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A. N. Wilson is a distinguished contemporary English author and journalist whose writing constantly displays the depth of his understanding of and concern for the Church of England. Himself once a devout Anglican, albeit one of the Church's more vocal watchdogs, Wilson now writes as an outsider and an unbeliever. Yet he is still widely read and highly regarded as a commentator on the institution, and as one who is never reluctant to confront the ills which he believes responsible for its demise. / Wilson takes the church hierarchy to task for neglecting spiritual matters in favour of "issues". He employs satire to illustrate what he believes to be the general mediocrity of the clergy. In his journalism Wilson continues to lambast liturgical changes and to question modern biblical criticism. / By using representative selections from Wilson's writings as novelist, biographer, polemicist and journalist, and by chronicling his own highly publicised religious quest, this study seeks to show the dilemma of a substantial body of contemporary English Anglicans. Furthermore, the inability and impotence of the Established Church in England to meet the needs of its traditional and more moderate worshippers is adequately reflected in Wilson's work.

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Three late Victorian novels provide significant insight into the Victorian crisis of faith because of their singleminded focus on an Anglican clergyman facing the issues that undermined received belief after 1860. William Winwood Reade's The Outcast (1875), Mrs. Humphry Ward's Robert Elsmere (1888), and George MacDonald's Thomas Wingfold, Curate (1876) cast the theme of doubt in a fresh light by systematically exploring what happens when a clergyman entertains doubt and investigates issues of faith and the ideas of evolutionary theory and higher criticism.Each novelist's distinctive perspective on the Victorian crisis of faith clearly shapes the delineation of the protagonist's crisis, determines which aspects of his crisis receive emphasis, and reflects the novelist's purpose for exploring doubt in a clergyman. Of deep interest is what these novelists achieve by exploring an Anglican clergyman's crisis of faith. First, using an Anglican clergyman as protagonist allows the novelists to explore the impact of doubt on the Established Church and the ramifications of doubt for a clergyman. Second, exploring a clergyman's crisis of faith allows the novelists to comment on how the Church failed to respond adequately to the Victorian crisis of faith. Third, the redefinition of faith advocated by all three novelists is best portrayed through an Anglican clergyman.In The Outcast Edward Mordaunt loses his traditional faith because of science, and through him, Reade suggests that the rejection of orthodoxy is the natural result of accepting the scientists' claims. He offers natural religion as a substitute for Christianity and uses the experience of his protagonist to criticize orthodox belief and intolerance. In Robert Elsmere Mrs. Ward defends intellectuals who accommodated their belief to new knowledge. She uses Robert Elsmere to show that accommodation is both possible and necessary and to accentuate the potential for social change when a sincere clergyman comes to terms with the claims of historical criticism. In Thomas Wingfold, Curate MacDonald acknowledges that the claims of science and higher criticism should be considered but suggests that they are not enough reason not to believe. He uses Thomas Wingfold to demonstrate a desirable approach to doubt and to argue for change from within the Church. / Department of English

The subject of this dissertation is Richard Hooker's defence of the royal headship of the church in the final book of his treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie. His treatment of this political question is remarkable for its depth of theological analysis. Hooker approaches the issue of the royal headship from three main theological angles: first, from the standpoint of the crucial distinction of Reformation soteriology between the so-called 'Two Realms' or 'Two Kingdoms'; secondly, according to the categories and distinctions of basic systematic doctrine, notably Chalcedonian Christology and Trinitarian dogma; and thirdly, he applies the magisterial reformers' test of ecclesiological orthodoxy. Modern students of Hooker's political thought have been very reluctant to bridge the gulf between the theological and political realms of his discourse. As a result, the theological matrix of Hooker's doctrine of the Royal Supremacy has been quite neglected. The erection of such a bridge is indispensable to our understanding of the alien mentalite which underlies this important Elizabethan controversy. We shall attempt to demonstrate that Hooker's employment of theological argument in defence of the Royal Supremacy was central to his ultimate apologetic purpose. He wrote the Lawes with a view to 'resolving the consciences' of the Disciplinarian-Puritan critics of the Elizabethan Settlement. He sought to convince these opponents by the most compelling mode of argument they knew - theological argument - that the royal headship was wholly consistent with the cardinal principles of the ecclesiology and political theory of the magisterial Reformation. In the first chapter there is a consideration of the methodological difficulties of modern Hooker scholarship. This is followed by an examination of Hooker's apologetic intention and a division of the chief theological elements of the controversy over the Royal Supremacy. Chapter two explores the soteriological foundations of Hooker's doctrine of the Two Realms and Two Regiments as well as his relation to the authority of the magisterial reformation. Chapter three examines Hooker's ecclesiology as the pivotal link between his soteriological 'first principles' and his political theory. Finally, in chapter four, the considerations of the previous chapters will be applied directly to the interpretation of Hooker's theology of the royal headship as presented by him in Book VIII of the Lawes.

This thesis provides a study of the career and works of Samuel Harsnett, one of the most senior members of the early Stuart Church. Harsnett enjoyed a distinguished career as bishop of Chichester and Norwich, and finally as archbishop of York, but earned notoriety much earlier, by virtue of preaching a controversial sermon against the then orthodox Calvinist position on predestined grace. It was this early expression of anti-Calvinism (or Arminianism as it later became termed), together with a predisposition towards tradition on the liturgy and ceremony of the Church, which has earned Harsnett, as Conrad Russell put it, a place among "the cream of the English Arminians". As the first future bishop to express openly anti-Calvinist views Harsnett's career is contemporaneous with the first forty years of what Nicholas Tyacke described as the 'Rise of Arminianism'. For that reason he is deserving of a biographical study, both to determine the nature of Arminianism in practice and his particular contribution to its 'Rise'. In seeking to determine Harsnett's contribution to the Arminian phenomenon this thesis suggests that Harsnett was, in a number of respects, hardly the archetypal Arminian that Professor Russell and most other modern historians have assumed. This raises important questions as to the actual significance of the theology of predestination to developments in the early Stuart Church. The significant areas of Harsnett's career considered in the thesis are: his formative years as a scholar and then fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge; his early career as chaplain to Richard Bancroft when Harsnett probably developed his lifelong dislike of Puritan non-conformity; his episcopal career at Chichester and then Norwich; his parliamentary career, which was marked by major ideological differences with fellow Arminians; his final appointment as archbishop of York, senior religious adviser to the king and Privy Councillor.

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Applied research project (D. Min.)--School of Theology and Missions, Oral Roberts University, 2005. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-321).

Thesis (doctoral)--Australian National University, 1979. / Title from screen.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaves 181-192. Also available online.