The embeddedness of Pentecostal/Charismatic tenets within contemporary global frameworks of transnational power reveals the ability of religion to shape the sociocultural and spiritual experiences of people on the move from one place to another. For this reason, sociologists of religion and scholars of World Christianity have noted the rapid missionary expansion of African Pentecostal/Charismatic movements to the northern hemisphere. Some have even referred to the missionary work of non-western forms of Christianity in the western world as the ‘Southernisation of European Christianity’. But if the aggressive strategies adopted by African Pentecostal/Charismatic churches in the western diaspora are intended to reawaken Christianity in Europe, what then is the motivation for intra-African Pentecostal/Charismatic movements in traversing national boundaries, with their distinctive version of the Christian faith, making Africa a theatre in which Christian missionaries are both sent and received? This thesis examines the intra-African missionary praxis of a highly influential Nigerian Pentecostal/Charismatic church, the Winners’ Chapel, and its accompanying power dynamics in Cameroon from 1996 to 2016. Using a qualitative research approach, the study examines the character of transnational Pentecostal/Charismatic movements in Africa, using Winners’ Chapel in Cameroon as a case study. After an investigation of the emergence of the church, the study examines the various strategies used to achieve and maintain control of the mother church in Nigeria over its daughter church in Cameroon, such as the deployment of Nigerian missionaries, the use of Nigerian-defined Winners’ Chapel tenets in Cameroon, the place of sermons and testimonies, and the role of the media. The thesis studies the conflicts of loyalty and contestations that emerge between Nigerian Winners’ Chapel missionaries to Cameroon and their Cameroonian colleagues in Cameroon. It concludes with an assessment of how far Winners’ Chapel can be said to contribute to the provision of social capital and empowerment in Cameroon. The findings in this study provide a significant and original contribution to the understanding of how power dynamics can operate within complex relationships between transnational Pentecostal/Charismatic actors (missionaries), and their receiving countries colleagues in the continent of Africa. It also contributes to the literature on African Pentecostalism but offers fresh insights into the encounters, contestations, and resistance that emerge between ‘founder-owners’ and recruited workers of intra-African Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements. By appropriating international relations concepts such as Joseph Nye’s ideas of ‘soft power’ and concepts in the sociology of religion such as Peggy Levitt’s ‘remittances’, popularised by Afe Adogame, the study potentially unveils the nexus between international relations, the sociology of religion and development within Pentecostalist transnational discourses in Africa.

Although scholars and Christian leaders have indicated that there is marked separation between morality and spirituality in the Christian praxis of many Africans and that the African worldview, which African Christians still hold is responsible for this separation, there has not been a detailed study of the issue. The aim of the research is to offer an explanation, of a paradox in Ghanaian society where there is enthusiastic Christian spirituality that is separated from social morality, so that a deeper integration of the Christian and Akan traditional moral schemes can be proposed.My research focuses on Pentecostals in Ghana whose appropriation of the African worldview into Christian praxis has generally been considered as a positive response to African religiosity. By the use of a practical theological method of correlation whereby the Christian truth is represented by the moral theology of John Wesley and brought in dialogue with the Akan traditional moral scheme, this research offers reasons for and proposes a solution to the lack of social morality in Ghanaian Pentecostalism. It uses the virtue theory as a heuristic tool for the analysis of morality in a way that provides explanation for the situation and guides an integration of the two moral schemes at a deeper level. The examination of the two moral schemes has been guided by the elements of character, a central theme of the virtue theory. It has been shown that the ‘Deliverance Theology’ of Ghanaian Pentecostals involves significant misrepresentation of the Akan traditional scheme, and that this situation causes many Christians to focus on religion as a means for the supply of existential needs rather than the transformation of inner dispositions for moral character formation. This research shows that reinterpreting the Akan view of humanity and integrating it with the Wesleyan account of the Christian truth, transforms the ‘Deliverance Theology’ by portraying the Christian life as a pneumatological characterology. The moral responsibility that this entails will ensure that African Pentecostals understand social morality as an essential outcome of their Christian spirituality.

