to both institutions, although these operated on different conceptual planes, because of different bases of landed patrimony dating back much further than the tenth century. Each monastery negotiated hierarchy and clientele through their miracula and according to local socio-political rules. Therefore, whilst related documentary and cultic transformations were inseparable from socio-political pressures, these were not necessarily pressures simply reacting to mutation féodale, but were formative processes in the direction and shape of social change.
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Rowland, Jones Sarah Caroline. "Doing God in public : an Anglican interpretation of MacIntyre's tradition-based reasoning as a Christian praxis for a pluralist world." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2011. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12286/.
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‘We don’t do God’, Alastair Campbell famously said of UK government policy-making. In contrast, Anglican Bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference committed themselves to reflect on contextualising their faith, and pursue their conclusions in public ethical discourse. This thesis proposes that the Bishops (and others) may justifiably pursue this two-fold course, through the application, reinterpretation and development of Alasdair MacIntyre's tradition-based moral reasoning. I contend that the validity of a MacIntyrean approach in contextualising Christianity is readily apparent; and can shed light on Anglican differences around human sexuality. Through distinguishing between MacIntyre’s ‘utopian’ theory and his practical requirement merely to be ‘good enough’ to ‘go on and go further’, I argue that we find effective resources for extensive moral rational engagement with other traditions, and, more surprisingly, within liberal democracy. This, I agree with Jeffrey Stout, has the potential to operate, to a useful degree, as akin to a ‘tradition’. I then outline how the Bishops can best pursue substantive, rational, ethical dialogue, first, with other communities of tradition; second, with those groupings, widespread throughout society, which, though not fully-fledged communities of tradition, nonetheless sufficiently reflect them to be able to sustain some degree of moral debate; and third, through developing MacIntyre's appropriation of Aquinas’ work on Natural Law, in circumstances that, or among those who, uphold no tradition. In each case, I argue the potential is greater than MacIntyre allows, and, importantly, is enhanced by constructive engagement, which it is therefore generally a morally rational obligation to pursue. With examples drawn primarily from the work of Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, I point to practical ways in which my proposed MacIntyrean praxis can both strengthen the Church’s engagement in public discourse, and enhance the nature of the public space as a place for pursuing the common good.
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Percy, Emma. "As a mother tenderly : exploring parish ministry through the metaphor and analogy of mothering." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12576/.
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As a mother tenderly: using mothering as a metaphor and analogy for parish ministry. The thesis sets out to use maternal imagery as a way of articulating the practice of parish ministry in the Church of England. The aim is to find a language which can affirm and encourage many aspects of good practice that are in danger of being over looked because they are neither well articulated nor valued. The ministry of a parish priest is a relational activity: characterised by care. It is because the priest has a responsibility to care for those entrusted to her that she engages in priestly activity. In doing so she is sharing in the collective ministry of the church in which she has a pivotal and public role. The church is to be a community in which people grow up in Christ and come to maturity of faith. In order to explore the relational activity of a parish priest the imagery of mothering is used. The changing place of women in society has made it more difficult to use gendered images and thus it is necessary to discuss whether mothering is an essentially female activity. After acknowledging the complexity of the gendered language and the reality that most women arrive at mothering through a specifically female bodily experience, the thesis goes on to state that the practice of mothering is not instinctual but learnt. It involves learning through a relationship with a particular child and what is learnt are human ways of being and doing which are not gender specific. As the child is a growing developing human being the relationship and activity needs to be adaptable and contingent, requiring concrete thinking. Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking offers a philosophical understanding of mothering as a practice shaped by three demands which are all good and often conflict. Using her understanding of mothering and drawing on Hanah Arendt’s categories of human activity the thesis explores the practice of mothering. The thesis then uses this understanding of mothering as a way of reflecting on the practice of parish ministry. As a relational activity parish ministry needs to value particularity and concrete contingent responsiveness. Intersubjective relationships need to be maintained and the virtues cultivated that guard against the temptations to intrusive or domineering styles of care on the one hand or passive abnegation of responsibility on the other. Parish ministry cannot be understood in terms of tangible productivity so different ways of understanding success and evaluating priorities need to be articulated. The thesis suggests ways of thinking about and describing aspects of parish ministry that highlight the kinds of practices that enable people to flourish. The use of maternal imagery is not intended to suggest that women have a better access to these ways of being and doing, nor that congregations are like children. Mothering at its best seeks to create the relationships and spaces in which people grow up and flourish. Times of dependency are part of that but maturity and reciprocal relationships of interdependence is the goal.
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Vnuk, Joseph. "Full of grace and truth : the sacramental economy according to Thomas Aquinas." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2013. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13153/.
