This thesis studies the nature of grassroots unity during the charismatic renewal of the 1970s and its significance for ecumenism. It argues that the renewal made an important contribution to ecumenism by means of complementarity of institution and charisms, and christology and pneumatology. It is based on the five international conferences of the Fountain Trust in the 1970s and focuses on two grassroots activities: worship in general and the celebration of the eucharist in particular. Worship in this setting nurtured unity through charisms, but the eucharist exposed the inadequacy of this grassroots unity because of doctrinal and ecclesiological differences. The thesis aims to suggest a way forward by searching for the complementarity of institution and charisms, and christology and pneumatology in a charismatic context. It argues that the two emphases of the charismatic renewal, charisms and the Holy Spirit, complement the institutional commitments of the church and ecumenism. The concepts of Christus praesens and Spiriti praesens are considered intrinsic to the charisms, and thus christology and pneumatology should both be considered significant for ecumenism. It finally discusses the complementarity of ecumenical institutions and the charismatic renewal, the convergence of ecumenical streams and continuity in modern ecumenical history.

Caribbean communities in Britain are known for the high religiosity of their people, and yet as ‘popular’ as the Church appears to be, there is at the same time an over-representation of many in the criminal justice, mental health and social care systems. This thesis takes a new approach to examining the effectiveness of the Church in their lives; rather than examine its belief systems and rituals, it looks at the worship and personal experience of Baptists, the oldest inherited Christian denomination, through the lens of culture. It reveals through practices and experiences, that British Caribbean Christians continue to maintain an allegiance to inherited missionary prejudices against Caribbean culture, enforced by leaders, through a system of social stratification, resulting in self-loathing, alienation and dislocation. They are a people who respect biblical stories and particularly the story of the Exodus, which gives meaning to not just their religious, but social and political lives. This thesis theologically reflects on that story, reframing it to demonstrate that Moses is indeed to be celebrated, but not simply as one who leads God’s people out of Egypt, but to the Promised Land; being a successful prototype of a leadership founded on cultural inclusion.

During the course of the Parliamentary debates about Catholic emancipation in 1829, around 120 original, single sheet prints were published in London on the topic of Catholic Relief, at which point it was almost the sole subject of visual satire. This was the first time in living memory that a debate around toleration and the relationship between temporal and spiritual authority had been conducted on such a wide reaching scale. On 3 February 1829 the King, George IV, the head of the Anglican Church, had introduced Roman Catholic Relief in his speech for the opening of the 1829 Parliamentary session. By 13 April 1829 an Act to grant Roman Catholics civil liberty was given Royal Assent, revoking laws that prevented non-Anglicans from holding public office. This had followed four failed attempts to introduce Catholic Relief in the 1820s which had also prompted satirical image making, but never on the same scale. This thesis analyses for the first time the extensive body of prints produced in 1821-9 that relate to debates around Relief and addresses the questions: why were images produced, why were they predominately single sheet etchings, and who was so interested in Catholic emancipation as to be buying them in such quantities?

To what extent is British African Pentecostal Megachurch (BAPMC) a postmodern phenomenon, and has APMC influenced the western Pentecostal worship style in any way? The plethora of literature on Megachurches reveals a gap in knowledge about African Pentecostal Megachurch (APMC) worship and its influences, especially within the UK. Consequently, there is a need to research if the APMC worship concept is a postmodern phenomenon. This study seeks to investigate and determine if there is any influence and to what extent the African Pentecostal Megachurch is a postmodern phenomenon. To determine this, the study examines early African religion, missionary Christianity, African Instituted Churches, African Pentecostalism, transmigration and African immigration, the Black Church, African Diaspora and the Megachurch to give an understanding of African worship concept in comparison to what is obtainable today. A research methodology peculiar to this study was adopted, which involved using four APMCs in London as case studies to generate sufficient data to answer the research question along with existing literature and research projects by Megachurch experts. This study used the western contemporary culture (WCC) as a lens to view how these APMCs worship today compared to the African early worship styles and establishes that a relationship exists between the WCC and the APMCs’ worship concept; that WCC has influenced the APMC worship concept. Likewise, the western Pentecostal worship style has been influenced by African Pentecostal worship features. Throughout this thesis, the phrases ‘postmodernism’ and ‘WCC’ will be used interchangeably.

This thesis studies the ecclesiological development of Romanian Pentecostalism from its inception until after the fall of communism as well as analysing the contemporary situation and practice of the Romanian Pentecostal churches in context, both to diagnose the most important problems and to draw attention to and explain promising experiments and signs of hope. It reveals that due to external factors such as socio-political and economic constraints and internal factors such as lack of resources, lack of vision, past traditional theological inheritances, Romanian Pentecostal Churches have not always been able to engage with their context in a missionary way, and their missiological praxis has not always been contextual. The thesis aims to suggest that Romanian Pentecostal Churches produce a contextual theology that, in addition to being rooted in the Scriptures, is sensitive to the needs, struggles, and aspirations of the churches and the peoples of Romania today. The thesis concludes by affirming that the churches need to be themselves missionary alternative communities embodying the values of God's Kingdom in their essence, structures and outlook.

