Presbyterianism in the seventeenth century has often been seen as an alien and unpopular Scottish import, and its ministerial proponents as strident polemicists lacking a committed pastoral approach and doomed to failure in their struggle for further godly reformation. This thesis reappraises the development and articulation of orthodoxy and Presbyterianism through the experience of Thomas Hall, pastor and schoolmaster of Kings Norton, Worcestershire, a particularly rigid adherent of these views. It argues that Hall’s beliefs were home-grown responses to English religious and political changes in the 1630s, and explores their development and consolidation during the English Revolution. It also investigates ways he promoted his ideology through his pastoral ministry, his teaching, and his evangelical and polemical writings. Though militant against heresy, Hall’s willingness to engage with popular religious beliefs, to experiment with a variety of media and to present Calvinist ideals in a sympathetic and accessible manner, demonstrate a far more positive and flexible approach than historians have generally acknowledged. Much of the evidence centres on Hall’s unusually large and well-annotated library, and his own publications. This enables a detailed analysis of Hall’s reading practice and activities as a book-collector which were closely integrated with his polemical and religious priorities.

Over the second half of the 20th Century and the beginning part of the 21st Century, major change has occurred in the worship practice of many churches. Within this time frame enormous change has occurred in the social, economic, political, technological, scientific and religious framework of British society. Worship practice has been influenced by these changes. This doctoral dissertation sets out to explore how British Methodist worship has changed over the same time period. The focus of this dissertation is on change in the practice of non-Eucharistic worship in British Methodism. This is the form of worship practiced most frequently in the British Methodist Church. It examines the form, content, style and ordering of worship and explores how the very ethos of worship has altered. In this time period there has been expressed discontent about worship. This thesis examines what the Liturgical Movement has promoted as a way toward renewal of worship, and explores how British Methodism might appropriate from the Liturgical Movement ideas and lessons that would aid the renewal of worship in the Methodist Church.

This thesis examines Oneness Pentecostalism from 1914 to 1931 via its initial interracial vision, the ministry of Garfield Thomas Haywood, and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. It attempts to rectify a one dimensional historical perspective which has ignored the significance of race in the restorative framework of the early movement, tracing its interracial fervor to the Azusa revival and its resistance to the Parham influenced U.S.south. Fresh historical detail informs assessment of the 1906 Azusa mission founding of the interracial PAW and Oneness Pentecostalism’s most obscure, yet vital early leaders, J. J. Frazee and E. W. Doak. All key leaders are studied from the perspective of the movement’s major centers, especially the centrality and history of Haywood and Indianapolis as its foremost epicenter. Its interracial authenticity is examined in relationship to its pre-Oneness PAW context, the battle for the Assemblies of God, and the transition of the PAW from Trinitarian to Oneness Pentecostalism. Investigation of the 1924 PAW racial schism, impact, and withdrawing White segment reveals diffusion and the proliferation of separatism and independency. The final analysis summarizes the movement’s region by region development and global spread by 1930 and examines the successes of early Oneness Pentecostal missionaries.

This thesis is a study of a Christian movement among the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria from its origins in the Civil War Revival (1967-73) to the present. It argues that the success of the revival depended upon a balance between supply and demand. Colonial legacies, Western missionary endeavours, decolonisation, and civil war not only created new religious demands, they contributed to the formation of a missionary fellowship, able to exploit the disorder of Igbo society and the failure of existing religious options to fulfil traditional aspirations. The thesis shows that during its formative period the revival’s Pentecostal progeny also benefited from this missionary impulse, and the flexibility of Pentecostal spirituality, which enabled it to adapt to meet consumer demands. It examines the way the movement has evolved since the 1970s, and argues that the decline of its missionary impulse, combined with a paradigm shift from holiness to prosperity teaching, and a propensity to schism, have imposed limitations on its potential as an agent of transformation. Finally, it shows that during the 1990s, a further shift has occurred towards a theology of socio-political engagement, and examines the implications of this for the movement’s identity and influence in a pluralistic society.

This thesis examines the relationship between the leaders of the Anglican Church, centring on Alexander Alfred Boddy (1854-1930), considered the father of British Pentecostalism, and the young Pentecostals in the process of formation of the three major Pentecostal denominations, namely, the Apostolic Faith Church, the Assemblies of God and the Elim Church. Although there were not many Anglican participants in British Pentecostalism and most Pentecostals came from Nonconformist backgrounds, Boddy dominated the leadership from the beginning. As a result, most of the British Pentecostals who were actively involved in the forming of Pentecostal denominations were either directly or indirectly influenced by him. However, as Pentecostalism grew, disagreement and conflict appeared over certain issues and intensified during the period when the Pentecostal denominations were taking shape. Finally, with the departure of the Anglican leaders from Pentecostalism, the Anglican influence disappeared. Although there is no doubt that Boddy’s contribution to the history of British Pentecostalism was considerable, there were huge gaps between his teachings and those of the men who became the denominational leaders of the Pentecostals.

