Many studies that have examined the issues of ‘secularisation’ and ‘religion and the working class’ have been based on large cities. This study, after first reviewing the debate on these issues, looks at institutional religion in coalmining communities in the East Midlands and South Wales from 1860 to the 1930s. It focuses particularly, though not exclusively, on Hucknall and Shirebrook in the East Midlands and the Rhondda Valleys in South Wales. The difficulties faced by the churches in providing for the needs of the rapidly growing mining communities are then outlined; the progress made by Nonconformity, Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism is examined and the contribution that the churches made to the lives of both church members and communities is assessed. The study also looks at the contribution of the miners themselves to institutional religion. The final chapter focuses on the inter-war years and assesses possible reasons for the widespread decline in religious commitment during that period and in so doing examines the extent to which the churches themselves may have inadvertently contributed to their own decline. Overall this study argues that institutional religion made a significant contribution, at least until 1914, to the life of the mining communities. It was mainly in the interwar period that, for a variety of reasons, secularisation in these working class communities increased.

A study of the relationship between the people of Gloucestershire and the Church of England diocese of Gloucester under two bishops, Charles John Ellicott and Edgar Charles Sumner Gibson who presided over a mainly rural diocese, predominantly of small parishes with populations under 2,000. Drawing largely on reports and statistics from individual parishes, the study recalls an era in which the class structure was a dominant factor. The framework of the diocese, with its small villages, many of them presided over by a squire, helped to perpetuate a quasi-feudal system which made sharp distinctions between leaders and led. It is shown how for most of this period Church leaders deliberately chose to ally themselves with the power and influence of the wealthy and cultured levels of society and ostensibly to further their interests. The consequence was that they failed to understand and alienated a large proportion of the lower orders, who were effectively excluded from any involvement in the Church's affairs. Both bishops over-estimated the influence of the Church on the general population but with the twentieth century came the realisation that the working man and women of all classes had qualities which could be adapted to the Church's service and a wider lay involvement was strongly encouraged. The Great War proved to be a major catalyst, both in breaking up class barriers and in confirming the estrangement of the masses from the Church and its message. Throughout the period, the Church's efficiency was impaired by having to operate through an archaic parochial system in which a large proportion of rural priests were considered by their bishops to display a high level of lethargy. Published work on this topic has hitherto been confined to some of the major industrial cities. This study offers an insight into an area of the country and at a period which has not previously received much attention.

This thesis is concerned with the movement of corporeal relics in France, England and the Low Countries during the central Middle Ages. There were two types of relic movements in medieval Europe. The first of these forms a broad category termed translationes, and includes the theft of relics (furta sacra) as well as intra-site translations (the movement of relics within a specific site) and regional translations (the movement of relics from one site to another). The second type of relic movement was the delatio, or the tour of relics. Communities were motivated to move their relics by numerous factors, including protection from harm or theft, to claim land, to provide protection to a specific area (including from war or pestilence), or to build wealth or focus a community around a specific secular or religious identity. The latter often meant that the movement of relics was performed as part of a deliberate relic policy of the leaders of that community, and helped to promote a common identity, thus binding the people of that area together as a social group. They also could be used to build boundaries around lands that were either desired by or owned by a particular monastic community, thereby allowing the monastery to acquire new lands and endowments. This thesis is contextually wide-ranging but topically specific. It explores one facet of medieval Christian devotional practices (the movement of relics and the erection of shrines to Christian saints) in great detail, while also investigating the economic, social, and political framework of western Europe between 800 and 1200. The dual nature of this structure emphasises the contributions made throughout this thesis to the historiography. I have developed a new interpretation of the valuation processes for relics, understanding them not as commodities or inalienable possessions, but as ‘inalienable commodities’, or goods that functioned both as moveable, tradeable commodities with use-value and exchange-value, and as inalienable possessions, above the normal means of economic exchange. I also argue for a new understanding of sacred space, noting that physical shrines could be temporarily erected, not just permanent sites of the sacred. This is a spatial category that has remained unstudied in the fields of history and anthropology. This thesis argues that the movement of relics as represented in hagiographical accounts manifested miracles as a necessary economic and social product. This product was a result of the labour of the monastic or ecclesiastical cult, the laity who gave devotion to the saint, and the work of the saint themselves through the medium of their relics. The hagiographical accounts of medieval Europe used specific literary topoi to illustrate how these thaumaturgic productions manifested the value and socio-economic status of relics. Once the value of the relics had been established, the relics were then used to further the political, economic, and social aims of the monastic and lay communities that surrounded them through the implementation of relic policies. It is therefore argued that the movement of medieval corporeal saints’ relics in western Europe demonstrates that relics circulated within the medieval economy in myriad ways. Research into the status of relics, how they were exchanged, and the socio-economic benefits accrued through their acquisition can therefore have some bearing on the historian’s understanding of the worth of the human body, as well as the tension between creating capital and promoting the sacred in medieval Christianity.

