Religious leaders are at the forefront of religious faith and considered to be the gateway between humankind and God in all things, from matters of a spiritual kind, to the psychological. Whilst religious leaders may be acquainted with the spiritual realm, how do they perceive their engagement with the psychological? Furthermore, how do they manage the psychological distresses that they encounter given their pivotal position within the community? This empirical study explores how religious leaders experience the psychological distress of their congregation using the methodological approach of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Eight religious leaders gave an account of their experiences through semi-structured interviews, the transcripts of which were then analysed implementing IPA protocol (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009). Four superordinate themes emerged from the data: ‘expectations of religious leadership’, which explored the participants’ experiences of the expectations placed upon them and their role; ‘proficiencies and limitations within the role’, which explored how the participants understood their professional remit in regard to providing psychological support; ‘the interconnectedness of religion and psychology’, which provided an insight into the participants’ experiences of the overlap between the fields of psychology and religion, and their contribution to each other; and ‘personal implications of religious leadership’, which explored the psychological impact of the religious leadership role on the participants. The four themes were discussed in relation to the religious leaders’ encounters with psychological distress. For most participants this was an external encounter, but reports of personal psychological distress were also presented. The findings have implications for Counselling Psychologists who work with religious individuals entering into therapy, and in particular those with religious leadership status. This study explores the link between religion and psychology from the perspective of those integral to this phenomenon, yet who appear to have received little empirical consideration. The findings are discussed in the light of previous research. The quality and limitations of this study are also considered, alongside proposals for future research.

The psychological impact of Jewish family purity laws is under-researched, particularly within the United Kingdom. This study gives women who observe these rules an opportunity to be heard, and contributes to the multicultural literature enhancing counselling psychologists’ understanding of ethnic minorities. The study explores in depth the experiences of women who observe Jewish family purity laws. Through a qualitative research design, the study aims to elucidate the deep meaning of the women’s experiences and the implications for their current lives, so that they can be supported efficiently through counselling psychology. The data was collected from eight observant orthodox Jewish participants who had been married for between one and five years. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather information from the participants. This was followed by an analysis of the data using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The four superordinate themes that emerged from the data were: The Power of Dissonance, conveying feelings of anxiety, pressure and guilt while bound be these rules; The Emotional Juxtaposition, describing paradoxical feelings of monotony and excitement within their martial relationship; The Phenomenon of Relational Space, exploring paradoxical findings covering closeness, distance, invasion and space; and last, Desire for Attachment, referring to the desire for meaningful relationships with G-d1 and their spouses. Existing literature is drawn on to evaluate the findings, and the limitations of the study are outlined, together with the implications for research into, and clinical practice of counselling psychology. Emphasis is placed on the need to offer therapy that empowers clients to take control of their lives and make informed choices on the basis of their own decisions and desires, rather than those imposed on them by anything else. The study concludes with recommendations for future research.

In his book The Shape of the Liturgy Dom Gregory Dix coined the phrase ‘Eucharistic man’. In a speech to clergy Archbishop Rowan Williams remarked that Homo Eucharisticus, his Latinised version of Dix’s words, was, ‘a new human species who makes sense of the world in the presence of the risen Jesus at his table’. This thesis will seek to define what is specifically meant by the term Homo Eucharisticus and to indicate that, in a very real sense, Dix is Homo Eucharisticus, understood in his life, vocation, and his primary scholarship as it is centred on The Shape of the Liturgy. I shall demonstrate that Dix’s theology was Incarnational and that his Trinitarian understanding was based on the precept of a ‘Spiritual-Logos’. I shall examine these concepts in the context of Dix’s experience and personality. I shall assess the historical, intellectual and theological influences that helped to shape his life and vocation, and explore his Anglican identity as a priest, a scholar and a member of a religious community. I shall explain Dix’s creative understanding of the Trinitarian nature of the Eucharist and determine that he was a noteworthy theologian of major significance. I shall include studies of his writings on the Ministry of the Church and his major liturgical works The Apostolic Tradition of Saint Hippolytus and The Shape of the Liturgy. I shall present a reassessment of his liturgical scholarship and review his continuing importance in the Church of the twenty-first century.