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Neo-Thomism misread Aquinas by trying to find in him answers to questions posed by Descartes and Kant, producing a theology that people like Chauvet rightly abandoned. This thesis, on the other hand, proposes a decidedly pre-modern reading of Thomas. It begins with two basic structures of Thomas' thought - a threefold notion of truth (so that truth is ontological as well as epistemological), and an understanding of exitus-reditus that shows its links to “archaic” concepts such as the hau of the Maori. Then it considers human life in terms of merit and thus “economy,” (exchange of valuables); but this economy is a gift economy, and here we consider the gift in the light of Seneca (whom Thomas took as an authority) and Mauss, as well as using Allard's insights into how debt, particularly debt to God, generates what in Thomas takes the place of the Cartesian subject. In this light grace is seen as the spirit of the gift with which God graces us, giving rise to gratitude. We then consider Christ as graced and gracing us, first of all by our configuration to him in the sacraments (using the analogy of clothes), followed by a conformation in grace. We look at this in baptism and penance, but then we take the Eucharist as a three-fold sign, and show how it generates in us faith, hope and love. The unity of the sacrament as a gift is emphasised, and the cases of its division, such as fiction, the votum sacramenti, and circumcision are examined. As a Jew, Derrida gives insight into grace before the coming of Christ and the value of the sacrifice of Abraham, and in this way we can see how Thomas circumvents Derrida's critique of the gift. Finally we compare Thomas with Chauvet.
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Page, Sarah-Jane. "Femininities and masculinities in the Church of England : a study of priests as mothers and male clergy spouses." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2010. http://etheses.nottingham.ac.uk/1459/.
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This research is premised on the investigation of two under-researched groups within the Church of England, whose subjectivities have altered since the Church of England made the momentous decision to allow the ordination of women in 1992. Whilst women priests more generally have been subject to research investigation and comment, priests as mothers and the non-ordained spouses of women priests are two groups of people whose experiences and subjectivities have not been explored in explicit detail. Indeed, at the heart of this research is the theme of gender identity and how femininities and masculinities are lived and negotiated by these two groups constructing their identities within the boundaries of the Church. Rather than considering gender in a one-dimensional way, by focusing on both femininities and masculinities a more nuanced and complex picture will be allowed to emerge. This study emphasises the way in which everyday life is negotiated and lived and how this often disrupts traditional established binaries such as public and private, masculinity and femininity, sacred and profane. It considers how women priests negotiate an institution governed by sacredly masculinist norms and how their positioning as mothers impacts on this mediation. Motherhood is taken as a topic of salient concern, unpicking its ideologies and how these dominant ideas have been informed by both secular and religious discourses, especially regarding how sacred and profane discourses impact on motherhood’s construction. And how men as spouses mediate a terrain established as explicitly feminine is considered, highlighting the means through which gender acts as an important mechanism through which expectation and practice is established but how this is explicitly interwoven through particular gendered ways of experiencing public and private divisions.
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Sealy, Charles Scott. "Church authority and non-subscription controversies in early 18th century Presbyterianism." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2010. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1792/.
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The practice of confessional subscription, or giving assent to a confession of faith through signing a formula of approbation, was the subject of debate among Presbyterian Churches in the early eighteenth century. While other studies have examined the local controversies, this thesis offers a comprehensive examination of the question of subscription and the connections between the debates among English Dissenters, in the Church of Scotland, the General Synod of Ulster, the Synod of Philadelphia and the Presbytery of Charleston. It identifies the common background and influences, especially in questions of ecclesiastical authority in the Church of England that preceded and greatly influenced the subscription controversy, which itself was essentially a debate over Church power. The discussions within the different Church bodies are reviewed with the connections between the bodies being highlighted. The debates began with the attempt to introduce subscription among English Dissenters leading to the Salters’ Hall Debate of 1719. Although there was not an open challenge to the Westminster Confession of Faith in the Church of Scotland, the tradition of subscribing inherited from emigrants and the involvement of ministers in correspondence with other Churches influenced the developments elsewhere. Next the development of Irish Presbyterianism from both English and Scottish traditions is shown followed by a discussion of the actual controversy in the General Synod of Ulster. In a chapter on the Synod of Philadelphia an interpretation of the American Adopting Act (1729) within the context of the international debate is offered. The closing chapter covers the much overlooked Presbytery of Charleston with insights from sources that have not previously been studied for that Church’s history.
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McCulloch, David. "Developing an "Oslo model" of theological education by distance learning for the contemporary British Church of the Nazarene." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2001. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2108/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis brings together areas of research in the common theme of theological education for the ordained ministry. Its goal, through original critical analysis and original research, is to develop an "Oslo model" of theological education by distance learning for the ordained ministry of the Church of the Nazarene in the United Kingdom. This is done by drawing on the emerging competencies from the recent ecumenical Oslo debate on theological education together with the contemporary principles of distance learning. Its application is in the context of the Church of the Nazarene where theological education for the ordained ministry is a live issue. To develop the model, the argument moves through several stages in which original critical analysis and original research is done. Chapter one summarises the three year ecumenical Oslo debate in ministerial formation and theological education. Chapter two, describes the emerging "Oslo model" through the six competencies agreed at its final consultation held in 1996. The formation of the minister is seen as central to the theological education endeavour, therefore the competencies are primarily formative in being educative. Chapter three critically reflects on the context of the Oslo consultation in the knowledge that similar arguments for a new vision had already been rehearsed in the debate which led up to the formation of TEE a generation earlier. A critique of TEE is done through an examination of its philosophy and historical development. Chapter four analyses and critiques, through original documentation, a working model of TEE in its historical and philosophical context within the Church of the Nazarene. This throws more light on the reasons why Oslo may have been so reticent in its promotion of TEE. It also raises significant questions for the Church of the Nazarene of its use of the method. Chapter five considers the set of core competencies drawn up by the Church of the Nazarene for its theological education programme. Are these compatible with those from the Oslo consultation? It so, should they take precedence over the Nazarene competencies?
