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Charles Haddon Spurgeon was one of the leading preachers of the latter half of the nineteenth century and was truly typical of the orthodoxy of the period. He believed that the great object of preaching was to glorify God - an object which could be achieved only if the hearer were persuaded to accept Christ as saviour. This persuasion was accomplished through an emotional plea which stressed the fear of a literal and eternal hell. Spurgeon's preaching denied the persuasive power of God's love and failed to recognise it as an integral part of the gospel message. In his view that God's judgment could be preached as distinct from His love he greatly overemphasised hell. His preaching was exclusively the attempt to Induce decisions for Christ; it minimized the importance of the teachings of Jesus in the lives of his hearers; and no challenge or guidance was offered to those who had already made a profession of faith, i.e. to the church. Harry Emerson Fosdick was the conspicuous leader of Protestant liberalism during the first half of the twentieth century, and he represented liberalism at its best. He believed that the only justification for the existence of preaching was to assist the hearers in solving the many problems which confronted them in life. The method whereby this help was made possible was through the "cooperative dialogue" in which the congregation. objections, questions, doubts and confirmations were fairly stated and dealt with. The content of the message presented was Jesus, not as a saviour in the classical sense, but as the leading representative of a philosophy of life. The substance of the Christian faith was a source of ethical ideas which gave to man direction and guidance. Posdick's view of scripture failed to notice that the substance of the Christian faith is not a connected series of profound moral ideas, but the revelation of God's act of redemption in history. His proclamation of the ethic of Jesus did not arise from the doctrine of redemption, and he failed to achieve a balance between didache and kerygma. Indeed, the latter was omitted. James S. Stewart is one of the most famous preachers in the contemporary English-speaking church. He believes that the task of the Christian preacher is to herald the good news of Christ as historical, unique, and esohatological fact. The resurrection is the core of the gospel because it proves that Christ is the conquering Messiah, not a defeated hero-prophet and, it gives preaching its unique character ~ the living, personal word breaking in from beyond and going to work in the lives of men. While Stewart is fundamentally a good exegete and a competent scholar, his occasional use of allegory tends to import alien meanings to the text. We have further argued that while Stewart understands that didache must he based first on kerygma, he fails to grasp that didache is also important because it repeats and deepens kerygma within the congregation. By emphasizing kerygma at the expense of didache, Stewart fails to achieve a balance between. The Word directed to the world and to the church.

Acknowledging their powerful visual element, theological historian Bernard McGinn maintains that medieval saints’ lives are ‘something like modern film’. My thesis interrogates this assertion by bringing theoretical perspectives from twenty-first century film studies to analyse the Latin biographies of the group known as the ‘Holy Women of Liège’. Commonly (though not always accurately) considered to be ‘beguines’, these women were practitioners of a new form of female spiritual practice that emerged in the thirteenth century in the Low Countries. Practitioners of this new form of devotion typically lived unenclosed in semi-organised communities (beguinages). They embraced work in society, such as tending the sick and the poor, while simultaneously devoting themselves to God. Written shortly after the protagonists’ death by a collection of anonymous and clerical authors, the Liège vitae are filled with dramatic visions of God and intense physical unions with Christ which run alongside, and justify, tales of the women’s involvement in social, political, and religious spheres. These texts — controversial and polemical in their own time and since — demonstrate the problematic division of body and soul, Christ and human, in the period, revealing the potential of text to transmit visual experiences. Following the advice of medievalist Stephen G. Nichols, my analyses of these texts consider medieval scholarship in conversation with modern theories and questions. Recent developments in visual theory allow for fresh perspectives on the conceptualisation and function of the holy Liégeoises’ divine visions. I include chapters focusing on different strands of such theory: embodied spectatorship, the relationship of film to time and mortality, celebrity studies, and digital environments. Through theoretically informed close readings of the vitae, I argue for a spectrum of visual experience running from the medieval to the modern period, a non-hierarchical and interconnected series of possible viewing positions which inform both medieval and modern experiences.

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The 1976 wave of riots in the South African townships, the Black Consciousness Movement with its attendant slogan of Amanbla Ngawethu (the power is ours) and the raised, clenched fist were reminiscent of scenes in the urban areas of the U.S. in the late 60's. The parallels between the American and South African situations were not lost to the South African Government, and so the cry of "external influence" was raised. Clearly one important eompcnent of this external influence was Black Americans. The contact between Black Americans and South Africans has been a long and continuous one, and the commonalities between the two are several: Both are urban and proletarian; both are subjected to the particularly virulent form, of racism in an advanced capitalist society; and both by virtue of their exploitation and oppression were forced to create their own social institutions. One such institution was their independent churches.

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This study explores and assesses the initiatives and contributions of indigenous agents (both men and women, converts, and non-converts) in the growth of mission Christianity in Ugogo and Ukaguru, central Tanzania. To some extent, it is also an attempt to re-write the story of the work of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission in that region. The thesis argues that like other missions in Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the CMS mission adopted strategies of Cllristianisation mainly through literacy training, and preaching as well. The active involvement of the indigenous agents was indispensable to this process. The fact that their role has been largely ignored in the standard literature relating to the work of the CMS mission in Ugogo and Ukaguru exposes a bias in mission historiography. To redress this omission, this research explores and evaluates the actual contributions and experiences of indigenous agents in the growth of Christianity in Ugogo and Ukaguru. The study uses a socio-historical method, and takes into account the context in which Christianity grew. It therefore considers the challenges posed by the resilience of the traditional Gogo and Kaguru social and religious practices to mission Christianity. The dynamics of operating under the German and British colonial governments; and the impact of the competition with Islam, and the Benedictine Roman Catholic mission, upon the growth process are explored. A thematic presentation of the material begins with an analysis of some aspects of political, social and religious life of the Wagogo and Wakaguru before and at the time of the arrival of the CMS mission. Aspects considered are those which the CMS mission regarded as controversial as mission work progressed. The initial work of the CMS from 1876 to 1900 is explored and assessed in the next chapter. It is argued that little growth took place in this first phase, yet, African initiatives and contributions began to emerge in this period. The chapter that follows examines and assesses the contribution of the chiefs. It argues that though most of them maintained loyalty to their traditional political, social and religious obligations, nonetheless, their initiatives were indispensable to the establishment of literacy and preaching centres.

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The subject is examined against the background of basic questions concerning the importance of private religion to the Romans, the extent to which it was native, the sacredness of the house building, the manner in which the family operated as a unit and the differing religious roles of members of the family. The house is shown to have had certain sacred areas from which animistic and anthropomorphic divinities gradually evolved to become the objects of household cult. The utensils and other paraphernalia of cult, the nature of offerings and of ordinary ritual are then examined together with the religious suitability of the human participants. A demonstration follows of the unity of the family (both excluding and including its attendant slaves), under its male head, in the civic and religious spheres, of the consequent importance of its continued existence and of the unifying elements of its private cult. The functions of the men, women, children and slaves within it are then severally examined according as their sex and sexuality, birth and civic status affected their general religious status. The headship is found to have been responsible for all major changes to the family's structure, for upholding its traditional sacra nriuata, and for conducting major festivals, while the other members performed supporting roles; the wife had a special function as child-bearer. In practice slaves apparently shared in household cult, any exclusion from it being due to their not technically forming part of the Roman family. Private Romans of every category are seen to have enjoyed considerable opportunities for personal piety. Finally, answering the questions posed at the beginning enables certain, more detailed, conclusions concerning Roman household religion to be drawn.