There is an imbalance of literature on church, mission, and unity. It has often been argued the three are so close they can no longer be understood separately; scholars began to use the term ‘mission and unity’ or ‘mission in unity’. However, few, if any, works approach individual national or denominational church history in this comprehensive way. This study is an attempt to fill the gap on the issue of unity in Korean Christianity, particularly the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK).  The PCK has responded to various foreign challenges in an indigenous way, on the one hand, and has struggled with its own indigenous problems, both ecclesiastical and socio-political, on the other. This study is to examine the process of indigenisation of the issue of unity in the PCK. Centring on the PCK, there have been four simultaneous histories: the church history of the PCK, the mission history of the missions, both expatriate and indigenous, and the ecumenical movement; and the interaction between these histories is indispensable to understand the issue of unity.  Through various ecclesiastical and socio-political challenges, the ecumenicity of the PCK continues to grow, although slowly and incompletely, and thus the PCK is expected to play a role of a bridge-builder, as a divided unifier, in the polarised church and the conflict ridden world.

This dissertation aims to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between Christianity and genocide in Rwanda, looking in particular at the ways in which Anglican adherents narrate their experience of 1994. Chapter one explores the novel means of narrating one’s life which the Rwanda Mission introduced into Rwanda, and the practice of publicly giving one’s conversion testimony which was a defining characteristic of the East African Revival. Chapters two, three and four illuminate the past against which present-day Anglican accounts of 1994 are told. Chapter two argues that Anglican missionaries, like their Catholic counterparts and Belgian administrators, were obsessed with ethic categories and favoured the Tutsi because of their common European thinking concerning race. Chapter three examines post-colonial Rwanda, and shows that close cooperation between church and state followed when the Anglican predilection for the Tutsi wavered in the context of a Hutu-dominated republic. Against the background of civil war from 1990, chapter four shows that though a more inclusive territorial definition of Rwandan identity existed, ethnic identity gained a greater saliency as extremist rhetoric portrayed the RPF and Tutsis living in Rwanda as a threat to the country. Chapter five considers how perpetrators have reinterpreted their actions in the post-genocide context. Chapter six reveals how rescuers’ present-day explanations obscure their motivations for protecting people in 1994. Chapter seven discusses how through their narratives of divine intervention survivors expand their conversion testimonies, position themselves in the community and make claims on society. The study examines the variety of roles Anglicans played during the genocide, and the manner in which Christian thought was so conceived as to support genocidal violence, protect those at risk, and encourage survivors, but also to show how converts interpret the past to position themselves in the present.

This thesis seeks to address the broad question of how the Church is more effectively herself in the world. It represents a multi-modal response to the issue of how in the immediacy of the Church’s <i>present</i>, she can uncover her own integrity. It moves through questions of creation and temporality, to consider the nature of reconciliation, apostolicity, redemption and governance. I assert that whilst both history and eschatology are key components in and discussion of ecclesial identity, the temporal present <i>itself</i> is shaped by the primal and extreme events of the <i>Pascha </i>of Jesus Christ – the eschatological within the historical – which embrace the world through the dynamism of Pentecost. Chapter Two explains how social temporality is focussed on the immediacy and integrity of the present. It argues that the Church’s own temporality is shaped by a deep immersion in the relationality of Pentecost, which reaches more deeply into the world through the exercise of the Church’s apostolicity and thus moves the world towards the <i>eschaton</i> and fuller sanctity. I argue that this temporality can be understood as expressed in the most formal sense through the Liturgical Calendar, in Advental and Pentecostal streams. Chapter Three addresses questions of how the Church articulates the world’s cry for reconciliation, and explores what the characteristics of a life lived in the light of a Pentecostal-Advental shaping might be through engaging with the Great ‘O’ Antiphons of Advent. Through this Christological data from the heart of the Church’s worshipping life I seek to pay close attention to the depths of the content of the Church’s message of reconciliation. Chapter Four is broadly about redemption, and asks how the Church’s apostolicity can embrace the plurality of modern culture. I identify the Church’s apostolicity as two radically related streams of prophecy and priesthood, and argue that it is through such engagement with the cultures in which she is embedded that these cultures grow into fuller sanctity. Chapter Five considers how the Church herself is best ordered to live this apostolic life in the world, and focuses on governance. Only when the Church lives a prophetic and priestly life can the charism of “kingship” or governance complete the ecclesial <i>munus triplex</i>. The basis of my work here is a confidently refurbished theology of the local Church gathered around and by the human figure of the bishop, and constituted eucharistically.

In November 1992, the Church of England took the step that would irrevocably change its ordained ministry more significantly than at any other time in its 500 year history as the governing body of the Church, the General Synod, voted by an overwhelming majority to remove the historical, legal and theological barriers to women being ordained into its priesthood. Notwithstanding this change it has remained the case that women have had to find their place within existing systems and structures which pay little or no attention to the experiences and self-understanding of ordained women as women and as priests. There is likewise little awareness of the ways in which the formation of the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity play out on the consciousness of individuals and shape institutional practices that have lived consequences for clergymen, clergywomen and the congregations to which they minister. It is, however, not the case that women experience their ministry negatively. Indeed, they find the exercising of their priestly ministry to be both fulfilling and empowering. There remains, however, a subtle play of forces at work upon the self-understanding of women as priests that makes the role an inexact fit for them, a whisper of unease in the story of their experiences. Taking its rise from a Foucauldian analysis of power relations in the construction of gender on the formation of the self-understanding of the individual, and the French feminist theoretical position of 1'ectriture feminine, this thesis will argue that women's place and role in the Church is formed and influenced by the discourses that have created the hegemonic norm of `the good Christian woman', and that this figure is the hidden constant in the consciousness of women, men and the institution. In addition, the formation of the Church of England's practice of priestly ministry has taken place from within a worldview that is founded upon masculinist discourse and patriarchal theology and that this has given rise to the paradigmatic clergyman as the primary model of ministry in the Church. It is the tensions caused by the influence of and the interplay between these two hidden constants on the self-understanding of women that gives rise to the whisper of unease that continues to be the experience of women as priests in the Church of England.