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Joansson, Tordur. "Brethren in the Faeroes : an evangelical movement, its remarkable growth and lasting impact in a remote island community." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3647/.
Full textAbstract:
The thesis comprises results of broad research into the Brethren Movement in the Faeroes from 1865 to 2010, emphasising the disciplines Church History, Economic, Social and Cultural History, Cultural Studies and Missiology. The role of Brethren in the Nation Building Process is analysed as well as their pioneering work in the language struggle. Drawing on recent theories the Faeroese Brethren Movement is set in national and international perspective. Interviwes with many Brethren confirm the validity of the theories and give insight into (1) the developments until the 1960s, and (2) the period after. New aspects are brought to light, analysed and seen as part of the general development in the islands, and how Brethren have influenced the national, economic and cultural progresses. Nowhere has the Brethren Movement had such support as in the Faeroes where around 15 per cent of the polulation are members; elsewhere it is between a half and one per cent at most. Reasons for this are analysed as are Brethren theology and practices, attitudes and activism which have influences the broader community. The conclusion points out that the Faeroese Brethren movement has had much greater impact on the progress and developments that so far acknowledged. Self-government, self-financing and self-propagation of each assembly have influenced attitudes outside the movement, and Brethren attitudes, pioneering spirit and new ways of thinking have inspired others. The Brethren Movement was the first to break away from colonial power (the Danish State Church) and establish a Faeroese church. Tensions and changes within the movement in the early 21st century are discussed and the future of Brethren in the Faeroes is evaluated.
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Thomas, Andrew. "The holy fools : a theological enquiry." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2009. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10797/.
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What is the significance of the deployment of madness in the early Christian ascetic experience of holiness? The first Byzantine holy fools – themselves critics of monastic orders – represent the consistent and logical conclusion of the theology and practice of the early Christian ascetics, and in particular that of the followers of Anthony and Pachomius. The flight to the desert of the first Christian anchorites and coenobites was an attempt to transform the experience and theology of holiness in church and society by transgressing the rules and thoughts of the city in a practical outworking of negative theology. The transgressive behaviour of the holy fools renewed that transformation by accepting neither secular nor religious truth and life. Where desert fathers and mothers had transformed the production of norms by their obedience and ascetic transcendence of human life, holy fools undermined the religious production of norms through their masterless obedience, defeat of vainglory, and foreignness to self. The transformation of the production of ethical knowledge amongst early Christian ascetics – through control of passions, representations, and silence – was followed through by the holy fools’ apophatic babble and rejection of religious loci of knowledge production in liturgy, confession, religious community and ecclesial authority. As a continuation of ascetic methods of reforming the self’s relation to society by brutal truthtelling and truth-hearing, the holy fools used self-ostracising insult and laughter to follow divine truth into the periphery without legislating universal modesty and submission to group truths. As such, the holy fools exemplify the practices most idealised in early Christian asceticism – humility, suspicion of fixed orders and truths, apophatic critique of doctrine and legislation – with renewed innovation and commitment to city life. They applied the strategic moves and principles of negative theology to the Christian theology and practice of holiness through aspiring to desert freedom, the practice of ignorance, and the unserious self.
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Vaughan, Patrick H. "Non-stipendiary ministry in the Church of England : a history of the development of an idea." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1987. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11248/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis traces the development of the idea of non-stipendiary ministry (NSM) in the Church of England from 1833, when it was first mooted by Thomas Arnold, to the present day. Four phases of development are identified and examined: first, the nineteenth century, when proposals to open the diaconate to men in secular employment were under discussion; second, the period leading up to the major discussion of the idea at the Lambeth Conference of 1930; third, the period leading up to the institutional establishment of 'Auxiliary Pastoral Ministry' in 1970; and fourth, the subsequent period of growth and development of NSM in practice. The method adopted is to analyse relevant debates in Convocation, Church Assembly and General Synod, together with relevant published material; new unpublished material from archives in Brisbane Diocese, Church House, Westminster, Lambeth Palace, and Selly Oak Library, as well as from the private papers of Roland Allen, is presented and analysed; the influence of developments in Anglican Churches overseas, of the World Council of Churches and of the French Worker-Priest Movement is assessed; the influence of certain key figures is examined, including that of Thomas Arnold, Walter Hook, William Hale, William Bright, Herbert Kelly, Roland Allen, F. R. Barry, Mervyn Stockwood, John Robinson, Lesslie Newbigin and E. R. Wickham. Factors influencing the development of the idea at each successive phase are identified, the most salient of which are: pressure for each local community to be self-sufficient in ministry, for the Church to offer ministry in a style and expression congruent with working-class culture, for the removal of the divide between clergy and laity, for the Church to offer meaningful witness in 'the world of work', and for supplementary ordained assistance for the diminishing numbers of stipendiary clergy. But throughout the period examined, constant restraints are shown to have been operating, restricting the smooth development of the idea. Chief amongst these are the protective reactions of the clerical profession and the over-riding influence of the parochial system. Finally, particular structural factors inhibiting the development of ministry in secular employment are identified.