This thesis examines six factors that helped to shape beliefs and expectations about death among evangelical Nonconformists in England from 1830 down to 1880: the literary conventions associated with the denominational magazine obituaries that were used as primary source material, theology, social background, denominational variations, Romanticism and the last words and experiences of the dying. The research is based on an analysis of 1,200 obituaries divided evenly among four evangelical Nonconformist denominations: the Wesleyan Methodists, the Primitive Methodists, the Congregationalists and the Baptists. The study is distinctive in four respects. First, the statistical analysis according to three time periods (the 1830s, 1850s and 1870s), close reading and categorisation of a sample this large are unprecedented and make it possible to observe trends among Nonconformists in mid-nineteenth-century England. Second, it evaluates the literary construct of the obituaries as a four-fold formula consisting of early life, conversion, the living out of the faith and the death narrative as a tool for understanding them as authentic windows into evangelical Nonconformist experience. Third, the study traces two movements that inform the changing Nonconformist experience of death: the social shift towards middle-class respectability and the intellectual shift towards a broader Evangelicalism. Finally, the thesis considers how the varying experiences of the dying person and the observers and recorders of the death provide different perspectives. These features inform the primary argument of the thesis, which is that expectations concerning death and the afterlife among evangelical Nonconformists in England from 1830 down to 1880 changed as reflections of larger shifts in Nonconformity towards middle-class respectability and a broader Evangelicalism. This transformation was found to be clearly revealed when considering the tension in Nonconformist allegiance to both worldly and spiritual matters. While the last words of the dying pointed to a timeless experience that placed hope in the life to come, the obituaries as compiled by the observers of the death and by the obituary authors and editors reflected changing attitudes towards death and the afterlife among nineteenth-century evangelical Nonconformists that looked increasingly to earthly existence for the fulfilment of hopes.

William Jay (1769-1853) was an Independent minister of the Argyle Chapel in Bath for sixty-two years. His career bridged the time between the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century and the formal Congregational denominationalism of the nineteenth century. Jay’s autobiography is used among historians for its first-hand accounts of other notable evangelical figures such as William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Hannah More (1745-1833) and John Newton (1725-1807). Too often his own influence has been overlooked, but at the time he was regarded as one of the foremost Dissenting preachers of his era. His ministry within a fashionable spa city increased the respectability of evangelical religion among the growing middle classes in Bath. This thesis examines the evangelicalism of William Jay in the context of his times. The scope of Jay’s life and popularity will be examined in six chapters. Following the introduction, chapter two will examine his direct impact through the Argyle Chapel upon Bath. Chapter three will review the early life of William Jay that was much neglected by his biographers. It will demonstrate the formation of his evangelicalism first introduced to him by Joanna Turner (1732-1784) and instilled in his training by Cornelius Winter (1742-1807). The social composition of the Argyle Chapel will be evaluated in the fourth chapter. Those that Jay attracted to the chapel not only promoted his cause to advance the gospel, but also increased the prestige of the minister and his place of worship. In chapter five, Jay’s preaching, which attracted celebrity and commoner alike, will be analyzed for form, style, content, delivery and the receptivity of his audience. Likewise, the spirituality of the man, which will be reviewed in chapter six, induced similar qualities to stimulate evangelical religion. Finally, the polity and ecclesiology of William Jay will be examined in the seventh chapter. The Argyle Chapel was under strong pastoral guidance for the vast majority of the minister’s service until Jay lost that influence shortly before his retirement in 1852. The biography will conclude with an appraisal of R.W. Dale’s (1829-1895) categorization of Jay and his chapel as representative of older evangelical religion and criticism of the early participants of the revival found in Dale’s sermon The Old Evangelicalism and the New (1889). William Jay promoted a religious perspective that exhorted the individual to dwell on the self yet sought to do so through a united Christian movement that crossed denominational barriers.

Following the Evangelical Awakening, many of the Nonconformist traditions experienced an evolution in their ecclesiastical structure, resulting in the formation of new associations that frequently acted to establish pragmatic agencies like missionary societies, educational boards and social charities. The transition required new expressions of authority. Understanding the nature of this authority is the chief objective of this study. Chapter One introduces the various themes and goals of the study. Chapter Two explores the Hampshire Congregational Union. In addition to the Union’s structure, David Bogue and the Gosport Academy were central to this group’s identity. Chapter Three focuses on the Lancashire Congregational Union in the North West of England, home to William Roby, the central figure within Lancashire Congregationalism. Chapter Four covers the Lancashire and Yorkshire Baptist Association and the later Lancashire and Cheshire Baptist Association, where John Fawcett was the primary influence. The New Connexion of General Baptists, Chapter Five, was under the authoritative direction of Dan Taylor, a former Methodist and a zealous evangelist. Chapter Six analyses the Scotch Baptists. Peculiar among Baptists, it was created under the leadership of Archibald McLean. The British Churches of Christ, Chapter Seven, closely resembled the Scotch Baptists but were different in some fundamental ways. Finally, in Chapter Eight, patterns of associational authority among these associations will be compared and assessed. Authority among Nonconformist associations, particularly those denominations practising congregational polity, was exercised on the grounds of doctrinal purity and evangelistic expansion. As the nineteenth century continued, the organisational structures grew more complex. In turn, increased control was voluntarily granted to the organisations’ governing bodies so they might more efficiently minister. Following the Awakening, these voluntary bodies found new life as a pragmatic expression of Evangelical zeal.