This thesis examines the \(influence\) of music on the development of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). The dissertation is historically driven, but relies upon an interdisciplinary approach to draw on the insights of ecclesiology, theology, liturgiology, church development, and music. This thesis utilizes a chronological and systematic approach to the relationship between music and the Church of God in the United States during the first 125 years of the denomination’s history, from 1886 – 2011. The study focuses upon eight major themes: historical roots, education, publishing, evangelism, transition, nurturing, liturgiology, and worship, to show that music had a widespread influence on the development of the denomination. The musical underpinnings for these broad themes include: Spirited-singing and exuberant worship; traveling music groups for the purpose of promotion; the shaped-note tradition; technological advancements; the amalgamation of both music and the youth of the Church of God; the establishment of a leadership structure for music; the music styles used in the Church of God; and finally highlighting worship as a lifestyle. For over a century music has been an often-neglected dialogue partner at the table of academic discussion and literature, and this thesis argues for recognition and a proper place in Pentecostal history.

In many churches, congregational singing is a central component of corporate worship. The sung hymns encapsulate the congregation’s theological beliefs, reflect their historical heritage and underscore the musical biases of the congregation. This writer contends that because hymns are so essential to congregations, there is a correlation between a congregation’s hymnody and its identity, which is typically measured by factors such as its rituals, history, leadership and location. However, one variable that deserves greater attention is that of the role of congregational hymnody. Consequently, the aim of this study is to explore how congregational hymnody is a source of congregational identity. To achieve this, this writer applied a case study methodology to multiple sites. The first is historical and examines the 18th Century Fetter Lane Moravian congregation. The second is an ethnographic study of the St. Thomas Assemblies of God Pentecostal congregation. The third is a textual analysis of the sole Caribbean ecumenical hymnal ever published. Through this study, I advance the notion that as congregations sing hymns they are engaging in a unique activity (\(hymnic\) \(performativity\)) in which as they make music through hymn singing, the music is also at work shaping and forming the congregations’ communal identity.

The current study contributes to the development of a discourse surrounding the ways in which Pentecostal and Charismatic attitudes have been shaped and reshaped by issues at the core of Zambia’s civic concerns. Tracing the historical development of Pentecostalism in Zambia and exploring the nation's history of civic engagement, the primary areas of examination will include both political activism and various attempts at addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Attempts at Pentecostal civic engagement are traced in post-colonial Zambia, from independence in 1964 during the Kaunda era, until 2012. Between June 2009 and September 2013, the author engaged inter alia on both intensive and extensive ethnographic research in Lusaka, conducted over 50 interviews with major church leaders, distributed 300 questionnaires (with a response of 265), attended 20 gatherings of her focus group, and visited 3 HIV/AIDS clinics in Lusaka over a 4 year period. This research focused on leaders and members of mainly Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, and also on workers in integrated health care centres as well as in other institutions set up by some of these churches. To date, no comprehensive research has been conducted in the area of Pentecostal and Charismatic civic engagement in the Republic of Zambia.

In the light of the Mission-Shaped Church report (2004) and the foundation of the joint Anglican/Methodist Fresh Expressions Initiative (2005), churches were encouraged to seek ‘fresh expressions of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church’. The ecclesial reality of four case studies of new forms of worshipping communities across Methodist Churches in the Liverpool District was examined and analysed in relation to the official statements of the Methodist Church and the Fresh Expressions Initiative, questioning the rhetoric of “church for the unchurched”. Operating at the interface of ethnography and ecclesiology, this thesis employed ethnographic and negotiated research methods in order to establish why, in an age of declining church attendance, people are choosing to join groups that are doing church differently. From the evidence, I draw out characteristics of hospitality, participation and flexibility indicative of a grassroots experience of church. The thesis discovered, through detailed ethnographic research the ecclesial reality of these new Methodist groups, and presents previously unpublished evidence from grassroots participants. In listening to the voices of participants and their experience the research challenges the narrow understanding of a ‘Mission-Shaped Church’ and considers whether the ecclesial reality of the grassroots groups in this study bring a broader and more nuanced understanding of new ecclesial realities to the Methodist Church and the Fresh Expressions Initiative.

This thesis embodies the first systematic historical research of Black gospel music as a tradition in Britain, calling attention to the serious gap in knowledge so far concerning its growth amongst African Caribbean Pentecostals in Britain. Although it maintains that an underlying theme is the significance of Africa as the original birthplace of African descendants in Britain, the Caribbean and America; it opposes a one-size-fits-all universal historical account of Black gospel music, suggesting that historical knowledge so far is based on historical interpretations of the development of religious music amongst African ancestors in America. It makes the claim that African Caribbean Pentecostalism, in particular its worship practices, nurtured the musical talent of the youth in its congregations who were destined to advance Black gospel music as a tradition in Britain. Using first-hand accounts of African Caribbean Pentecostals of the post-war years in Britain, it identifies three main sources as retainers of “historical facts” representative of objects of the past that can help towards a new approach to history and heritage.