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Walker, David Stuart. "The inclusivity of rural Anglicanism : theoretical and empirical considerations." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2014. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/64262/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis presents a reflection on a series of published papers which explore in a systematic way how theoretical and empirical considerations can analyse and illuminate the current condition of the Church of England in rural areas. A fourfold model of belonging through activities, events, people and places is set out and two large data samples are studied. Particular attention is paid to those who attend Church of England services, but on only a few occasions each year. The chapter structure of the thesis illustrates the progressive nature of the research and demonstrates how the component parts come together to form a cumulative and coherent case. As well as demonstrating the validity of the belonging model, implications for the governance of the Church of England and for its income generation model are drawn out and made more explicit than in the original papers. The missional implications for a church that has adopted a model led by a dominant "activity" theme are considered. The power of a cumulative study using a range of empirical tools is shown. It is concluded that, within an Anglican view of inclusivity, the rural Church of England embraces a diverse range of people who express their Anglican identity and their sense of belonging to the Church in ways that can now be better understood.
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Kay, William Kilbourne. "A history of British Assemblies of God." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1989. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13082/.
Full textAbstract:
There are two main historical works on Assemblies of God in Britain. The first is Donald Gee's Wind and Flame (originally published under the title The Pentecostal Movement in 1941; later revised and enlarged for publication in 1967). Gee was intimately involved in much of AoG's development not only in the British Isles but also overseas, There are, however, three things which Donald Gee fails to do and which I decided to attempt in the history which follows. First, and very properly, Gee underestimates his own contribution to the shape of British pentecostalism. A natural modesty prevented Gee from seeing all the value of his own efforts. Second, Gee very rarely gives the source of any information he cites. There is a complete absence of footnotes, references, printed materials and the like in his book. We simply do not know what and whom he consulted when he wrote. And, third, Gee fails to make any mention of the immense social and technological changes which took place in his life time. He gives us the foreground without the background, and yet the background was important. It matters, for example, that ordinary commercial air travel opened up after the 1939-45 war or that telephones became common in the 1950s. The Pentecostal movement did not develop in a vacuum and sometimes successful events are explicable by reference to forgotten factors. For example, the success of the great Stephen Jeffreys crusades makes more sense when one knows that, at one stage, he moved from town to town, each within easy travelling distance of the others; this allowed those who had been attracted by one set of meetings to travel to the next. Or that these crusades took place when the national health service in Britain did not exist and people were more desperate in their search for healing. The second main work is Walter Hollenweger's The Pentecostals (SCM, 1972). This sets British pentecostalism in a world wide context and allows comparisons with Pentecostal churches in Latin America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Continent and North America. Inevitably, therefore, Hollenweger's book paints on a broad canvas and omits many events within British Assemblies of God. At the end of this thesis a list is given of all the people I interviewed or consulted by phone. Not listed, however, because references are given at appropriate places in the text or notes, are the various documents which became available to me. These included letters, handbills, newspaper cuttings, minute books, diaries, reports submitted to the General Conference, accounts, short-lived magazines and, of course, all the volumes of Redemption Tidings. Undoubtedly Redemption Tidings proved to be the richest source of information. It was published continuously from 1924-85 and contained a whole variety of articles, crusade reports, letters, editorials, stenographically recorded sermons, advertisements and the like which, more than any other single source, recreate early pentecostalism. Redemption Tidings was published monthly 1924-33 and then fortnightly 1934-1956 and weekly 1956-1985. So far as the ordering of the following history is concerned, I have simply moved forward decade by decade and with little attempt to group subjects together thematically. This rather unimaginative approach has the virtue of being systematic and it was used by Adrian Hastings in his excellent A History of English Christianity: 1920-1985 (Collins, 1986). At the start of each major section, I have briefly outlined the economic and political events of the era. At the end of each major section, I have paused for sociological comment. These comments are not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, I have used some of the tools and concepts of sociology to illuminate the historical development previously described. Alternation between description and analytic comment is slightly clumsy, but seemed to be the only sensible way of handling the overall task. The events of Pentecostal history are simply not well enough known to take them for granted: they need to be described first. Any attempt to describe them while simultaneously analysing them would have proved confusing in the extreme. It is also necessary to point out that this history pays particular attention to Pentecostalism in Britain and only mentions missionary work overseas to the extent that this it is relevant to what was happening in Britain. In some respects this is unfortunate, but to do justice to the extraordinary work of men and women in various continents of the world would require a separate study of comparable length.
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Moulton, Tyler Rex. "Divine benevolence, embodiment and salvation in the teachings of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1997. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11447/.
Full textAbstract:
No abstract. From introduction: "On the whole, this thesis is more concerned with reexamining some fundamental questions than with finding all of the answers. What responses are given are to be viewed as suggestions and possibilities, and certainly not as definitive conclusions"
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Marshall, Craig Lithgow. "Mormon student religiosity and higher education." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1996. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11281/.
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This study examines the religiosity of Mormon college students in Britain and its relationship with higher education and their church. Past research has demonstrated a negative association between the level and length of education and religiosity. However, many American studies identify in Mormon students an exception to this general trend. The initial hypothesis to be tested is that British Mormons will show the same resistance to the secularizing influence of higher education as their American counterparts, despite an apparently less favourable social environment. A further proposal is that various agencies of Church support, particularly the Institutes of Religion, are an important element in sustaining religious commitment. Research methods include questionnaire surveys of students, Church administrators and Institute instructors. Religiosity scales are developed from the student questionnaire through factor analysis, utilizing procedures developed in America. Differences between the British and American scales underline the complex nature of religiosity and reflect the generally contradictory and inconclusive character of wider research in this field. The scales are used to measure student religiosity and correlations with other variables are calculated. Results confirm that for Mormon students in Britain there is no significant association between years of higher education and religiosity. Associations are demonstrated between religiosity and various Church agencies, including Institute, thus supporting the second hypothesis; however the dependency in several relationships is problematic and the influence of these agencies is not conclusive. This result stimulated a consideration of other areas of belief and practice likely to be important; characteristics of LDS faith are identified which may be significant for the resilience of Mormon religiosity.
