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This thesis aims to provide an answer to the question of how one lives well as a Christian in consumer society by looking at the concept of simple living and considering what resources it has to offer. That we live in a society shaped by consumerism is not contested. How that consumerism unfolds, however, and how a Christian is to respond to those forces, is widely debated. Consumerism poses a number of significant challenges to the Christian believer and those who attempt to practice some form of simplicity would claim that this furnishes them with a way of meeting and counteracting those challenges. Although works on consumerism abound, both the concept and practice of simplicity have received scant attention in academic circles. This thesis seeks to make a small step in filling that lacuna. Using both quantitative and qualitative research, the thesis is based on a substantial piece of empirical research focussed on a self-styled, ‘simpler living’ Christian network, called Breathe. The research is designed to explore a nexus of issues around what sort of person is involved with Breathe; what they think simplicity is; in what ways they see the decisions they are making as responding to consumerism, and what relationship this has to their faith. What becomes clear is that the attempts of the Breathe members to simplify their lives are not undertaken as a whim, but emanate from clear ideological convictions. Arising from the results of this research, the thesis thus considers how Breathe has emerged from the intersection of a number of different discursive frameworks – global, political, cultural and ecclesiological – and seeks to unpack these. The final section of the thesis takes the research findings and looks to provide a theological articulation for what Breathe members are trying to do, with the aim of moving towards developing a theology of simplicity. As a part of this, we consider a series of tensional relationships that Breathe members live within and we then develop a theological framework to enable us to make sense of what is taking place. The long tradition of discussion around happiness and well-being associated with Aristotle and Aquinas is drawn on as we develop an understanding of simplicity as a justice-focussed eudaimonist ethic.

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George Parkin Grant (1918-88) was one of Canada's greatest 20th century minds. He is best known for his contributions to Canadian nationalism, the Red Tory tradition, and his philosophical critique of liberal technocracy. In this thesis, I will argue that behind Grant's personae as philosopher, political scientist, and social activist -indeed, driving them all - stands a cohesive core of contemplative-prophetic theology, deriving and developing from Grant's conversion. Despite his stature among our foremost thinkers, Grant's animating spirituality and constitutive convictions have not been sufficiently established or adequately assembled. Louis Greenspan explains, "There are those who seek in Grant's philosophical writings a systematic statement of philosophical first principles, a summa Grantium, but this enterprise is very hazardous. The interpreter must ... deal with the very unusual framework of Grant's problematic. ... [It] must be considered in the framework of Grant's commitments to philosophy and Christianity ... Much of his thought was engaged with Simone Weil, but he published very little on her work." The unique purpose of this thesis is to venture this precise challenge. That is, I will enucleate the life and thought of George Grant to its generative kernel - 'the heart of the matter' - to use his parlance. Drawing from an analysis of Grant's conversion experience, I will unveil Grant's four seminal doctrines encompassed in his phrase, "We are not our own" - and reveal his central concern: the primacy of the Good vis-a-vis the primacy of the will. The bulk of the thesis traces this conviction through four abiding doctrines, which comprise Grant's calling as a contemplative theologian and social prophet. These doctrines include: I. his deconstruction of liberal modernism, II. his classical contemplative way of knowing and being, III. his Platonic Christianity and (anti-)theodicy of the Cross, and IV. his call to love-centered justice as Canada's prophet of lament. Thus it will become obvious that Grant's career as a political philosopher and lifelong educator were inextricably dependent on two prior vocations. First, he was a contemplative theologian of the Cross in the Platonic Christian tradition of Simone Weil. And second, he was a national social prophet, lamenting Canada's slide into the shadows of American liberal hegemony. I will argue that Grant's owlish vision, illumined by love, was expressed for him in Plato's Good, fulfilled in Christ's Passion, and exemplified in the life and thought of philosopher-mystic-activist Simone Weil. This is widely acknowledged. But this thesis will contribute two additional major elements to Grantean scholarship on these fronts. It will be the most thorough work to date in tracking Grant's resonance with and reliance on Simone Weil. I identify the extensive overlap in their thought, both before and after he discovered her works. The reader will see the spiritual and intellectual correspondence between Grant and Weil on each of his four pillar beliefs. It will be the first work to chart Weil's cosmology of consent and demonstrate Grant's integration of it into his theology of the Cross-as-consent and his "politics of justice and consent". Finally, this Summa Grantium will be the first to outline and elucidate Grant's four principal doctrines using four stages of Plato's analogy of the cave (The Republic, Book 7, 514a-520a), which Grant and Weil consciously identified as their own spiritual experience.

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This thesis is a historical study of the joint efforts that ecumenical Protestants made towards the citizenship of Africans in Kenya, between 1918 and 1982. It is based on archival documents including minutes, government and church reports, correspondence, biographies and interviews as primary sources. Though it analysed actual documents of the past, it is written as a narrative history. While taking note of the origin and development of citizenship as a concept, its theories, and how it came to Kenya under the colonial state, this thesis presents findings from primary sources of how ecumenical Protestants organized themselves and made efforts towards the citizenship of Africans. ’These efforts were aimed at improving Africans’ representation in decision making organs of the state concerning labour, taxation and property rights and facilitating them through better race relations and civic empowerment. Its main argument is that though individual Protestant missions and churches had the primary task of spreading Christianity, their joint efforts in critical moments of Kenya’s socio-economic and political history between 1918 and 1982, were important for Africans’ citizenship. They did this either directly through advocacy and representation or indirectly through information and civic empowerment. Their efforts contributed to the gains that Africans made from exclusion, to localised representation in 1924, to limited national representation in 1944, and to full representation or full citizenship at independence beginning 1963. Its main findings were that of the efforts that ecumenical Protestants made towards the rights of Africans, whether by direct or indirect engagement as noted above, or both, only those that got secured in suitable laws and policies, amounted to gains towards their integration to citizenship, because the state could be held accountable to enforce. The efforts that Ecumenical Protestants made revealed important dynamics that underlay how church to state influence happened. As a result, this researcher recommends that the churches maintain their ecumenical efforts towards justice and good governance through advocating for good laws and policies and improve on their civic education by clarifying their theology of public engagement for Kenya’s largely Christian citizenry.

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