This dissertation evaluates the feasibility of a measure for implicit religiosity, and adapts an existing measure of religiosity to examine the presence of implicit religiosity among music and sports science students. Scales from the adapted measure are tested for reliability, and the resulting data is compared to data from similar research on religiosity. The dissertation is divided into three parts. Part one examines the background to the creation of the construct of implicit religion, and the development of its meaning and usage up to the present day. Hypotheses on the structure and function of religion and implicit religion are discussed with reference to recent understandings of implicit religion and simil~r concepts from other fields which illuminate the theoretical foundation of both religiosity and implicit religiosity. Part two continues with an in-depth examination of measures of religiosity and measures of secular motivation. Particular attention is given to measures which support the theoretical framework. constructed in part one. The selection and adaptation of the measure and the selection of the sample to be surveyed are discussed. Methods of data analysis are outlined and key characteristics of an effective measure are identified. VI Supplied by The British Library - 'The world's knowledge' Part three reports information and statistics associated with the sample and the context in which it is located, as well as data from the survey. The scales constructed from survey items are tested for reliability, and further analysis is carried out in the form of t-tests and correlation and partial correlation tables. These results are discussed against the background of the statistics and information about the sample and its environment, and comparisons are drawn with similar studies on religious behaviour and secular motivation. Recommendations for improving the study are given, new findings are reported, and suggestions for future research are offered. The dissertation concludes with an assessment of the effectiveness of the measure, and a discussion of the potential for future research.

Before the Frafra become Christians, they use their mythic world as an interpretative mechanism in times of sickness through the symbolic representation of <I>Kaaba</I>. When they become Christians and they fall sick, they are torn between returning to their old mythic world which they used to deal with their experiences of sickness represented in <I>Kaaba</I>, and being faithful to Western Christianity which hitherto has not seen the need to mobilise their mythic world and <I>Kaaba</I> in Christian ministry of healing. The use of Frafra mythic world as an interpretative mechanism of times of sickness through the symbolic representation of <I>Kaaba</I> is of central significance to the Frafra of the Upper East Region of Ghana. Therefore, a Frafra Christian ministry of healing has to begin with the Frafra understanding of their experiences of sickness and healing represented in <I>Kaaba</I> in their mythic world. This thesis seeks to gain some insight into how the Frafra use their mythic world in their understanding of their experiences of sickness in <I>Kaaba</I>, before we can determine what a contextualised Frafra Christian ministry of healing will be like. So we set ourselves three objectives. The first objective was to conduct among non Christian Frafra an empirical research into the nature of <I>Kaaba</I> and how they use their mythic world as an interpretative mechanism represented in <I>Kaaba</I>. The second objective was to gather views of healing from Christians, pastors, lecturers and students from two seminaries to determine how their views of Christian healing relate or do not relate to the traditional mythic worlds of their cultural background. The third objective was to use a contextual critical theological reflection method to analyse our data. The method of contextual critical theological reflection was used because our overriding goal in this thesis is how to contextualise Christian ministry of healing to Frafra Christians who fall sick.

The concern is with explaining religious distributions in Scotland on the basis of selected socio-economic variables and a model is formed of the geography of the Church in Scotland in terms of the demand for its ministrations and the provision made for its users. A historical perspective traces the evolution of the regionality and diversity of Scottish religion, and this forms a basis for an understanding of present-day patterns. Particular use is made of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship and Education. The evidence of the twentieth century supports the concept of secularisation and refinements to the concept are suggested by geographical analysis. The post-World War Two period stands out in that many denominations have experienced a notable decline in membership during these years. In order to explain these changes and their real expression a variety of independent variables are analysed and incorporated into the model. The data necessitate that two approaches be adopted: an aggregate time series analysis and a disaggregated spatial analysis, both of which employ regression methods. In these analyses the role of migration in causing not only the redistribution of demarcl but also of contributing to the fall in membership is identified. From a survey of 21 congregations distributed along a selected transact through Scotland, church member behaviour is modelled in urban and rural areas and two types of urban congregation are distinguished. At each stage a review of institutional adjustment to supply is made and it shows that historically the Church was in a position to influence demand through its provision of supply. Latterly, supply has been constrained by trends in demand but Church policies and decision-making processes are seen to influence the development of the geography of the Church as much as changes in the geography of known demand.