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Hamby, Carole Anne. "A theological examination of inwardness in the faith and practice of British Quakers." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6848/.
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This thesis examines Inwardness in the faith and practice of British Quakers. Inwardness is identified within the spiritual and mystical component of individual Friends’ experiences and discussed in terms of personal experiential knowing. Both academic and devotional discourses are used to clarify what is meant by ‘spiritual consciousness’, framed both within corporate, albeit mainly tacit, formulations of Inwardness, and expressed by leading exponents of Quakerism, at two different stages of the history of the Religious Society of Friends. The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship in three ways: it identifies a distinct view of Quaker Inwardness in terms of process and state; it provides a new model of spiritual development through the Quaker worship practice; and it offers an explanation of spiritual maturity. The latter is identified with reference to an understanding of Interiority, which has consequences. Two Conditions and seven Elements of the process of gaining the state of Inwardness are identified and are found to be consistent between seventeenth and twenty-first century Quakers. Throughout the thesis analysis, reference to expansion of consciousness is interpreted in relation to mysticism, and proposes finally a new perspective on Quaker theology.
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Dales, Joanne Clare. "John William Graham (1859-1932) : Quaker apostle of progress." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7097/.
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This thesis explores the thought of John William Graham in the context of changes that took place in the Society of Friends in Britain during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. With other liberal-minded Christians, he turned against evangelicalism and strove to promote a faith open to new scientific thinking, and new approaches to the Bible. With other Quakers of his generation he found a religion which met his needs in George Fox and other early Friends, with their promotion of an inward faith, free alike of dogma and of ritual, and relying on the ‘free ministry’ of immediate inspiration. He became prominent in campaigning against tendencies within Quakerism to establish a paid pastorate and set forms of worship, and for a newly invigorated Quaker ministry. He believed that authentic Quakerism, based on the ‘Inward Light’ could lead the way towards a new and better world. Graham had an idiosyncratic outlook on theology as well as politics, especially the politics of war and of empire, which occasionally set him at variance with other Quakers of the ‘Renaissance’. In exploring points of convergence and divergence, this thesis provides new ways of understanding this crucial era in Quaker history.
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Foster, Robert. "The provision, design and effectiveness of websites for local Methodist churches." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2008. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/173/.
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This study is about the nature of the relationships between Websites – which enable global access to data and interaction – and local churches – which are congregations whose core focus is on particular, geographically-located, communities. It considers the thesis that there are significant inequalities in the provision, design and effectiveness of local Methodist church Websites which, if addressed, could result in a more consistent approach to Website provision within the Methodist Church and in better mission outcomes from the resources that are invested in Website design. The argument presented plays a part in the integration of the fields of missiology and information technology, making an original contribution to knowledge because of the way in which macro-missiological issues related to the use of technology are considered along with the micro-missiological issues related to local church Websites and the local mission priorities of individual churches. In conjunction with the gathering of new data about local church mission priorities and Websites and the production of original statistical information, new insights are revealed concerning the deployment of information technology in the context of Christian mission and, in particular, new insights into the deployment of Website technology in the context of local Methodist churches.
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Jackson, Darrell Richard. "The discourse of "Belonging" and Baptist church membership in contemporary Britain : historical, theological and demotic elements of a post-foundational theological proposal." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2009. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/378/.
Full textAbstract:
During the late twentieth century Baptist church membership declined whilst church attendance increased. An investigation of these phenomena references Stanley Grenz’s post-foundational theology and Anthony Giddens’s sociological theory of structuration. An historical overview of Baptist church history reveals the continuities and discontinuities in the theology and practice of church membership. Attention is focused on the covenantal discourse of professional theology from the early 1980s to date, on the denominational discourse informing a sample of 120 church membership materials, and on the relational discourse of twenty interviews with church members and attenders. Interview data shows that membership discourses have two forms: formal and relational. The latter is found to reduce distinctions between members and nonmembers for which ‘belonging’ provides a validating framework enforced by four features: experientially-validated subjectivity; post-denominationally conceived identity; de-structured relationality; and practical immediacy. Scripture, church tradition and the contemporary context are the sources for Grenz’s post-foundational theology and point to the trialectical tension between the covenantal, denominational and relational discourses of membership and belonging. A discursive theological methodology is proposed that is located within the congregation, rooted in a trialogue, requires deeper scriptural engagement, and is focussed on discussion of an additional Core Value: ‘relational communities’.
