This thesis examines the nature and extent of the participation of women in the Catholic Church and attitudes towards this, from the Second Vatican Council to the present day in the Anglosphere nations. The originality of this contribution to knowledge derives from the analysis of earlier survey data on the subject authorised by the Catholic Bishops’ Conferences in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, England & Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. A comparative study is made of these findings with those of a parallel qualitative and quantitative study undertaken in 2013 in Scotland. The findings evidence analogous themes running through both the earlier research data and that from 2013. The duty to appreciate the diversity of Catholic women is a key factor. The dangers of a culture of clericalism are evidenced as a serious barrier to any lay participation. The need for education and formation of the laity is identified as crucial, as is the importance of Catholic social teaching in providing a conduit for increased dialogue and respect between women and men. The Church’s emphasis on unity and continuity is acknowledged as both a barrier to, and yet potentially a positive means for, future collaboration between men and women. Proposals are made about how this research could underpin future development in the Catholic Church, particularly in Scotland. These include utilising an oblique methodology and the implementation of a receptive feminism. The facilitation of dialogue would ensure there is true gender equality, allowing the gifts of both women and men to be engaged in meeting the needs of the Church and the world.

The supervision of students for ministry is of primary importance for the Church today. In a context where religion is becoming increasingly privatised and the Church increasingly marginalised, not only are there fewer candidates presenting for ministry, and fewer ministers, the challenges facing these ministers become ever more complex. Although the study of theology is basic to the exercise of ministry, the skills for ministry are learned on placement, where a student engages in the practice of ministry supervised by an experienced and trained minister. It is from this supervisor that the trainee minister learns how to deal with the complexities of ministry today. It follows, therefore, that the training given to such supervisors must be developed to take account of the changing role of ministry. The Church of Scotland has an intensive training course for these supervisors whom I will refer to as ‘formational supervisors’. This thesis aims to evaluate this training to ascertain the extent to which it equips formational supervisors for the task. To do this, I interviewed six formational supervisors and the six probationer ministers on placement in their congregations to determine the extent to which supervisory practice was sharpened and enhanced by the Church of Scotland’s current training programme, where any weaknesses lay, and, therefore, whether the training was fit for purpose. The results of my research show that the training offered is very good but could be excellent. I outline the strengths and weaknesses of the training as it is currently configured and suggest areas for development. I make ten recommendations for improvements to the training. I also identify the characteristics of the formational supervisor which sets this type of supervision apart from pastoral or clinical supervision. This is significant in enabling appropriate training in formational supervision. The results of the research, while being of importance for the training of formational supervisors of ministry students in the Church of Scotland, have wider application. These results would also be helpful for reflecting on training in other churches and could be developed for the training of formational supervisors in any discipline.

The visual culture of Victorian Protestant missionaries is an under-researched area, despite the current interest in art and religion, and the implications of missionary imagery’s legacy in a post-colonial world. Looking specifically at British missionaries to southern Africa, this thesis proposes that visual culture, comprised of art, image, and their corollaries in personal and collective imagination, be recognised as an appropriate framework through which to re-examine a group predominantly associated with the Word. In particular, it argues that visual resources were not only communicated with originating missionary societies and home supporters, but were utilised as tools for evangelism and education, and the development of self-identity for men and women operating far from home. Beginning with a theoretical defence of visual culture as an appropriate and meaningful lens through which to investigate mission, the thesis goes on to consider the formative visual culture of prospective missionaries, identifying how and why evangelical Protestants accessed images. Key themes of landscape and portraiture are identified, and the varied media through which these were encountered investigated, including printed publications, gallery art, domestic ephemera, and ecclesial decorations. A detailed examination of the popular religious periodical The Sunday at Home brings together the exploration of these diverse themes. The second half of the thesis transitions from visual influences on prospective missionaries at home, to the visual culture of foreign missionary practitioners, pivoting on the activity of missionary training. An exploration of training reveals a disconnect between the importance of art and image in popular religious life, and a failure to address adequately their evangelistic applications. Moving into the final sections of the project, art and image re-emerge as significant, though the lack of guidance on their use is shown to have limited their co-ordination and effectiveness. Nevertheless, archive research in the UK, and field research in Malawi and South Africa, yielded sufficient material to demonstrate the particular importance of the landscape genre, and of the magic lantern as a crucial visual medium. Although visual materials were significant in the construction of missionary identity, and were heavily utilised in mission contexts, there was a widespread lack of engagement with, and distrust of, the visual, creating the complex and ambiguous interactions with which this thesis is ultimately concerned.