This thesis addresses the existential challenges and opportunities posed by religious diversity. It argues that philosophical engagements with diversity misrepresent and obstruct full engagement with it. The thesis reconceptualises diversity from a Kierkegaardian perspective, sensitive to the existential dimensions of religion and focused on religious commitment. Drawing on features of Kierkegaard’s description of religious faith, particularly uncertainty, risk, paradox and transcendence, it proposes that an authentic, Christian response to religious diversity is one of unbounded commitment. It is unbounded in that it is an absolute, boundless commitment and deep fidelity to God’s revelation, but entails a venturing, boundary-crossing, radical openness to finding this in sites of offence. This is grounded in the idea of horizontal transcendence: that subjectivity and selfhood are called into being by the presence of inassimilable others that invite one beyond one’s boundaries in deep relationships and substitutionary love. Deep engagement with religious others goes to the heart of faith in Christ as well as expressing fundamental truths about the human situation itself. A concluding sketch is provided of how deep interreligious encounter can be achieved through indirect communication focused on the character of the participants.

The thesis proposes a liberative Mariological model for southern African Christian women disproportionately infected/affected by HIV/AIDS. The first chapter argues that women are disproportionately infected and affected by HIV and AIDS impacts in southern Africa. It proposes the utilisation of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as an inspirational symbol for the empowerment of southern African Christian women against HIV/AIDS. The second chapter explains the basic themes of the thesis of ‘symbol’, ‘inspiration’ and ‘empowerment’ in relation to Mary. It also illustrates how Mary is utilised as a symbol of empowerment within the chapters that follow. Chapter three considers some African theological writings on Mary, mainly by African women theologians and also reflects on how Mary interacts with some communities in southern Africa. Chapters four to eight are built on chapter themes of Mary as mother, as mother of sorrows, Mary’s incarnational role, Mary as virgin, and as a revolutionary respectively. Within each chapter theme, the thesis considers how Mary could inspire southern African Christian women for empowerment against HIV infection and AIDS impacts. In chapter nine, a Marian healing ritual for women living with HIV/AIDS is proposed, using feminist ritual healing guidelines, for the women’s empowerment, followed by the concluding chapter.

This thesis explores the experience of spiritual dissonance described in the spiritual life histories of twenty one Christian women associated with the evangelical Christian community in Scotland. It describes the symptoms of constriction, paralysis and impasse which some of these women report and explores the reasons for their interpretation of their symptoms as signs of spiritual sickness. It uses faith development theory to explain some aspects of these symptoms in the context of healthy transitional faithing change. It suggests however that women’s reluctance to speak publicly about their experience, their habitual repression of their deep emotions and questions, their tendency to use psychological ‘splitting’ to conform within their faith communities and resist the fragmentation of their spiritual identity, indicate that their development has been seriously damaged by spiritual restriction in some congregations. It argues that patriarchal church culture, androcentric educational approaches and the deliberate perpetuation of dependent faithing styles militate against women’s spiritual development. It demonstrates the extent to which some women’s interiorisation of the patriarchal structures and values of their communities has led them to separate themselves from aspects of their relationship to self, church and God in a manner resembling the behaviour of those who have been abused. This thesis calls the evangelical church in Scotland to acknowledge and respond to this phenomenon, recognising that while some of these women are at present ‘internal leavers’ in the church - physically present within but emotionally detached from their congregations - they may ultimately make the decision to leave.

This thesis is an attempt to develop a constructive systematic argument about Christian hope. The first chapter examines the historical ground of Christian hope in Jesus' death and resurrection, the central instance and paradigm of God's saving action. Precisely because it is hope in God who raised Jesus from the dead, Christian hope can face fully those features of life which deny hope and still believe rationally that God's purposes of life and love will triumph. This is shown by discussing hope in terms of atonement and suffering. In chapter two we explore further the historical and theological ground of hope by pressing the importance of understanding Jesus' resurrection as an historical event, and by discussing the trinitarian theology of death and resurrection. We suggest that the theology of Holy Saturday is particularly important since it is an attempt to take seriously Jesus' death as an event within the very life of God. Death itself is an important subject for Christian theology. Christian hope must help people to find positive significance in their mortality as well as trusting in life after death. Moreover, the theological significance of Jesus' resurrection extends far beyond its implications for human destiny since it invites a re-thinking of God, human being and the world. In particular, it paints us to Jesus as God's way of saving the world, and shows the importance of self-sacrifice if hope is to be kept alive. The complex of crucifixion-resurrection is the ground, logic and pattern for the actions of Christian hope. Nevertheless the hope for life after death is essential to Christian hope since it is the hope for the final fulfilment of God's purposes not only for us but for all creation. This shows that eschatology should not be fanciful speculation but rather cautious projection from our present experience of God. We sketch out a possible Christian eschatology in terms of the importance of the body, the social nature of personal life, and the abiding place of creation itself. In chapter three we examine the pressure of the logic of the Christian doctrine of God - ie of the triumph of his grace in crucifixion and resurrection - towards universalism, and find this compelling despite the familiar objections. If all men and women are to love God freely we must think of personal growth towards perfection beyond death. Finally, in chapter four, we turn to the practice of hope in seeking a better human future. We argue that this makes politics an important and unavoidable concern for Christians, and we show why Christian belief requires us to take politics seriously, despite the claims often made, both inside and outside the church, to the contrary. Some indication is given of how the complex relation between faith and politics can be respected, and we make specific proposals for the kind of changes which Christian hope should cause us to work for in contemporary Britain. Thus it may be seen that Christian hope embraces the whole of life in the conviction that all things work together for good under God's love.