Robert Pollok’s The Course of Time was one of the best-selling long poems of the nineteenth century, outstripping works by much better known contemporaries such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley. Yet today, Pollok and his poem are almost entirely forgotten by scholars and general readers alike. This thesis explores the factors behind the poem’s enormous, decades-long popularity and its later sudden decline, arguing that neither can be understood without a recognition of the poem’s distinctiveness as a Romantic-era Miltonic theodicy written from an evangelical Scottish Calvinist perspective. In contrast with most of his Romantic peers, Pollok used the Miltonic model to defend, rather than to challenge or reinterpret, traditional Christian doctrines under siege in the early nineteenth century, especially biblical authority, final judgment, heaven, and hell. As the first comprehensive examination and close reading of The Course of Time in the modern era, this study begins with an exploration of Milton’s significance for the British Romantics as a whole and compares that with his peculiar importance for Pollok, which lies primarily in the theodicean model of Paradise Lost and Milton’s embodiment of the ideal of the Christian poet. Next, the study considers three figures contemporary with Pollok whose influence may have been decisive for The Course of Time: Lord Byron, whose short lyric “Darkness” inspired Pollok’s poem and whose religious skepticism Pollok sought to challenge; theologian John Dick, who provided a theological framework and polemical stance that Pollok may have adopted; and apocalyptic Scots preacher Edward Irving, who called for a new Milton to affirm biblical understandings of judgment in an epic poem, and who did so shortly before Pollok began The Course of Time. Following, I undertake a close reading of the poem to investigate its larger didactic aims and performance as a “sermon in verse” intended to offer cautionary examples to its readership. The final chapter examines the poem’s reception history through reviews, analyses, and commentaries and considers the reasons behind its dramatic rise to popularity and precipitous decline and near-disappearance decades later, finding both rooted in its deep religiosity and distinctive identity as a traditional Miltonic theodicy in the Romantic age. A comprehensive examination of the poem and its history thus provides valuable insights into the changing relationship between religion and wider culture in the nineteenth century, the uses of literature as a vehicle for theological content and instruction, and the important and often overlooked role that religion played in Scottish Romantic literature.

One of the key causes of disharmony on a global scale, throughout human history, has been the disregard for the protection of religious expression. This goes some way to explaining why the international community in the post-war era, particularly after World War II, have enacted legal instruments and implemented policies aimed at promoting religious freedoms at global and regional levels. Regionally, the ECHR with implementation mechanisms has led the way in terms of upholding the protection of religious rights and freedoms. Having progressive and effective mechanisms to protect human rights does not mean that decisions of the ECtHR as a judicial body are free of criticism. For example, the ECtHR has ruled in the number of cases against the practice of religious expression, particularly in cases relating to the wearing of the headscarf. These decisions, the ECtHR argues, were taken on the grounds of secularism and prevention of fundamentalism and intolerance. This research, unlike others written on the subject, examines the concepts of fundamentalism and tolerance through a historical and philosophical approach, which will be used to argue that a restriction on the headscarf cannot legally or logically be justified as the bases used by the court to provide a rationale for the rulings are undefined, ambiguous and often in conflict with the principle of religious expression. The ECtHR often prioritises national policies and political considerations such as secularism over the personal right to freedom of religious expression. Notably, recent polices in Turkey which now allow and encourage the wearing of headscarf in public places call into question the validity of previous judgments of the ECtHR supporting the ban on wearing of the headscarf. As a part of the qualitative methodology the researcher has chosen three methods to conduct this research including black-letter, historical and comparative themes. This thesis is critically analysis ECtHR cases relating to freedom of religious expression in the context of the wearing of the headscarf. In doing this thesis further explores the relationship between Article 9 ECHR, the wearing of the headscarf, and the concepts of fundamentalism and intolerance. The researcher argues that the link between the wearing of the headscarf and intolerant or fundamentalist behaviour is a difficult one to prove, and that by supporting the ban on wearing of the headscarf on grounds including intolerance, the ECtHR’s decisions are in effect validating intolerance of religious expression.

While the immediate origins of 20th century Pentecostalism are in the Wesleyan-Holiness movement and in that form of Afro American Christianity which developed during slavery, some of its roots go back to West Africa. What began among a small black Christian group in Los Angeles in 1906 has now become a world-wide phenomenon which has spread to the Caribbean and from there to Britain. Black settlers primarily from rural Jamaica - arrived in urban England to face the racism and rejection, not only of the wider society but also of the white denominations. With them they brought types of Pentecostal ism which are similar to and in some ways quite different from, both the mainstream denominations and white indigenous Pentecostalism. Some of the black Pentecostal congregations established in the Borough of Wolverhampton remain tied to white North American headquarters while others are free from white control or influence with a concomitantly greater emphasis on certain black leitmotive.

Bibliography: leaves 191-202. 1. Introduction -- 2. Instrumentation and calibration -- 3. A radio monitoring program for southern blazars -- 4. Analysis of long-term blazar radio variability -- 5. Probing microarcsecond-scale structure using interstellar scintillation -- 6. The rapid scintillator, PKS 1257-326 -- 7. Conclusions and scope for further work.

