This thesis presents an argument for the development of a catechumenate for the Church of Scotland. It does so first by drawing attention to the wide discrepancy between the assumptions of the secular culture and those of the church, specifically the Church of Scotland, with a view to understanding the substantial differences in the beliefs of those baptised and the beliefs of the church. It argues that the church has yet to come to terms with this discrepancy and consequently has weakened its distinctive baptismal witness. Secondly, the thesis considers in depth the development and reception of two major studies on the subject of baptism conducted by the Church of Scotland in the last sixty years. It indicates that both remain largely unknown quantities within the church and have subsequently failed to provide practical guidance to the church in its practice of baptism. This thesis considers the experience and practice of adult baptism in contemporary Scotland and concludes with an extended argument justifying the need for a fully developed catechumenate.

This thesis develops a Pentecostal ecotheology by utilizing key pneumatological themes that emerge from the Pentecostal tradition. It examines and utilizes the salient Pentecostal and Charismatic voices that have stimulated ecotheology in the Pentecostal tradition and situates them within the broader context of Christian ecumenical ecotheologies (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Ecofeminist). These Pentecostal expressions are placed in dialogue with the particular ecological pneumatologies of Denis Edwards (Roman Catholic), Mark Wallace (Protestant), and Sallie McFague (Ecofeminist). The thesis advances a novel approach to Pentecostal ecotheology through a pneumatology of the Spirit baptized creation, the charismatic creational community, the holistic ecological Spirit, and the eschatological Spirit of ecological mission. Significantly, this thesis is the first substantive contribution to a Pentecostal pneumatological theology of creation with a particular focus on the Pentecostal community and its significance for the broader ecumenical community. Furthermore, it offers a fresh theological approach to imagining and sustaining earth-friendly practice in the twenty-first century Pentecostal church.

This thesis maps a qualitative empirical investigation of the talk, dynamics and theological practice of Bible-study groups. Chapter 2 locates this in the field of practical theology, demonstrating only a rather tenuous link between practical theological reflection on biblical interpretation and the practice of churches. This clarifies the aim of the thesis: to investigate the practice of Bible-study groups, as a contribution to the practical theology of biblical interpretation. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the methodology of the investigation (including in operation), bringing together interests from ethnography and discourse analysis, in relation to a wider frame of action research. Chapters 5 to 7 of the thesis account for the field work of the research, carried out through meetings with the three Bible-study groups, recording of data, transcription, coding and further analysis. Analytical concerns include the speech-exchange patterns of group meetings and the linguistic resources employed, in order to investigate how interpretative activity is achieved in the interaction between group participants. A particular interest is in the way different voices interrupt each other, and re-contextualise the conversation but also contribute to dialogue, especially between authoritative interpretations and critical questions from participants' experience. Comparisons are drawn with discourse in medical contexts and of scientists. Chapters 8 and 9 offer a comparative study of the three groups: of group dynamics and of the dynamics of interpretative dialogue. They also provide a rich picture of the practice of Bible-study, which includes sensual, ritual, relational and theological dimensions, key to which is the critical recruitment of texts and other voices, in order to interpret the relationship between God, group participants and others. God is experienced as incarnate in this interaction but also transcends the dialogue. Chapter 10 concludes the thesis, identifying questions for further research and offering suggestions designed to enhance Bible-study practice.

Interdisciplinary work is of the essence of pastoral theology, most obviously where theology and the human sciences interact. Such work carries with it a number of risks that are not always addressed or even recognised. The principal risk is that a facile attempt to forge links between disciplines may lead to serious distortions of the meanings of both. This thesis examines gestalt therapy and feminist theology as possible candidates for interdisciplinary work. By reading and interrogating the literature of both disciplines, it identifies their origins and analyses their core ideas. The thesis affirms disputed links between gestalt philosophy, psychology and the later therapy, and examines other contributors to the development of gestalt and its core ideas. It next examines the development and scope of feminist theology before analysing core ideas across the range of voices in feminist writing. From these core ideas it is possible to establish the values that writers and practitioners find important in their lives (practical-values). On this basis, it is shown that these two disciplines, despite differences of history and purpose, are compatible with each other and therefore suitable candidates for interdisciplinary work.