This study indicates that several common assumptions about Anglican pew-renting are unrealistic. Although many critics writing in the nineteenth century, and some historians since, believe that rented sittings in Anglican churches were filled by the very rich and the upper-middle class, the evidence strongly indicates that the primary renters were from the middle-middle and lower-middle classes, particularly small business owners. Also contrary to popular belief, pew-letting continued in many churches well into the twentieth century, in some instances into the 1950s and 1960s, and one Anglican church in the British Isles has continued to rent sittings into the twenty-first century. This is qualified, though, by the finding that those churches that rented sittings persisted in the practice for longer than was expected, but the number of new churches which instituted seat-letting systems dwindled, particularly in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Pew-renting is also seen to have been most often practiced in large urban churches of low-church orientation. The findings further suggest that most churches abolished pew-rents in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, not for philosophical or charitable reasons, but because profits diminished to the point at which the cost and trouble of administering a system of pew-rents could not economically justify the revenue produced. Finally, this study has uncovered some evidence both of private pew-renting in addition to proprietary chapels, and of informal pew-renting in the form of tips paid to pew-openers and other officials for preferred seating for a single church service. Examples of dishonest behaviour by church officials are also given.

This thesis examines the history of Anglican and the Methodist churches’ collaboration in Western Nigeria during the era of the missionaries and after. The intention is to establish the approach that the early foreign missionaries bequeathed to the mission-oriented churches has been a particular problem, which has inhibited the emergence of a truly African or Nigerian form of unity particularly between the Anglican and the Methodist churches. A critical evaluation of the churches’ collaboration in Nigeria would suggest that what obtains is institutional and doctrinal unity introduced by the missionaries. While this study appreciates and commends the efforts of the early missionaries for laying these collaborative and ecumenical foundations, the study holds that it does not go far enough especially in attaining its potential to positively affect the sociocultural, religious and political challenges facing contemporary Nigeria society. Such an effective collaborative spirit is achievable only when it is contextualized, employing local and indigenous approaches including indigenous theological education. This thesis does not condemn western contributions because there are aspects of western culture that are still relevant in the context of global collaboration. However, it stresses the need for the understanding of ecumenical collaboration from different cultures particularly in Yoruba speaking region of Nigeria, so that, instead of looking up too much to the West for leadership in ecumenism, it should grow in the Nigerian climate and culture

This thesis uses images of books in Italian art of the duecento and trecento as pictorial evidence for the appearance of books and to establish a chronology for changes in the detail and style of book-bindings during those two centuries. The conclusions from the pictorial evidence is that there were material differences in the appearance of books in the duecento and trecento and that gold tooling was used to decorate books from about 1320, a hundred years earlier than previously thought. The thesis also considers how, and to what extent, medieval viewers related to images of books and whether it is possible to identify individual styles in the way artists represented books. There are four case-studies that are used to investigate how images of books were used, and what religious, social, political and psychological purposes were served. Part of the methodology is to identify and study those points of change when books appear or when the way they are shown changes. This is in the belief that when circumstances alter, the artist responds consciously and creatively rather than by imitation. A number of works of art are studied in detail and the thesis proposes new interpretations for, inter alia, the Stefaneschi Altarpiece, Guido de Graziano'sDossal of St Francis, theAnnunciation scene in the Arena Chapel, the RucellaiMadonna, and the S Caterina Polyptych. The case-studies have demonstrated that the image of a book was one of the most powerful visual signs, certainly for the period and region to which this study has been devoted. It shows that in the decades around 1300 the book became an established attribute in altarpieces, the book displaced the rotullus as the symbol of authority, and the book became the dominant attribute of the VirginMary in scenes of the Annunciation, displacing earlier formats. The book was the symbol of learning and therefore a key attribute for the mendicant orders and especially the Dominican Order.

This thesis explores the place of the natural world in the spiritual and intellectual lives of British and Irish Quakers (Friends) from the earliest evidence in 1647 up to the rise of evangelical Quakerism around 1830. Whilst Quakers agreed that God had made and continued to uphold the creation, responses to the natural world were, after the Restoration, essentially individualistic, giving rise to diverse views of its place in theology. Overall, it is shown that there was a shift away from the unity of the first Quakers’ experience that both God and the creation could be truly known only through divine revelation, towards support for the scientific study of the material world, and forms of natural theology. It is argued that this was the result of personal experience, not of synergies between empiricism and orthodox Quaker theology. Although reservations about its status continued, for an increasing number of Quakers, nature was a resource in a divinely-inspired search for order and truth. Although the subject is almost absent from contemporary official records of the Society of Friends, the natural world became a significant part of the wider Quaker culture of the 19th century.

This thesis examines the relationship between pentecostalism and fundamentalism in the United States from 1906-1943. Of particular interest is the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals, which combined these two movements (along with holiness churches), though their history was marked by dispute. On closer examination, the two groups held an evangelical heritage in common from the nineteenth century. Like a new species that is introduced into a particular ecological context, new religious movements grow and develop in response to their surrounding environment. This study divides pentecostalism’s growth (particularly that of the Assemblies of God and the Church of God [Cleveland, TN]) into three stages: genesis (the introductory period, 1906-1909), adaptation (the formative period, 1910-1924), and retention (the educational period, 1925-1943). Fundamentalism ‘leavened’ pentecostalism by the latter’s adoption of the ‘language’, the ‘content’ and the ‘rhetoric’ of fundamentalist theology, especially through the vehicle of dispensationalism. In the end, the hostility exhibited between them during this period was the result of religious proximity. Pentecostals were a threat to the power structures of fundamentalism by attracting parishioners to its form of revivalism.