Taylor is an early example of a divine who wanted to find a way of remaining an orthodox Christian while rejecting the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. Taylor could not see how the term ‘sin’could be correctly applied to anything but an individual’freely-chosen acts. However, he recognised that the reduction of the Christian concept of sin to particular sins constituted the Pelagian heresy. He attempted to avoid it by placing the insight behind the traditional doctrine in the challenge posed to the will by a naturalised version of the Augustinian fallen state, which was nonetheless morally indifferent in itself. The insights and confusions in Taylor’treatment of original sin and his anthropology, notably regarding the human will and its freedom, provide a fruitful basis for a more general consideration of the question of ‘orthodoxy’concerning original sin and the classical Christian doctrine of man.

This thesis examines the relationship between pentecostalism and fundamentalism in the United States from 1906-1943. Of particular interest is the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals, which combined these two movements (along with holiness churches), though their history was marked by dispute. On closer examination, the two groups held an evangelical heritage in common from the nineteenth century. Like a new species that is introduced into a particular ecological context, new religious movements grow and develop in response to their surrounding environment. This study divides pentecostalism’s growth (particularly that of the Assemblies of God and the Church of God [Cleveland, TN]) into three stages: genesis (the introductory period, 1906-1909), adaptation (the formative period, 1910-1924), and retention (the educational period, 1925-1943). Fundamentalism ‘leavened’ pentecostalism by the latter’s adoption of the ‘language’, the ‘content’ and the ‘rhetoric’ of fundamentalist theology, especially through the vehicle of dispensationalism. In the end, the hostility exhibited between them during this period was the result of religious proximity. Pentecostals were a threat to the power structures of fundamentalism by attracting parishioners to its form of revivalism.

This thesis examines the form and function of the miraculous as it appears in Latin narrative histories of the crusades of 1095-1204. It addresses an important scholarly lacuna by approaching crusading through the lens of the miraculous, a theme of critical importance to many historical representations of the crusades. Three core lines of analysis are pursued: how the miraculous, as the ultimate epistemological tool for the discernment of divine will, was employed by the authors of crusade narratives as a component in their rhetorical strategies; how representations of the miraculous can reflect changing contemporary attitudes towards the crusading movement; and whether the miraculous of crusade texts can mirror parallel changes to the intellectual landscape of western Europe. The importance of supernatural themes to the narrativisation of the crusades is revealed through the exploration of three thematic dichotomies: miracles and marvels; visions and dreams; and signs and augury. It will be shown that the miraculous represents a previously undervalued source for understanding how the crusades were conceptualised, represented, and memorialised in this period. Further, the findings of the thesis exemplify how crusade narratives represent rich and hitherto largely overlooked sources for the study of medieval western European intellectual culture more broadly.

This dissertation reports a research project conducted as part of the Doctor of Practical Theology professional doctorate programme at the University of Birmingham. The research explored how the perceived needs of older people in an Anglican Parish Church might be more adequately understood and addressed through an Action Research strategy. Initial investigation by means of focus groups led to the design and implementation of a short course for people over 55 through which they could share their practical wisdom about how to age well. The course is described and reflected on in detail as the key action within this Participative Action Research process. The research adopted a strengths-based philosophy and was influenced by the approach of Asset Based Community Development. Emergent theory from reflection on practice include non-essentialist, general and specific experiences of ageing which are related back to pastoral ministry. The findings suggest some ordinary ways in which older people can be enabled to adopt a positive attitude, overcome obstacles and challenge a deficit model of ageing. Theological reflections explore issues of normalizing ageing, the ethic of abundance, fullness of life, and a Christian theological anthropology which holds ageing to be a Creation good.

This thesis discusses the Threefold Blessing: salvation, financial prosperity, and healing as a contextual hope in the Korean Pentecostal context. Ironically, hope always begins in hopeless situations and it will not function as a hope unless it is renewed in the new context. No one hopes for the hope that already has been achieved. As hope is contradictory to current difficulties, it can be hope to those who are suffering from the current lack, deficiency and hardship. The Threefold Blessing was the most urgent and eager hope for desperate Koreans in the post Korean context. As the Threefold Blessing was contradictory to the socio-economic and political situations of Korea after the War, it could be hope to Koreans. In fact, the Threefold Blessing successfully contextualized into the Korean context and has deeply lodged into Korean Pentecostals’ life. However, as today’s Korean contexts changed, it is questionable if the Threefold Blessing can continuously give hope to contemporary Koreans. Thus, the Threefold Blessing has to be reinterpreted and recontextualized into today’s Korean Pentecostal context theologically. If the old Threefold Blessing emphasized spiritual, physical and prosperous life of individuals, the new Threefold Blessing has to be understood in wider theological perspectives, including social and ecological matters. Throughout this thesis, I will review the contextualization of the Threefold Blessing in the Korean context as a Pentecostal hope and suggest the ways of its recontextualization for present and future Korean Pentecostals with theological interaction with Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope.