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Though John’s Gospel has been widely understood as ambivalent toward the idea of “church,” this thesis argues that ecclesiology is as central a Johannine concern as Christology. For the fourth evangelist, there is neither a Christless church nor a churchless Christ. Jesus is consistently depicted in the Gospel as a figure that destabilizes the social construct and generates a new communal entity. Rather than focusing on the community behind the text, the following study concentrates on the vision of community prescribed within the text. This vision is presented as a “narrative ecclesiology” by which the concept of “church” gradually unfolds throughout the Gospel’s sequence. Attending to this cumulative development, it will be argued that Johannine ecclesiology entails a corporate participation in the interrelation between the Father and Son, a participation helpfully described by the later patristic language of theosis. Before drawing on this theological discourse the thesis will provide exegesis on the theme of participation within the Prologue and the oneness motif. John 1:1–18 is recognized as one of the most influential Christological texts in early Christianity, but the passage’s Christology is inseparably bound to ecclesiology. The Prologue even establishes an “ecclesial narrative script”—an ongoing pattern of resocialization into the community around Jesus or, more negatively, of social re-entrenchment within the “world”—that governs the Gospel’s plot. The oneness theme functions within this script and draws on the Jewish theological language of the Shema: the Johannine claim to be “one” signifies that Christ-devotion does not constitute a departure from the “one God” of their Jewish religious tradition; moreover, to be “one” with this “one God” and his “one Shepherd” involves the believers’ participation within the divine family. Such participation warrants an ecclesial identity summed up in Jesus’ citation of Psalm 82: “you are gods.”

This thesis provides an original reconstruction of Gillian Rose’s work as a distinctive social philosophy within the Frankfurt School tradition that holds together the methodological, logical, descriptive, metaphysical and normative moments of social theory; provides a critical theory of modern society; and offers distinctive versions of ideology critique based on the history of jurisprudence, and mutual recognition based on a Hegelian view of appropriation. Rose’s philosophy integrates three key moments of the Frankfurt tradition: a view of the social totality as both an epistemological necessity and normative ideal; a philosophy that is its own metaphilosophy because it integrates its own logical and social preconditions within itself; and a critical analysis of modern society that is simultaneously a critique of social theory. Rose’s work is original in the way it organises these three moments around absolute ethical life as the social totality, its Hegelian basis, and its metaphysical focus on law and jurisprudence. Rose’s Hegelian philosophy includes an account of reason that is both social and logical without reducing philosophy to the sociology of knowledge, thereby steering between dogmatism and relativism. Central to this position are the historically developing nature of rationality and knowing, and an account of the nature of explanation as depending on a necessarily and necessarily imperfectly posited totality. No totality is ever fully attained but is brought to view through the Hegelian-speculative exposition of history, dirempted experience, and the tensions immanent to social theories. Rose explored one main social totality within her social philosophy – absolute ethical life – as the implied unity of law and ethics, and of finite and infinite. This enables a critique simultaneously and immanently of society and social philosophy in three ways. First, of both the social form of bourgeois property law and social contract theories reflective of it. Second, of social theorising that insufficiently appreciates its jurisprudential determinations and/or attempts to eliminate metaphysics. Third, the broken middle shows the state-civil society and the law-ethics diremptions as two fundamental features of modern society and as frequently unacknowledged influences on social theorising.

This thesis attempts to illustrate the salience of the concept ‘heresy’ for sociologically-informed studies of religious violence and opposition by removing it from its traditional moorings in historical theology and applying it to two religious movements: second-century Christians and nineteenth-century Mormons. Divided into two major sections, the study pursues its objective first by surveying available definitions of heresy (theological and sociological) and offering its own understanding of heresy as a Weberian ideal type of religious opposition. Part One of the study concludes with a look at the sociology of knowledge in general and the theory of identity adumbrated by Hans Mol in particular, appropriating each in order to outline the social process whereby religious groups facing opposition come to elaborate complex soteriologies capable of resolving the conflict. The second half of the thesis involves a close examination of early Christians and early Mormons, providing a detailed description of the types of social opposition each group faced and juxtaposing the two communities in an effort to illuminate unique historical patterns of social marginalisation. Following this investigation of each group’s religious milieu and corresponding persecution, the study engages the soteriologies articulated by Irenaeus and Joseph Smith, paying particular attention to the connections between specific forms of opposition and the way in which espousing deification helped resolve such ‘heresy’. The thesis concludes with thoughts on the relationship between adaptable belief systems (such as the forms of deification expressed by Irenaeus and Joseph Smith) and the future success of new religious movements.