The large numbers of Africans that have come to live in Britain in the last few decades have necessitated a better understanding of African Christianity. Focusing on Pneumatology, this study sets out to achieve such understanding by first undertaking a research of a church in London with a congregation made up of mostly Africans. This fieldwork yielded twelve concrete statements or “pattern-theories” on what the church members believe about the Holy Spirit. At that point, a review of existing literature was used to understand these “pattern-theories” more deeply. A second fieldwork was then carried out whereby two of these twelve “pattern-theories” were tested on a larger number of Africans drawn from four different Christian denominations. The second phase enabled the study to achieve a wider understanding based on a more diverse population of Africans. These two phases of fieldwork constituted the empirical cycle. Following the analysis of the findings the study advances five factors which determine African Pneumatology. These are their day to day experience of life, the Bible, their African worldview, the African traditional concept of God and the worldwide Pentecostal movement. The study also suggests that the Doctrine of the Trinity is a key factor determining African Pneumatology.

Rapid social change has become a hallmark of post-apartheid South Africa and part of this process has been the expansion of a middle class amongst previously disadvantaged people. My thesis contributes to our understanding of this upward mobility by investigating the role of two Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian churches in helping young, professional, previously disadvantaged women (re)shape their identities and negotiate the various networks of social, economic and political power they encounter as they strive towards socio-economic advancement. The thesis details His People and Grace Bible church and gives an explanation of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity in South Africa. In contrast to Latin American studies it is argued that within both churches there was a masculinization, rather than feminization of Christianity, which was attractive to men and women. Using some of Bourdieu's ideas I have tried to show that a central contribution these churches make in the lives of some of their members is to help them develop various social and cultural capital resources, which they felt they lacked. Through their engagement with these churches women (re)shaped their identities seeing themselves as having a life purpose and the potential to realise it. Their identities as mothers, wives and single women were impacted by the ideal of the nuclear family and wifely submission upheld in both churches and which the women in this study tried to fulfil. By aligning themselves with this ideal women found their faith legitimated distancing themselves from their extended families and the various demands of African cultural practices. Both churches strove to establish a sanitised, modem, African Christianity, which promoted individuality and socio-economic success, and offered an alternative to the hedonistic trends of popular Y culture.

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.

Substantive understanding of religious belief hasn’t been explored within Catholicism. The study first investigates multi-faceted aspects of individual religious experience by the development of psychometric scales assessing sensitiveness to Catholicism, contents of Catholic belief and strength of adherence to them, and religiousness in the Catholic domain as a means for establishing, keeping, and improving a personal relationship with God, which is described as a mutual interaction. Scales were developed after conducting exploratory studies and thematic analysis, and finally tested in a sample of 470 individuals with a Catholic background. Developed scales are: ‘The Attitude toward Catholicism Scale’, ‘The Self-Evaluation Scale of Adherence to the Creed of the Roman Catholic Church’ and ‘The Mutuality Evaluation Scale of the Personal Relationship with God’. These scales are useful instruments for the assessment of religious belief in Catholic individuals especially when mental health outcomes need to be investigated in connection to practical aspects of religious belief. The role of religious belief in practice, bereavement resolution, and mental health are further aspects of the study conducted in New York in a sample of 42 Catholic bereaved individuals who lost their spouse in the WTC disaster. Although done retrospectively, the research focuses on the assessment of religious belief in Catholic bereaved individuals involved in the World Trade Center disaster prior to the attack. Moreover, while in the process of mourning, re-evaluation of religious experience, religious forgiveness described as a motivational transformation, and religious coping were also investigated. Aspects connected to a re-evaluation of the religious experience, the usage of religious strategy of coping, and religious forgiveness were explored in relation to the constructive significance given to religious belief, which was also explored in relation to resolution of bereavement, depression, and life satisfaction. Mechanisms of religious coping were analysed as transformation of significance and measured with the ‘Religious vs. Non Religious Coping Scale’. Religious transformation was assessed by the ‘Re-evaluation of the Religious Experience Scale’. Religious forgiveness was measured with the ‘Scale of Religious Forgiveness’. These above three scales were developed for the purpose of this study according to the particular features of the participants of the New York sample. Resolution of bereavement, levels of depression, and life satisfaction were mainly explored by conducting linear and multiple regressions in relation to different factors that emerged from factor analysis of the new developed scales. Results significantly supported the conceptualisation that constructive religious experience operates as a motivational phenomenon in promoting psychological well-being.

This thesis examines the influence of Christian interpretative frameworks on three New Woman novels: Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883), Amy Levy's Reuben Sachs (1888) and Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins (1893). It shows how Christian narratives were used to plot women's civic and sexual emancipation in the decade leading up to the naming of the 'New Woman' in the literary marketplace of the mid-1890s. This thesis arises out of an interest in women's theology and how this intersects with new feminist forms of women's fiction. It argues that, by the end of the nineteenth century, a theological apparatus enabled women novelists to plot female subjectivity outside of a Christian devotional context. Christian themes, such as self-sacrifice, conversion and prophecy, provided New Woman authors with a shared framework within which to nuance their ideological differences. Chapter one considers faith, doubt and the Woman Question in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm. This chapter shows how she used the high form of spiritual biography to plot women's civic and sexual struggle. Chapter two considers how the Christian structures of late-nineteenth century feminist thinking and Jewish conversion intersect in Amy Levy's Reuben Sachs. This chapter focuses on an original account of the Jewish heroine's reading of Swinburne's Poems and Ballads at the centre of Levy's novel as a scene of sexual and cultural revelation. Chapter three examines Christian tropes in sex education debates of the mid-1890s and how these are plotted in Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins. This chapter is concerned with the religious contours of social purity campaigning and how they impact on questions of literary form. The thesis concludes by considering more widely the effect of a fragmentation of Christian culture on fictional representation of women's social and intellectual transition in the final years of the century.