This thesis reveals, describes, and critically analyses the complex and little-studied lifeworld of elite Coptic Orthodox Christians living in Kuwait. As a sociotheological study, it contributes towards a greater understanding of the Coptic Orthodox Church's lived theology and diasporic situation on the Arabian Peninsula. Following a grounded theory, qualitative approach using interdisciplinary methods, the aim of the thesis was to describe Coptic Orthodoxy in Kuwait and then rescript the data to contest, complicate, and construct various sociological and theological theories. Material was gathered from St Mark's Coptic Orthodox Church through participant observation, interviews, and literature analysis. The material was situated within the backdrop of the current literature, Coptic history, and the Kuwaiti context described as restrictive clientelism. Selected data were analysed sociologically and theologically. Randall Collins' Interaction Ritual theory was a primary tool. Data on prayer were analysed using a model based on a sociotheological reformulation of the theory of theosis grounded in the experienced activity of the Holy Spirit or pneumatic piety. The results of these analyses were placed in conversation with Pentecostalism for contextual, comparative, and dialogical purposes. The manuscript concludes with the contributions of this thesis while noting the future challenges and possibilities for continuing research.

This thesis comprises an introduction to the life and works of Victorinus of Pettau, a translation of his commentary on the Apocalypse and a select commentary on that work.

This thesis examines the religion and spirituality of black African churchgoing teenagers in England. The study is situated within the existing literature on the religion and spirituality of children and teenagers in the field of religious studies, not as a repeat of any existing study, but as a unique investigation. It is important given the limited research that exists on the subject matter, despite the enormous population of black teenagers in the United Kingdom. The study argues that a qualitative methodology is most suitable because of the nature of the enquiry. The interview method is adopted because it allows for interaction between the researcher and the participants, which is crucial to the aims of this study. The participants of the study comprised 27 black churchgoing teenagers, ages 13 to 15, who are members of the RCCG, an African-led denomination. The results show that even though religion and spirituality influence the lives of the participants, other factors affect the extent of this influence. The factors discussed in this study include the influence of society (societal values, social media and music) and social contexts (home, school and church) on the religion and spirituality of the participants. The perceptions and the beliefs that the participants expressed on religion and spirituality were also discussed. This information forms the basis of the main research. In addition, the influence of fashion - tattoos and body piercing - was discussed, although it was not covered by the original interview questions, as it was unexpectedly brought up during the course of the interviews. This study contributes to the ongoing debates about the religion and spirituality of teenagers from a specific cultural background, providing a balanced comparison between the existing literature on the religion and the spirituality of teenagers from a British background and teenagers with African origins who are living in Britain. It also provides a unique understanding and knowledge for research boards in education, black majority church leaders and teachers on the way African teenagers, particularly the participants of this study, perceive religion and spirituality, thereby helping the church leaders and the teachers to support them.

This thesis analyses how martyrs’ blood was constructed in sixteenth-century English martyrological writings, confessional apologetics and polemics, c. 1520-c. 1625. It uses the topic of martyrs’ blood as a lens onto wider confessional constructions of both martyrdom and confessional theologies. It argues that, despite superficial similarities, Protestants and Catholics constructed martyrs’ blood in very different ways, and that this calls into question recent scholarly trends towards seeing the confessions as having a common conception of martyrdom. Chapter One surveys the treatment of blood and martyrdom from the Bible to the medieval West, demonstrating the main threads on which early-modern constructions of martyrdom drew. Chapter Two discusses Henrician Protestant constructions of martyrs’ blood. Chapter Three focuses on John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Chapter Four examines the relatively unbloody rhetoric of English Catholic discussions of martyrdom, from the 1520s to 1570s. Chapter Five looks at the emergence of a rich rhetoric of martyrs’ blood in English Catholic writings from the 1580s to the 1620s. Authors examined include William Tyndale, John Bale, John Foxe, Thomas More, Reginald Pole, Robert Persons and William Allen. The thesis focuses particularly on five key elements relating to the texts’ treatment of martyrs’ blood: Eucharistic theology; materiality; temporal worldview; bloody enemies; martyrs’ blood as witness.

This thesis is entitled ‘Classical Elements in Early Christian Depictions of the Afterlife’. Taking an approach influenced by Reception studies, it explores some key moments where Christians engage in a dialogue with their pagan predecessors. The focus is primarily on Latin literature, although a limited selection of art and Greek literature has been included where particularly revealing. The aim of this work is to use a series of case studies in order to demonstrate the cross-pollination of ideas and to show that in late antiquity, Christian authors in the Latin West were reacting to their pagan antecedents in a variety of different ways. Through close readings of several key texts this thesis will examine moments of cultural interchange and allow us to think about some specific and illuminating examples of a complex and nuanced relationship. In the first few centuries AD Christian ideas about what happens when we die were still fluid, so the afterlife provides a particularly fruitful basis for exploring wider questions about the relationship between paganism and Christianity.