L'accouchement prématuré reste la principale cause de mortalité et de morbidité néonatales. Le signal EMG utérin semble un vecteur potentiel d'indication du risque d'accouchement prématuré.<br /> Dans la suite des travaux réalisés pour la détection, le traitement et la classification des événements dans le signal EMG Utérin, notre travail s'est orienté vers la classification des contractions à partir des signaux EMG utérins, afin de séparer les deux types d'accouchement : accouchement prématuré et accouchement à terme.<br /> Les contractions utérines ont été manuellement segmentées à partir du signal EMG utérin. Puis chaque contraction est modélisée et des paramètres sont extraits avant de faire la classification. Cette modélisation est faite par ondelettes et par analyse de la densité spectrale de puissance de chaque contraction.<br /> La classification est ensuite réalisée en utilisant 2 types de méthodes : tout d'abord une classification non supervisée, qui regroupe les contractions sans connaissance a priori des classes, permettant ensuite une interprétation des groupes en fonction des semaines d'aménorrhées et du terme d'accouchement. Dans ce contexte nous avons développé une méthode originale de classification non supervisée basée sur le test de Fisher combiné avec la méthode de k-moyenne (USCM, Unsupervised Statistical Classification Method).<br /> L'autre type de classification est supervisée. Après avoir sélectionné d'une façon précise les femmes qui peuvent être utilisées pour l'apprentissage de notre méthode de classification, nous avons utilisé différentes méthodes supervisées de classification. Tout d'abord, nous avons testé des méthodes classiques (Réseaux de neurones, Parzen,...). Puis une méthode originale basée sur le réseau d'ondelettes a été développée pour cette classification, cette méthode ayant été précédemment utilisée pour la régression mais jamais pour la classification.<br /> Nous avons été confrontés à un problème lié au faible nombre de d'éléments pour l'apprentissage. Nous avons donc aussi utilisé une méthode basée sur la modélisation autorégressive pour augmenter l'ensemble d'apprentissage.<br /> En ce qui concerne les applications, et pour la séparation entre les signaux d'EMG (application clinique), nous avons utilisé deux approches. Dans la première approche, nous avons utilisé des contractions ayant le même nombre de SAR (Semaines d'Aménorrhée à l'Enregistrement) mais des SAA (semaines d'Aménorrhée à l'accouchement) différent (petite différence et grande différence). La deuxième approche est de classifier les événements acquis avec différentes (SAR) pour des femmes ayant le même SAA.<br /> D'après les résultats obtenus, nous avons pu conclure que nous pouvons distinguer le terme d'accouchement des femmes enregistrés aux mêmes termes de grossesse. Et nous avons pu également conclure que les contractions changent de caractéristiques en fonction du terme de grossesse. D'un point de vue clinique, le résultat important est que, pour un terme de grossesse donné à l'enregistrement, il est possible de distinguer une contraction normale et une contraction conduisant à un accouchement prématuré.

ON ETUDIE DANS CETTE THESE CERTAINS PROBLEMES SPECTRAUX POUR DES OPERATEURS DESCHRODINGER. ON S'INTERESSE D'ABORD A LA LIMITE SEMI-CLASSIQUE POUR LE NOMBRE D'ETATS PROPRESDE L'OPERATEUR DE SCHRODINGER A N CORPS. ON UTILISE ENSUITE LE CROCHET DE DIRICHLET-NEUMANN POUR OBTENIR LA LIMITE SEMI-CLASSIQUE DES MOYENNES DE RIESZ DES VALEURS PROPRES DISCRETES POUR L'OPERATEUR DE SCHR¨ODINGER A N CORPS. ON CONSIDERE EGALEMENT LE POTENTIEL EFFECTIF DE L'OPERATEUR DE SCHRODINGER A N CORPS AVEC POTENTIEL DE COULOMB ET ON OBTIENT QU'IL A UNE DECROISSANCE CRITIQUE A L'INFINI. ON ETUDIE DONC L'OPERATEUR DE SCHRODINGER A POTENTIEL CRITIQUE. ON S'INTERESSE AU SEUIL POUR LA CONSTANTE DE COUPLAGE ET AU DEVELOPPEMENT ASYMPTOTIQUE DE LA RESOLVANTE DE L'OPERATEUR DE SCHRODINGER, PUIS ON UTILISE CE DEVELOPPEMENT POUR ETUDIER LA LIMITE A BASSE ENERGIE DE LA DERIVEE DE LA FONCTION DE DECALAGE SPECTRAL POUR UNE PERTURBATION A DECROISSANCE CRITIQUE. FINALEMENT, ON UTILISE CE RESULTAT AVEC LE RESULTAT CONNU POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT ASYMPTOTIQUE A HAUTE ENERGIE DE CETTE FONCTION DE DECALAGE SPECTRAL POUR OBTENIR LE THEOREME DE LEVINSON.