Thesis (M.A.)--Briercrest Biblical Seminary, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-114).

Although lay patronage was abolished in 1690, the study emphasises the importance of linking that Act with the one restoring it in 1712, since there was a difference between the landed interest and the Church in their perception of both pieces of legislation. This divergence, together with the 1690 Act's placement of the heritor class into the process of ministerial election, and the vexations caused by the Abjuration Oath, combined to create the complications which undermined the Church's ability to throw off patronage. The study questions the idea that few patronage disputes arose in the first period after the Act, and goes on to examine how the intensification of Squadrone/Argathelian rivalry in the post-Union scramble for influence drew church vacancy matters inexorably into the web of politics. The most successful manipulators of patronage were Lord Ilay and Lord Milton, and a general comparison is made between their administration and that of the Marquis of Tweeddale. Skilful management of the Church's senior courts, along with a judicious preferment of ministerial loyalists, made concerted opposition to even the worst excesses of patronage, overwhelmingly difficult. The study however draws attention to one period, between 1734 and 1736, when forces antipathetic to the abuses of patronage appeared to achieve an effective unity. Finally, the study looks beyond the influence of simple party politics, to examine what local factors may have impinged upon settlements by presentation, and to this end examines the peculiar circumstances which obtained in the Presbyteries of Edinburgh, Duns and Brechin.

This thesis examines the nature and role of evangelicalism within the Established Church of Scotland between the Disruption of 1843 and the end of the nineteenth century. It focuses on three prominent evangelical clergymen within the Church of Scotland and three contemporary religious periodicals. The thesis argues that the Church of Scotland developed theologically, socially, and culturally away from the conservative Calvinism of the Westminster Confession of Faith toward a more inclusive theology, while still maintaining typical evangelical views on missions, conversion, atonement, and the Bible. It further argues that the increasingly liberal evangelical movement contributed greatly to the post-Disruption recovery of the Church of Scotland. Chapter One considers the role of the evangelical Middle Party and especially the Edinburgh clergyman William Muir (1787-1869) in the initial recovery of the Establishment following the secession of a third of the clergy and nearly half her members in 1843. Chapter Two discusses the work of the Church's missionary organizations in the wake of Disruption, drawing on the reports of the Church's Home and Foreign Missionary Record. Chapter Three examines the life of Norman MacLeod (1812-1872), minister of the Barony Church, Glasgow, and argues that his Romantic sympathies greatly influenced the confessional liberalization of the Church. Chapter Four shows how the influence of this more theologically liberal evangelicalism was further advanced by MacLeod's religious periodical Good Words. Chapter Five focuses on Archibald Hamilton Charteris (1835-1908), a parish minister and later university professor whose efforts to democratize evangelistic and social work and encourage spiritual life strengthened and revitalized the Church at large. Finally, Chapter Six examines the Church of Scotland periodical begun by Charteris - Life and Work magazine - and considers its theological, spiritual, and social impact on the Church between 1879 and the turn of the new century.

South Africa has had three periods of historiographical change. As South Africa has transitioned from colonialism, to apartheid, to democracy, historiography has been influenced by those in power. Post-1994 and with the onset of a democratic government, the Nation sought to create a new historiographical framework. However, as this attempt to build a National historiography developed questions could be raised as to whether this historiography was inclusive of a variety of sources? This dissertation looks at three areas regarding South African historiography. First, the current role of Churches in South Africa in fostering historiography. Second, the theological framework of "Ras, Volk en Nasie", the "Kairos Document", and the "Belhar Confession". Third, the depiction of South Africa by the Church of Scotland's National magazine "Life and Work" during 1975 – 1985. By looking at this time period, the thesis shows that as various strands of theology developed in South Africa, these changes had connotations within the Church of Scotland. Life and Work shows a distinct change in attitude towards the Dutch Reformed Church and the Black Consciousness movement. It argues that underrepresented stories about South Africa allow for a holistic historiography. Churches in South Africa have an opportunity to use their position within society to develop this holistic historiography and thus, historiography becomes a practical theological issue. / Dissertation (MTh)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Church History and Church Policy / MTh / Unrestricted

This thesis is an examination of the eucharistic doctrine of ten Scottish theological writers in the tradition of Scottish Episcopacy; five from the seventeenth century, two from the eighteenth century, and three from the nineteenth century. The doctrine espoused by each one throughout the stated period, 1620–1875, is found to agree with the other writers considered herein, because each writer turned to many of the same Church Fathers as the source of his doctrine and his interpretation of Holy Scripture. The argument of this thesis is that all of the writers, rejecting the Tridentine, Lutheran, Bezan-Calvinist, and Zwinglian definitions of the Eucharist, maintained a material sacrifice in the Eucharist, which is an offering to God the Father of bread and wine as the propitiatory memorial of Christ’s death on the Cross, commanded by Christ himself at the Last Supper. The sacrifice is propitiatory because it is the means of representing the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross to God the Father, thereby pleading the benefits of the Cross for the communicants. The bread and wine do not change substance, but become effectively the body and blood of Christ. Three of the ten writers produced eucharistic rites, one in the seventeenth century, and two in the eighteenth century. It is argued that each of these rites is expressive of the Eucharist as being a commemorative and representative sacrifice. Each rite explicitly offers bread and wine to the Father, invokes the Holy Spirit’s action over the elements, and prays that by receiving the consecrated bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ, the communicants will receive the forgiveness of sins, the continuing grace of the Holy Spirit, and eternal life.