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Wood, Terence Arthur. "A study of perceptions of God and of relationship to God among seventeenth century and modern British Quakers." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5481/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis argues that current debates about belief within present-day British Quakerism misrepresent the nature of Quaker faith and practice by over-emphasising particular aspects of the way in which Quakers have traditionally talked about God, namely, seeking to understand the mystery of divinity and the role of the divine will in relation to human intuition and reason in guiding behaviour. By comparing texts from the seventeenth and twenty/twenty-first century, using a quantitative method, it is demonstrated that there is a consistency across time in the way in which Quakers have perceived God and their relationship to God. By treating ‘performance’ (how adherents follow the will of God) and ‘transformation’ (how adherents experience their relationship with God) as dualistic and by using different strategies to avoid the challenge of empiricism, present-day Quakers appear dis-united in their internal theological disagreements. This thesis argues that Quaker faith and practice is more accurately understood, in both periods, as a single axis, running between performance and transformation and that this pattern of believing and belonging avoids internal disputes, which are misplaced. The method of analysis itself also provides a contribution to academic understanding of how patterns of belief and behaviour can be analysed.
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Burdick, Tim. "Neo-evangelical identity within American Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) : Oregon early Meeting, 1919-1947." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4152/.
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This thesis is an historical case-study using archival written data to analyse the formation of a neo-evangelical identity within Oregon Yearly Meeting (OYM) of the Religious Society of Friends, with emphasis on the years 1919-1947. The argument of this thesis is that by 1919 there were fundamentalist thinking patterns developing within the corporate religious identity of the Yearly Meeting (YM) marked by ecumenical separatism, world-rejecting views, biblical literalism and decreasing social action. The values of this fundamentalist identity became dominant by 1926, pervading the mindset of the YM until the late 1940s when it was replaced with a more socially-concerned, world-engaging expression of evangelicalism. This neo-evangelicalism attempted to highlight positive Christianity, while maintaining the supernatural orthodox theology of its fundamentalist predecessors. The pattern that unfolded in OYM shares similarities with a larger pattern taking place throughout Protestant Christianity in America over the same period. This research makes original contributions to scholarship in three ways. Firstly, it analyses a particularly influential group among evangelical American Quakers during the twentieth-century. Secondly, it starts to redress the dearth of scholarship specific to evangelical Quakerism, and, thirdly it adds to the scholarship on twentieth-century American Protestantism by focusing on an understudied region and denomination.
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Padwick, Timothy John. "Spirit, desire and the world : Roho churches of western Kenya in the era of globalization." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2003. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/264/.
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This thesis is a study of the Roho churches of Vihiga District, Western Kenya, from their beginnings in 1927 to the present. After an initial historical overview of this group of African Independent Churches, it examines their creation of a vernacular theology – the founders’ vision. This was characterized by a strong pneumatology, in which the Holy Spirit acts as guardian of the community. The thesis locates this vision, and its rejection of modernist, western, and capitalist modes of development, in the articulation of the traditional communal mode of production in contradistinction to the European industrial capitalism characteristic of Kenya in the 1930s. It examines the desire of Roho leaders to play a role in the public sphere and recounts their attempt to influence national political life through an indigenous conciliar movement at the time of political independence. Finally, it examines the process of re-envisioning undertaken by Roho leaders and members to meet the dual challenges of pauperization and modernization at the present day.
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Cho, Mijin. "British Quaker women and peace, 1880s to 1920s." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1072/.
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This thesis explores the lives of four British Quaker women—Isabella Ford, Isabel Fry, Margery Fry, and Ruth Fry—focusing on the way they engaged in peace issues in the early twentieth century. In order to examine the complexity and diversity of their experiences, this thesis investigates the characteristics of their Quakerism, pacifism and wider political and personal life, as well as the connections between them. In contrast to O’Donnell’s view that most radical Victorian Quaker women left Quakerism to follow their political pursuits with like-minded friends outside of Quakerism, Isabella Ford, one of the most radical socialists, and feminists among Quakers remained as a Quaker. British Quakers were divided on peace issues but those who disagreed with the general Quaker approach resigned and were not disowned; the case of Isabel Fry is a good example of this. This thesis argues that the experiences of four Quaker women highlight the permissive approach Quakerism afforded its participants in the early twentieth century, challenging previous interpretations of Quakerism as a mono-culture. Highlighting the swift change within Quakerism from being the closed group of the nineteenth to a more open group in the twentieth century, this thesis describes the varied and varying levels of commitment these women had to the group as ‘elastic Quakerism’.
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Read, Mark John. "Quakers in the contemporary workplace : a critical analysis." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7546/.
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This thesis contends that contemporary work processes shape fundamentally Quaker practice in the everyday context. This qualitative research is based on semi-structured interviews of opportunistically acquired participants. It is therefore an in-depth, if not statistically representative, study of the contemporary Quaker tradition. Participants in the research are overwhelmingly adult converts who frame conversion to the Quaker church in liberating terms. The interviewees depict the prescription of religion by mainstream Christian churches as oppressing the individual religious enterprise. Rather, Quakers in the research tend to see their religious journey as a primarily individual project which is affirmed by their conversion to the church. Tensions are also evidenced, however, between affiliates’ highly individualised re-imagination of the Quaker tradition and conformity to the collective concern. The interviewees claim an intention to improve the world, matching Quaker horizons with those espoused by their work organisations. Lived religion and work are thus conflated by affiliates with regard to their everyday social practice. Workaday tensions, however, show that the claimed utopian compact between affiliates and the work setting is provisional. The thesis concludes that, whilst the contemporary work organisation sets out the terms of affiliates’ social practice, these Quakers tend towards pragmatism in the everyday.
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Doyle, Una. "Stress in the Roman Catholic priesthood : "harvest for a millennium"." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2005. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11308/.