The thesis compares the teaching about Baptism contained in the catechetical and mystagogical teaching of the fourth century Churches in Jerusalem, Antioch and Mopsuestia with that of the period 1960-1980 emanating from the Church of South India and the Catholic, Orthodox and Baptist Churches in Britain. It considers the different approaches to catechesis and mystagogy of Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom of Antioch, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, and indicates the emphasis of Cyril on the necessity for the sincerity of the candidate, the pastoral concern and realism of John Chrysostom, and the emphasis on baptism as the symbol of the future which derives from Theodore. It also notes the differences in the situations and audiences for the material considered which is: the Procatechesis, Catecheses, and Mystagogical Catecheses of Cyril, the Catechetical Instructions of John Chrysostom, and the two works on the Faith and the Sacraments of Theodore. In the context of printed rather than oral instruction, a variety of modern works and liturgies are compared to give a composite view of each Church, although catechesis and mystagogy have tended to merge into one area of instruction. This modern material indicates a reversion to the earlier 'golden age of catechesis' of the fourth century, which in some situations is a conscious reversion, and in the others is an unconscious reversion to the fourth century due to the limited number of ways in which the baptismal rite can be explained. The link between baptism and ecclesiology is illustrated, as is the renewed importance of the community of the faithful in the acceptance and nurture of the candidates, and the renewal of interest in the role of the sponsor as the link between the candidate and the community.

The Christian Church, speaking both to its members and to all humankind, proposes, commonly, that human beings are required to offer acts of prayer and worship to God. However much Christian theologians approach the place of prayer and worship in the life of human beings it is not evident that they commonly question the notion that human beings are required to offer prayer and worship to God. In this study I have examined directly, in a manner which is not explicitly and commonly evident within Christian theology, some of the ways in which we might approach the notion that human beings are required to offer acts of prayer and worship to God. The core of this study is an examination of a series of texts drawn from the thirteenth century to the present day which, I show, do offer elements of an answer to my question. I explore the answers I can derive from the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, from English and Scottish philosophers and from English devotional writings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from Kant, from a series of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers, and from Christian resources of the twentieth and twenty first century. I examine the terms within which the notion of the requirement to offer prayer and worship to God is most commonly set and I explore the ways in which these terms are commonly approached among twentieth century philosophers. Finally, I offer elements of my own approach to the question' Are human beings required to offer acts of prayer and worship to God?'

This thesis explores the lives of those whose experience as ordained ministers, psychological therapists or adult educators leaves them feeling marginal within their respective professions. The Introduction recounts an epiphanic experience in the researcher’s praxis which made him question received professional wisdom. Chapter One traces the labyrinthine contours of qualitative research and expounds a model of contemplative inquiry derived from the account of the disciples at the Easter tomb (John 20) and introduces autoethnography and creative arts research as the key research methods. Chapter Two places border discourse in historical context and expounds Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of ‘borderlands’ as the conceptual basis of the study. Five short autobiographical pieces form the basis of Chapter Three and serve to personally locate the author within the Borderlands. Chapter Four widens the exploration from ‘auto’ to ‘inter-ethnography’ and, in a series of eight ‘ink polaroids’, introduces those who participated in the study before presenting them in their own voice in a medium adapted from Carol Gilligan’s work on I-Poems. Chapter Five identifies the recurring themes of identity, spirituality, therapy, pedagogy and kinship and records what Borderland participants would like to say to their mainstream counterparts. The penultimate chapter playfully adopts Dwight Conquergood’s concept of the researcher as co-performative witness and presents data analysis in a musical composition for two pianos with narrative commentary. The final chapter outlines Anzaldúa’s neglected spiritual teaching and plots the coordinates of borderland grace. The study concludes that Borderlanders are not misfits but people who occupy a distinct vocational stance in the world. As a piece of creative art, this genre-challenging work transgresses conventional borders between academic analysis and lived experience, scholarly knowledge and embodied wisdom, audience as passive observer and as active participant. As a contribution to professional praxis, it traces the journey of nine practitioners from silence to speech, discouragement to empowerment, isolation to kinship. In fostering greater integration and wellbeing among the practitioners involved, it contributes to improved levels of spiritual, therapeutic and educational care for those with whom they work.