The Cape of Good Hope was discovered by Ba.rtholomew Diaz, a Portuguese navigator, in 1487, but it did not occur to any European nation to make a settlement there until one hundred and sixty.years after that date. On the 6th April, 1652, Jan van Riebeeck founded the earliest settlement at the foot of Tab1e Mountain. Holland was at that time at the height of her political and commercial prosperity. The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, had acquired a practica~ monopoly of the sea-borne traffic with India and the East, and it was in order to provide a port of call for the outgoing and returning vessels of this Company that a tawnship was established and a castle built at the Cape of Good Hope in 1666, under the nsme and title of "the frontier fortress of India".

As one of the most remarkable of the Scottish Covenanters, George Gillespie had a reputation in England and Scotland as an orthodox Puritan theologian and apologist for Scottish Presbyterianism. He was well known for his controversial works attacking the ceremonies of the Church of England, defending Presbyterianism, opposing religious toleration, and combating Erastianism. He is best remembered as one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly in London, which sought to reform the English Church and establish a uniform religion for the two kingdoms. This study assesses his life, ideas, and legacy. In Gillespie's estimation revelation and reason played complementary roles in the Christian life. While the Fall had affected man's reasoning abilities, man could rely upon natural law and scholarship as long as one kept them within the limits of God's truth revealed in Scripture. Moreover, he insisted that the church structure its worship ceremonies, government, and discipline according to the pattern set forth in the Bible. In addition, he emphasized the central role of God's Word and the sacraments in the worship of God and stressed the importance of cultivating personal piety. At the heart of Gillespie's political thought lay the Melvillian theory of the two kingdoms, which led him to reject Erastianism as subordinating the church to the power of the state. Furthermore, his delineation of the limits of the authority of the civil magistrate, presented a challenge to the state's authority and led him to formulate a radical version of the Covenanter doctrine of resistance to the state. While Gillespie supported uniformity of religion between England and Scotland, opposed religious toleration, and rejected the Engagement with King Charles, none of these causes proved successful in his lifetime. Yet these ideas influenced generations of Resolutioners, Protestors, Cameronians, and other heirs of the Scottish Covenanter tradition.

This thesis focuses on the role of the Church of Scotland's Board of Social Responsibility in the development and implementation of social work policy in Scotland. The thesis deploys a case study methodology and interpretive research methods to generate understanding of the Board of Social Responsibility and its intended purpose as a service-providing voluntary organisation. Links between the Board of Social Responsibility and significant social work policy developments are identified to determine the changing influence of both local authorities and central government upon the scope of voluntary social work service provision. The thesis identifies a process of incremental social work policy development in Scotland that has operated to encourage the contribution of service-providing voluntary organisations. The Board of Social Responsibility is identified as having operated as Scotland's largest voluntary provider of social work services throughout the period under review and to have implemented a changing pattern of social work service provision: first shifting from an innovative to a traditional model of participation, returning to an innovative model, and then, finally, shifting towards a developmental model of participation. The source of this changing pattern of participation is identified as individual agency allied. to interpretations of the organisation's faith-based ethos. The significant role of the Board of Social Responsibility in the development and implementation of social work policy in Scotland is established as that of provider of a range of replicative, alternative social work services. This role is related to Scotland's wider voluntary sector to establish that views of social work policy development existing within the Board of Social Responsibility are not indicative of views existing within other voluntary organisations. The Board of Social Responsibility's particular pattern of participation is also recognised to be distinctive. Ultimately the thesis finds that the approving model of governance adopted by the Board of Social Responsibility's higher-order collectives means the Church of Scotland has not exerted a significant influence upon the policy environment that has grown to control and regulate the social work undertaken by service-providing voluntary organisations operating in Scotland between 1948 and 2000.

Marcella Althaus-Reid was a theologian who dared to imagine differently, a thinker whose inventive style brought striking originality to her writings on sexuality and gender, people and God. Her work is remembered most noticeably in theological academia for her conceptual phrase, ‘Indecent Theology’. In this thesis about questions of God, the innovative elements of Marcella’s literary corpus are developed in new ways by placing her academic theories alongside a practical research study undertaken in the alternative milieu of Church of Scotland congregations in Edinburgh. This primary material, which has been analysed through interview and focus group transcripts, together with questionnaire responses, brings revealing insights to frame the emerging tensions between churchgoers and Marcella across the dimensions of its four chapters. In each, the following themes are developed: the ambiguities surrounding questions of asking who God might be; the considerations involved in recognising God’s relationship with the Bible; the exploration of the extent to which sexuality and gender may influence God concepts; and the recognition of the role people play in evaluating their understandings of God in Christianity. Arranged in a rhythmical structure throughout, every chapter is first prefaced by a media-based report which contextualises relevant themes in a contemporary idiom, and is later concluded by a deconstructive postscript that, in fragmentary ways, invokes some critical concepts in the work of Jacques Derrida germane to the particular questions of God pursued in each.

The thesis examines the evidence for migration from Northern Britain to Ireland associated with the activity of the Church. It has a particular focus on British and Pictish individuals. Making use of a wide range of sources from the early medieval period onwards, detailed case-studies consider individual men and women whose activities can be discerned. They assess how the movements of these individuals contributed towards wider trends in the dynamics of migration between Northern Britain and Ireland from the coming of Christianity until the close of the eighth century. The investigation also charts the manner in which such migration was perceived in later centuries and how these perceptions changed as time progressed. A picture emerges of how the ‘migration narrative’ was developed and engaged with in both Ireland and Scotland. This was to have a significant effect on how the character of the early Church was understood.