This study provides a qualitative analysis of an Assembly of God Pentecostal church in the North East of England. The research employed an ethnographic framework incorporating overt participant observation and in-depth interviews over the period of one year at the City Christian Centre. In addition, a number of other churches (of varying denominations) were visited and observed. In this work, former interpretations within the sociology of religion, regarding membership and recruitment, are challenged and new perspectives offered. Few ethnographic studies of conservative evangelical Christians in the United Kingdom exist and quantitative work on this group, generally, has failed to define significant concepts such as salvation and conversion adequately. While such concepts remain foundational to the conservative evangelical believer, a significant transformation of religious expression is taking place within contemporary British Pentecostalism. This thesis gives an account of a synthesis between classical Pentecostals and the Charismatic movement that is creating a distinct form of spiritual expression resulting in a hybrid church. This fusion of traditions affects congregations in a number of important areas. Expressions of praise and worship, theological interpretations and church leadership each reflect the dynamics of the hybrid church. So in addition, does a shift in class composition. Once the preserve of the working classes, Pentecostalism in Britain is now much more socially and economically diverse in its membership. This thesis comes at an interesting time for the sociology of religion. Much is said about a resurgence of interest in religion, this is partly due to its persistence in society. Much work has focused on church demographics and secularisation, this work, however, shifts the emphasis away from religious decline to religious adaptation and change.

The following PhD thesis will explore the connection between autobiography and myth of origin: On the one hand, I am concerned with the ways in which women autobiographers rewrite classical myths of origin; on the other hand, I contend that autobiography itself is a myth of origin, a recreation of the forces that created the narrator. Throughout this thesis, I will develop two main themes: the first is the use of myth as a framework for autobiographical writing. This is possible because of myth's characteristic double focus on the universal and on the particular version, the historical context. Myth allows feminist autobiographers to connect themselves to universal truths from which they are barred by patriarchal tradition and to carve out their own, highly personal version. The second theme is that the autobiographers depict the origin as the core of the self and utterly Other. First, the narrator has to rely on the stories of other people, or a 'family memory'. Second, the past can be seen as connected to or leaving traces in the present; at the same time, it can be completely Other and incompehensible. Third, the autobiographical I is often cut off from her origins, and a constructive return that integrates the past and the present self is only possible through a deliberate act of mythmaking: It is mythmaking and storytelling that provides a connection between self and Other. I hope to make a contribution to feminist theory of autobiography as well as to feminist theory. Reading autobiography as myth of origin approaches the persistent problem of the relationship between the historical author and the autobiographical self. Moreover, I will explore the the specific relation between women and origins, and address the necessity for feminist theory to develop a framework where self and Other are intimately connected.

Chapter one reviews the published literature and studies that reported a link between religion, spirituality, and posttraumatic growth (PTG). A review of eleven key studies, in context, produced three main findings. First that religion and spirituality are usually beneficial to people dealing with the aftermath of trauma. Second, that traumatic experiences often lead to a deepening of religion and spirituality. Third, that positive religious coping, religious openness, readiness to face existential questions, religious participation, and intrinsic religousness are typically associated with posttraumatic growth. Important directions for future research are suggested that centre on the need for more fine-grained analysis of religion and spirituality variables, together with longitudinal designs,t hat allow more detailed exploration of the links between religion, spirituality, and posttraurnaticg rowth. Chapter two explored the component structure of the Maltby & Day (1998) amended version of the quest orientation scale. The scale was administered to 286 Christians and churchgoers in the UK. It was then subjected to a principal components analysis followed by oblimin rotation, Analysis revealed a three factor model consistent with that proposed by Maltby& Day (1998 )of complexity, doubt and tentativeness. Chapter three examines relationships between three religious orientations and two posttraumatic growth variables: positive changes in outlook and posttraumatic growth. Other psychosocial variables were included in the analyses. Two hundred and ninety one UK adults returned a questionnaire battery of standardised self-report measures. Firstly, correlational statistics identified all significant relationships between variables. Secondly, multiple regression analyses of just the highly significant correlated variables found that two aspects of religious orientation were important in achieving PTG. Firstly, Intrinsic religion (having a personal faith) was highly associated with the ability to create positive changes in outlook following trauma and to enjoy new possibilitiesin life. Secondly, the 'extrinsic personal' religion (using religion as a source of comfort) was highly associated with the overall capacity to develop PTG to two of the PTG subscales: personal strength and spiritual change. Extrinsic personal religion is a variable that has not received any attention in the PTG literature to date. A number of methodological weaknesses are discussed. Results are discussed within the context of the current climate of religious coping research and recommendations for future research are made. Finally, chapter four provides a review of the research process including insights into my own personal faith along with methodological considerations for similar future research