This thesis is about eudaimonism in Puritan thought. I am concerned with the living strand of Christian eudaemonism within the writings of 16th and 17th century English Puritans, which has long tendrils back into the tradition, and which is, more or less, neglected by commentators. I will be concerned to show that the notion of divine callings as a kind of command from God can sit comfortably alongside this eudaemonism, without rendering the Puritans ‘divine command theorists.’ As a sub-category of eudaemonism, I will address the Puritan notion of divine callings, showing how this can be understood as an aspect of human flourishing. And, further, as a sub-category of calling, I will look at how the category of ‘work’ can also be understood as an aspect of human flourishing, illuminated from within this tradition of Christian eudaimonism. I show within the Christian eudaemonistic tradition a distinction between natural and supernatural ends, the latter being only achieved in the vision of God in the next life. With this distinction made, I show that earthly happiness is constituted by the right use of reason in theoria and praxis, being related to our work places as well as a lifelong engagement in theology and philosophy. I then show the relationship between divine command theories and naturalism by looking at the emphasis on the development of virtue to character states appropriate to humankind as rational animals as a command of God. I then move to an examination of more particular commands in the doctrine of calling, arguing that for the Puritans the means of achieving earthly happiness vary from person to person and extend into our talents and workplaces. Finally, I show that personal earthly happiness cannot be achieved without the assistance of friendship in ecclesial and political communities.

During the past fifty years, a significant encounter has taken place between representatives of Zen Buddhism and Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism. A number of Catholics and others in Asia, Europe, and the United States have attempted to bridge the gap between the traditions of the Buddhism and of Christianity. These attempts have touched upon substantive issues in the lives of Christians, who have reached out to Zen Buddhism and found that Zen spoke to them. The major purpose of this dissertation is to compare and find the similarities and differences between the spiritually of St. John of the Cross and Dogen’s Zen Buddhism as representative elements in the Christian contemplative and Zen meditative traditions. Because it is an exploration of similarities and differences between religious worlds that allows one to criticise and renew one’s awareness of one’s own tradition. I adopt the approach of attempting to understand these writings from within their own philosophical structures in elucidating the nature of mystical experience. In the course of the comparison, a number of parallels as well as differences are discussed at the phenomenological level. It will be seen that these two traditions share virtually similar diagnoses of the nature of the unreformed aspirant, and that they teach similar strategies for purification. It also will be seen that they have different meditative techniques, ultimate aims, and views of ultimate reality. However, I will conclude that the spiritualities of St. John of the Cross and Dogen’s Zen are ‘different,’ due to the fact that, they have a different ontological reality, namely ‘God’ and the ‘Buddha-nature’. In fact, both the similarities and differences will help to determine both the possibilities and limitations of the cross-cultural study of spirituality. The thesis will also provide insight into how such a comparison may contribute both to a cross-cultural study of spirituality and Christian faith. I will compare these two spiritualities in terms of the following categories: (1) anthropology; (2) spiritual path; (3) characteristics of spiritual or meditative experience on the path; (4) ultimate goal/horizon.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was an intriguing development that took place in Bengal with regard to a Christian rapprochement with Hinduism. After the early tragic death of Brahmabāndhab Upādhyāy, a convert to Catholicism whose theology conveyed a positive appreciation of aspects of Hindu <i>advait</i>ic<i> </i>philosophy, a group of Belgian Jesuits in Calcutta sought to develop the theological project initiated by Upādhyāy. Fr. Pierre Johanns (1882-1955) the most articulate figure of the group, began to<i> </i>publish a steady stream of articles in the monthly <i>Light of the East </i>that analyzed pertinent features of <i>Ved</i><i>āntic </i>thought from the perspective of his neo-Thomistic presuppositions. In his articles, Johanns engages in a thorough explication and analysis of the thinking of the Hindu <i>acaryas </i>Śankara, Rāmānuja, and Vallabha. He attempts to fashion a creative synthesis of their views, constructing a new, holistic metaphysic from the raw materials of their respective philosophical theologies. The synthesis would serve as a foundation upon which to erect the superstructure of Christian revelation, which Johanns believed completes and fulfills the <i>Vedāntic</i> ‘natural’ religion. This thesis will<i> </i>undertake an examination of the theological writings of Fr. Pierre Johanns, discussing how Johanns interacted with <i>Vedāntic </i>philosophy and assessing the success of his project. The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter introduces the material with which Johanns was dealing <i>(Ved</i><i>āntic </i>philosophy) and the theological sources which influenced his methodology and treatment of the material (Thomist approaches to other traditions; fulfillment approaches toward Hinduism). The second chapter focuses on the historical context which contributed to Johanns’ intellectual background, discussing the phenomenon of Western Orientalism, the Jesuit philosophy of education, and the thought of some key Catholics in Bengal (Upādhyāy, Animananda, Wallace, Dandoy) who shifted the theological tone toward positive engagement with Hindu philosophy. The third chapter focuses upon Johanns’ treatment of the philosophical theology of Śankara. The fourth chapter details how Johanns interacted with the system of Rāmānuja. The fifth chapter analyzes how Johanns engaged with the thought of Vallabha. The sixth chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Johanns’ project, particularly in terms of the accuracy of his exposition, the quality of his neo-Thomist synthesis, and the credibility of his ‘fulfillment’ theology.