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This thesis investigates the existence of stress in the Roman Catholic priesthood. A transactional model of stress is adopted as a heuristic for this investigation. Here, stress is seen as the relationship between features of the work environment, as appraised by clergy themselves, and various indicators of diminished well-being e.g. poorer self reported health, lower self-esteem and increased pessimism about the role and effectiveness of the priest in the future. This model also places considerable emphasis upon the possible role of perceived support in the overall aetiology - or amelioration - of stress. Using this transactional model as a guide, seventeen work environment stressors, were identified on the basis of qualitative and quantitative investigations with a total sample of 189 priests drawn from four dioceses. The qualitative investigation comprised twelve in-depth interviews with an opportunistic sample of clergy. The focus of these interviews was to determine the antecedents and consequences of stress as perceived by members of the clergy. On the basis of the interview data a bespoke questionnaire was developed for distribution to a broad sample of priests. The questionnaire measured both antecedents (work environment factors) and consequences (impacts on well-being) as well as perceptions of the support available to priests both inside and outside the Church. The data to be presented show that it is the contradictions that many priests have to deal with which are often pivotal in the aetiology of stress e.g. the implementation of Canon Law in an increasingly secular world. The multiplicity and diversity of roles that priests now have to fulfil - whether at Diocesan or parochial level, is also a key factor, as are the daily parish/diocesan administration duties that priests have to undertake and the increasingly 'convenience stores mentality' (as clergy see it) of the Church community. Very little support in dealing with these issues was perceived to be available to them by many priests within the sample. The implications of these results are discussed both in terms of their correspondence with findings in general occupational stress research and in terms of a proposed rudimentary stress management programme that might be implemented to help manage stress within the Roman Catholic priesthood.
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Woodcock, Anne C. "Methodist allegiance in South Nottinghamshire parishes 1770-1875." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2015. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29278/.
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This study considers the nature of Methodist allegiance in four south Nottinghamshire parishes from the arrival of the denomination in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century until about 1875. In this area, Methodism became strongly established against an inadequate Anglican church but nevertheless most individuals did not exhibit an exclusive commitment. Using records from the Newark, subsequently Bingham, Wesleyan Methodist circuit, relating to the Societies in three medium-sized villages and one small market town, and looking particularly at Methodist membership and decisions regarding choice of baptismal rite, the research shows the existence of both exogenous growth and continuing fluidity of allegiance from the early period until well beyond the mid-century point of the religious census. It demonstrates a previously unidentified, significant turnover in Methodist membership throughout the period, which occurred irrespective of apparent growth, stability or decline. This lends support to the growing body of evidence about both varying and dual denominational allegiance, in particular between the Wesleyan chapel and the parish church. The research further confirms this phenomenon in relation to baptismal decisions, where some committed Methodist families continued to use the Anglican rite and many varied their choice for different children. In investigating these facets of religious life, the study also establishes the existence of emerging religious competition during the nineteenth century, evidenced additionally in competitive church building, service patterns and the provision of education. Only by the last quarter of the century were denominational boundaries clearly hardening, particularly in the town of Bingham, but this thesis demonstrates that until then allegiance was neither exclusive nor consistent.
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Pocock, Christine Margaret. "The origins, development and significance of the circuit in Wesleyan and primitive Methodism in England 1740-1914." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2015. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/30585/.
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This thesis is a contribution to the organisational history of Methodism. It seeks to investigate and record the origins, development and significance of the circuit in the connexional structure of Methodism. This in order to rectify what is an omission in Methodist histories and to inform future reflection on organisation. The field of research is Wesleyan and Primitive Methodism in England from c. 1740 to 1914. Originally the route of an itinerant preacher, the circuit soon became a ‘sub-regional’ unit of oversight, ministry and administration within a connexional structure. Itinerancy however remained an essential element of the connexional system. After addressing circuit origins and the transition, this thesis proceeds to investigate its development, both in the context of the Connexion and internally. The number, size and shape of circuits is explored, together with influencing factors. The main internal elements: the quarterly meeting, the local preachers’ meeting and the role of assistant (later superintendent) receive individual attention, as do the ‘temporal affairs’ of the circuit. Examination of the suitability of the circuit and itinerant system for inner city work in the late nineteenth century shows its limitations in this respect. In addressing the circuit in organisational terms, the implications, benefits and tensions of being part of a Connexion are brought to light. This includes the relationship between the conference and the circuits, and the expectations and understandings of lay people (including local preachers) against those of the itinerants. The significant differences between Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist organisational practice are identified.
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Kehoe, Sara Karly. "Special daughters of Rome : Glasgow and its Roman Catholic Sisters, 1847-1913." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1065/.
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Russell, Andrea. "Richard Hooker : beyond certainty." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2010. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11335/.
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For over four hundred years Richard Hooker has been firmly attached to the Church of England and his life and writings used to promote and preserve that institution’s self-understanding. Consensus as to his theological beliefs and ecclesiastical loyalties has, however, never been reached – even though each generation of scholars has claimed to discover the 'real' Richard Hooker. In spite of the differing, and often conflicting interpretations, there have been several constants – beliefs about Hooker and his work that have remained virtually unchallenged throughout the centuries. The aim of this thesis has been to examine three of those aspects and in so doing ascertain whether their truth is more assumed than proven. The first of these assumptions is the fundamental belief that Hooker is attached securely to the English Church and that their identities are so interwoven that to speak of one is to speak of the other. The second is that Hooker’s prose – his unique writing style and powerful rhetoric – can be ignored in the process of determining his theology. And thirdly, the widely-held belief that, as the 'champion of reason', Hooker’s faith is essentially rational and that God is perceived and experienced primarily through the intellect. Challenging the truth of each of these statements leads to an uncertainty about Hooker that, rather than negating scholarship, allows research to be liberated from the dominance of categorisation. Such a change would acknowledge that Hooker's theology transcends Anglican studies and would allow his radical thinking to reach a wider audience.