In this contextual study I investigate why and how the traditional approach to mission, engaged by Anglican missionaries, gave rise to a dual observance of ritual among Shona Anglican Christians. I begin by establishing the significance and essence of Shona views of death and the dead, then investigate the missionaries' historical background. I highlight that Christian arrogance, in the guise of racial superiority, underlies the confrontational and condemnatory approach. Traditional views were considered evil, in their place, Shona converts were forced to adopt western Christian views as the only acceptable and valid way of coping with this eschatological reality. These views did not usually fit the Shona worldviews and religious outlook, hence the adoption of dual observance. For some, life continues to be classified as either Christian or traditional and never both. However, some present Shona Anglican practices reflect a desire to integrate the two. Unless there is this integration, the Church remains other and irrelevant to the Shona people. The ultimate aim of this thesis is to advocate for a theological synthesis of Christian and Shona traditional views. I argue that such a synthesis, patterned on the interactive dialogical model, could lead to the cessation of confrontation and condemnation and its attendant dual observance, and enhance the development of a Shona Christian theology of death and the dead which provides for relevant and sensitive pastoral care.

Cluniac monasteries, so called because of their relationship to the abbot of Cluny in Burgundy, have been estimated to have numbered over seven hundred foundations at one time, distributed throughout France and in England, Wales, Scotland, Lombardy, and Spain. To date Cluniac studies have tended to concentrate on the abbey of Cluny, undoubtedly the fullest expression of Cluniac monasticism. Much work has been done on other individual Cluniac foundations but there has been little attempt to place the resulting information in the context of an organisational relationship between Cluniac monasteries and the abbot of Cluny, because this relationship is poorly understood. This thesis redresses this neglect by for the first time providing a model for this relationship whereby all Cluniac monks are said to have constituted an extended monastic community under the authority of the abbot of Cluny whose purpose was the transmission and maintenance of a distinctive monastic observance. This model was developed from a comprehensive examination of evidence of a variety of types, viewed from specific perspectives, relating to all the Cluniac foundations in England and Wales. This shows clear evidence of the involvement of centrally coordinated Cluniac administration in the regulation of these monasteries from the foundation process, the selection of their sites and their relationship with secular settlement and ecclesiastical and secular authority to provide optimal conditions for the following of a distinctly Cluniac monastic observance by their resident monks. It is argued on the basis of this model that future Cluniac research will be far more fruitful if it is reorientated towards the study of the extended Cluniac monastic community.

The Roman Catholic Church maintains that women cannot be ordained to the ministerial priesthood because of its unbroken tradition that only men can be priests, based on the example of Jesus, who chose only men to be ‘Apostles’. Vatican documents published during the late twentieth century use the writings of several mediaeval theologians and canonists to support this ruling. The topic is of present-day importance for understanding the origins of the exclusion of women from the priesthood given the current shortage of priests in the Catholic Church. This thesis looks first at the present ruling in the Vatican documents, and then considers the mediaeval writings, canon law and theology, from scholars such as Gratian, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, looking especially at their Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Subsequent chapters analyse in more detail the arguments from scripture and biology, drawing together strands of thought in the Middle Ages on these subjects, including judgements about women’s intellectual and emotional capacity, and the contemporary anthropological and Christological understanding of the Incarnation. Language and translation are also significant but often neglected factors in the discussion, which the thesis studies by highlighting the recovery of Greek writings in medicine and philosophy, along with choice of terminology and use of metaphor, in the mediaeval period and in modern Church documents. By this approach, a critical survey is made of the most salient aspects of the debate. This thesis seeks to dissect systematically the origins of the prohibition, based on attitudes towards women which, while not always intentionally misogynistic, were nonetheless rooted in a world view that, the thesis argues, is no longer relevant today.