The Philokalia is an anthology of texts which are concerned with finding God within the human soul. It is founded upon a philosophical tradition which draws upon Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, and a Christian tradition which, beginning with the New Testament authors, continued through Clement, Origen and the early patristic authors, and found its first flourishing in the Desert Fathers. In particular it draws upon the psychological insights of Evagrios of Pontus concerning the “eight thoughts” or passions. The concept of the passions represents a sophisticated phenomenology of the inner life which explains why people fail to adhere to the virtues that they espouse and make judgements which do not withstand the light of reason. It thus provides fertile theological ground for exploring the process of temptation. An understanding of the role of demons in provoking the passions maintains the tension necessary to recognise both external influence and inner motivation; both the way in which human beings are acted upon, and also the way in which they must accept personal responsibility. The passions are both an aspect of the human soul, but also something external which influences from without. They are the focus of an inner struggle against an enemy that threatens to destroy and enslave. The passions are “hostile pleasures”. In a dynamic process, which invites comparison with the phenomenon of addiction, they both confer pleasure and pain, they attract and enslave, they seduce and destroy. The Philokalia was compiled as a “guide to the practice of the contemplative life”. The radical remedies that it sought to provide for the passions were each included with a view to the fundamental vision of prayer which made radical sacrifice worthwhile. They are not cures which will simply make the problem go away, but they offer a way of life which may subdue and overcome the passions in pursuit of a theological vision of human well-being. They include a practical life of ascetic discipline, watchfulness, psalmody, and prayer. According to the Philokalia, to be a flourishing human being is to participate as fully as human beings may in the life of God in Christ. To this end, it is concerned primarily with the flourishing or well-being of the inner life of human beings. However, this is an inner life of a different kind than contemporary discourse acknowledges. Although the Philokalia exercises a kind of reflexivity, it is not the radical reflexivity that Taylor traces back to Augustine. Although it offers an objectification of (what we would call) emotions, desires and feelings, it is not Taylor’s Cartesian disengagement. Perhaps most importantly, the expressivism that gives us positive cause to articulate our own unique understanding of the voice of nature within us is completely inverted in the world of the Philokalia, which is much more concerned with our awareness of the negativity of the passions within and reaching out to the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” beyond. But this is only to acknowledge its situation within an anthropology formed by Platonic philosophy and Christian theology in relative isolation from many of the trends that Taylor identifies. The Philokalia is nonetheless concerned with a radical vision of the inner life which shows as much perceptiveness of the subtleties, deceptions, intricacies and aspirations of human thoughts as anything that has come after it. The Philokalia offers a kind of psychotherapy, but it has a vision of a radically different kind of therapy than contemporary psychologies acknowledge. The Philokalia insists on discussing everything in primarily theological terms. The effect of this is not simply to broaden the discussion in such a way that God must be included, but rather it offers an invitation to encounter God in prayer. It then understands the inner world of thoughts and feelings as something that must be discussed if a conversation about prayer is to begin. Rather than being a manual for psychotherapy, the Philokalia invites us to pray. In order that we progress in prayer, it advises that we will need to talk about things which are now more usually considered the domain of psychotherapy. Whereas Freud’s patient, Anna O, saw the treatment that she was offered as a “talking cure”, the Philokalia offers a “praying cure”. The Philokalia demonstrates that thoughts are powerful. They have the capacity to enslave and control, to deceive, to blind, to make sick and to kill. But they also have the capacity to set free, to empower, to illuminate, to heal and to bring life. Thoughts have the power to deny prayer, and to enable prayer, to obscure God and to reveal God. How may the Philokalia be interpreted for a post-Cartesian, post-Kantian philosophical age where dualism is frowned upon and the nature of the subjective self is no longer universally agreed upon? The language of inwardness is common to psychotherapy and the Philokalia, even if they have different emphases and interpretations to offer. Both worlds of discourse recognise that the psyche is in need of a cure, even if they have different anthropologies, diagnoses and prescriptions to offer. The Philokalia offers a non-dualistic way of discussing the inner life. Although it is pre-Kantian in its suppositions, its effectively “phenomenological” approach to the self works surprisingly well in a post-Kantian world. The kind of “pure prayer” towards which the Philokalia leads its reader requires that prayers be purified of thoughts that are not true, and it is not possible to identify which thoughts these are without some kind of hermeneutical process by means of which to interpret their true meaning. Equally, to pray truly requires that a true interpretation of thoughts be made, in order that these thoughts may be offered to God in prayer. Eventually, however, thoughts in any ordinary human sense become inadequate for prayer, just as all human language is inadequate to express the superabundant excess of meaning that is God. The Philokalia offers a therapeutic programme aimed at finding God in prayer. In order to implement this programme, it is necessary to undergo a kind of psychotherapy. The psychotherapy of the Philokalia is distinctive by virtue of its therapeutic focus on wellbeing understood in terms of prayer and union with God. Ultimately, this therapy leads to a breakdown in boundaries between inwardness and the outer world, between knowledge and unknowing, and between God and self.

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