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Turnham, Margaret H. "Roman Catholic revivalism : a study of the area that became the diocese of Middlesbrough 1779-1992." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12539/.
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This thesis seeks to provide a grassroots study of the diocese of Middlesbrough (1779-1992), in order to contribute to the history of the English Catholic community since it emerged from the Penal Times. Secondly, it is an examination of the manifestation of revivalism and renewal in Catholic devotional practice. The geographical extent of the study covers an area of Yorkshire with a strong recusant history, and that period has been well-served in Catholic historiography. However, writing on the period following the easing of the Penal Laws on Catholics and into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is remarkable for the paucity of references to the diocese and the area that it covers. Therefore this study sheds light upon a particular Catholic community that has been largely invisible to historians. Although the Catholic community itself might appear to be invisible, the devotional practice within it offers many insights, such as the extent to which the social culture influenced the practice of faith. Therefore it teases out and examines the changing nature of devotional practice, and compares it to aspects of Evangelical revivalism that provided the surrounding religious culture. It also examines the influences that came to bear upon the community itself, assessing their importance in the revival and renewal of faith of the people within it. By examining the history of Catholic devotional practice in this area of Yorkshire, it comes to the conclusion that revivalism and renewal are integral elements in Catholic devotion and as a result Catholics and Evangelicals have more in common with each other than their adherents have been ready to acknowledge.
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Dare, Ben. "Foundations of 'Ecological Reformation' : a critical study of Jürgen Moltmann's contributions towards a 'New Theological Architecture' for environment care." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2012. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/37723/.
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Jürgen Moltmann’s desire to see the relationship between humans and our natural environment improve is long-standing. In later years he called for a ‘new theological architecture’ to help facilitate an ‘ecological reformation’ of Christianity and society. While Moltmann did not claim to have created this new architecture, one of his work’s aims has clearly been to contribute towards it. To what extent has Moltmann been successful in this aim? Firstly, his doctrine of the Trinity provides the themes of love and relatedness which pervade and colour his whole project. These themes then interact with other key areas of Moltmann’s thought that inform this architecture: creation, God’s ongoing care and openness towards creation (largely pneumatology and christology), and eschatology. Each of these areas contribute to a theological architecture in which non-human creation, past, present, and future, is a full recipient of God’s uniting love and openness. Naturally this leads towards a consideration of the ecological reformation. Less positively, Moltmann’s discussion of God’s creating through self-restriction presents some problems for this architecture’s coherence, although Moltmann’s developing views on this do help provide a solution. Furthermore, analysis of the criticisms made by various commentators suggests that several debated areas are actually particularly productive for Moltmann’s contributions to the architecture. Other criticisms do highlight areas of concern and possible development, but do not present terminal problems. The potential for this architecture to address practice, not simply theory, increases through elements of Moltmann’s theological anthropology that challenge humanity’s behaviour. Those elements thus form a lens through which Moltmann’s wider contributions to the architecture more powerfully speak of the need for creation care. Therefore, while Moltmann’s contribution towards a new architecture for ecological reformation would be helped by certain modifications, nevertheless it is highly significant. Its wide scope makes it fertile for further contributions and development.
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Samuel, Joy T. "The pneumatic experiences of the Indian Neocharismatics." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8838/.
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This thesis elucidates the Spirit practices of Neocharismatic movements in India. Ever since the appearance of Charismatic movements, the Spirit theology has developed as a distinct kind of popular theology. The Neocharismatic movement in India developed within the last twenty years recapitulates Pentecostal nature spirituality with contextual applications. Pentecostalism has broadened itself accommodating all churches as widely diverse as healing emphasized, prosperity oriented free independent churches. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the Neocharismatic churches in Kerala, India; its relationship to Indian Pentecostalism and compares the Sprit practices. It is argued that the pneumatology practiced by the Neocharismatics in Kerala, is closely connected to the spirituality experienced by the Indian Pentecostals. Spiritual gifts, healing, spiritual warfare, exorcism, prayer and worship are significant to both movements. While emphasizing about healing, prosperity, and the miracles the movement is unable to cater the pastoral needs of those who could not experience any. The daily Christian experience with struggles and pain shapes the pneumatology of the Neocharismatics. However, the Neocharismatics practice it as emotional engagement with a modern outlook that relates to globalization. The argument engages with Pentecostalism as a global movement, and Neocharismatic Christianity as an advanced version of globalized Pentecostalism. Healing, prosperity and miracles give prime importance in the church. Hence spiritual life is seen as a fulfillment of a way out of the struggles of material life. This thesis suggests the need to construct a pneumatology for the Neocharismatics, which is focused towards the Christian doctrine. The Holy Spirit leads one to the knowledge and the joy in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, which overtakes any negative situations of life and transforms the believer to the image of Jesus Christ.