The US contemporary Evangelical church planting community is large and influential. The movement has a global international reach through books alongside video, sermons and resources that can be downloaded from the internet. This thesis investigates that body of work, which it calls the scape, from the perspective of an international user. Using a hermeneutical spiral, it engages in four tasks. The Descriptive Task provides morphology for the movement, which it calls the Second Generation, describing it as five streams. It takes two, the Neo-Reformed and Neo-Seeker streams, as representative of the movement as a whole. Their missiology and ecclesiology are then described. The Interpretive Task then considers the movement's history within American Protestantism alongside their origins in the Church Growth, megachurch, and Emerging movements. It analyses the influences of personal background, the US political scene, and American culture. It posits that these influence the movement in ways of which they are not aware. The Normative Task then enters Second Generation missiology and ecclesiology, as described, into a conversation with a dialogue partner, the Fresh Expressions of Church movement, bringing what is seen as important theological normative understandings, followed by evaluation that proceeds from the process. The evaluation follows a stated thesis, that the movement stresses a truncated missiology over ecclesiology to such an extent that their original missional intentions could be subverted by other factors . It argues that Second Generation praxis thus tends towards the individualistic, and the thesis argues that consumerism and homogeneity are consequences. For the international scape user, it is suggested that these factors will be difficult to discern. The thesis moves to the Pragmatic Task where new praxis is provided that may aid the movement to counter the problems posited. Directions for further research are suggested and the future of the movement is predicted.

This doctoral thesis provides a nuanced portrait of the conflicting worlds within Northern Irish evangelicalism. Based on 13 months of intensive ethnographic fieldwork, it offers a comparative investigation of the life of three evangelical churches in the Greater Belfast area: an inner-city Methodist Mission, a rural Pentecostal fellowship and a small-town independent Charismatic church. Parkview, Fields of Hope and City of God are contemporary expressions of the wider movement's generational, demographic and denominational diversity, yet at the same time are illustrative of evangelical concerns, across traditions, with 'authenticity', 'orthopathy' and 'difference' in the construction of their faith identities: they each define Christian person hood in relation to and as distinct from the 'world' and other 'Christian' groups. Such concerns surface in four key areas of evangelical discourse and practice, which are appropriated in varying ways according to contextual and congregational factors. First, I show how cognitive boundaries surrounding orthodoxy and conversional piety are shifting in light of denominational heritage, contact between traditions, and degrees of exposure to bounded and centred theological orientations. Secondly, I record conflicts between form and spontaneity and Charismatic or denominational values in a common quest for authentic worship. Thirdly, I analyse a mutual fixation on the Bible's authority and relevance as negotiated in intersections between personal and social sanctification. Finally, I expose the tensions between spiritual-evangelistic and socio-politico-economic priorities in evangelical activism. By accessing congregational conflicts arising from everyday applications of these four core aspects, then, this research project explores the world-making and world-breaking characteristics of Christianity as tangled in a web of tensions between denominational heritages, theological orientations, and internal and external community demographics.

No description available.

This study is to identify capitalist characteristics in the modern Korean Protestant church in terms of its rapid growth and stagnation from the 1960s to 2000. The approach throughout this research has been to show the particular private ethic centred cultural foundations of the dynamics of development and progress in the religious intellectual point of view. Methodologically, four main objectives were installed: first, the characterisation of neo-Confucian Korean culture epitomised into three representative categories - patriarchal familism, justification of hierarchically discriminated stratification, and constructed concentration of power; second, the categorisation of the features of capitalism on the basis of previous cultural analysis; third, to exemplify features of how neo-Confucian capitalism was accommodated into Protestant ministry and reflected in church growth from the 1960s to the early 1990s; and, finally, to examine the dysfunction of neo-Confucian capitalist church ministry resulting in church stagnation since the 1990s.

This doctoral project is an ethnographic account of the interactions between Protestant Three-Self (TSPM) churches and the local state in a coastal Chinese city. Adopting a framework of embeddedness and developing the concept of symbiosis, the study presents an original and nuanced analysis of church-state relations. I demonstrate that the embedded nature of the churches in the local state and the symbiotic relationship between the Three-Self churches and the Religious Affairs Bureau allows for the creation of informal structures and procedures. The project analyses these informal channels, arguing that they provide space for religious activities, some of which occupy an ambiguous 'grey' area while others are officially prohibited. These activities help facilitate proselytising and the expansion of the churches. While religious specialists and lay believers seek to utilise their relationship with the state, they do not consciously resist the state but rather seek to spread the Protestant message which they believe is not in conflict with state projects but has more to offer than the political messages of the state. The relationship between the churches and local state institutions results in the state providing resources which aid in the transformation of the state-religion nexus.

No description available.

No description available.

There are few modern studies of the impact of nonconformity at a rural and local level in Great Britain. This dissertation attempts to see what a multi-disciplinary approach - using archaeology, architectural history, historical sources and oral narratives - focusing in particular on the landscape and the material remains left by Dissenting Groups, can add to our knowledge and understanding of their origins and development. It then takes this knowledge and applies it to answer or inform several of the important questions being posed by others involved in the study of nonconformity across a variety of academic disciplines. It considers the impact of three very different groups in three contrasting landscapes, each landscape covering a progressively larger geographical area: The Strict and Particular Baptists of Grittleton, a village in north Wiltshire; the Associate Congregation on the Orkney island of Stronsay; and the Bible Christians on Exmoor and Brendon in Somerset. The study concludes that these different non-Conformist congregations had a material impact on their landscape, and often viewed the landscape in unprecedented and unusual ways, although the material remains are often fragmentary and sometimes disappointing. Particular individuals at a local leve1 and the power of faith in congregations often had a remarkable impact on the landscape The Dissertation shows how these buildings and landscapes are often neglected and under continuing threat: in Orkney, for example, the author surveyed several Dissenting Kirks for the first time ever; many Chapels throughout Great Britain face demolition, conversion or gradual decay and ruination; the collective memory is shrinking as members of congregations and smaller sects literally die off.

No description available.

The thesis is intended to establish a basis for the sociological study of the Oxford Group. As a historical study, its particular concern is to trace (1) the ideological origins of the Group in American revivalism, college evangelism, and missions in the 1890-1918 period; and (2) the ideological development of the Group itself from its foundation in the 1920s, through the period of its most vigorous revivalism in the 1930s, to its political involvements of the 1940s and 1950s. The thesis seeks to show that previous studies and commentaries on the Oxford Group have lacked an adequate understanding of the ideological motivation of the Oxford Group. In consequence of these misunderstandings, some sociologists have misinterpreted the structure and development of the Group as a social movement. By emphasizing the history of the Group's ideology, this thesis seeks to correct these common misinterpretations. In subsequent sections, the thesis then analyses the social composition of the Group in the 1930s, and seeks to explain its appeal to an educated upper and middle class clientele. Development of the Group's structuee is traced from 1920s to the 1950s and particular attention is paid to itslack of formal organization and its expression of 'non-sectarian' ecumenism. These features are contrasted with the Group's strong internal cohesion and its 'sect-like' enthusiasm.