This thesis is an historical case-study using archival written data to analyse the formation of a neo-evangelical identity within Oregon Yearly Meeting (OYM) of the Religious Society of Friends, with emphasis on the years 1919-1947. The argument of this thesis is that by 1919 there were fundamentalist thinking patterns developing within the corporate religious identity of the Yearly Meeting (YM) marked by ecumenical separatism, world-rejecting views, biblical literalism and decreasing social action. The values of this fundamentalist identity became dominant by 1926, pervading the mindset of the YM until the late 1940s when it was replaced with a more socially-concerned, world-engaging expression of evangelicalism. This neo-evangelicalism attempted to highlight positive Christianity, while maintaining the supernatural orthodox theology of its fundamentalist predecessors. The pattern that unfolded in OYM shares similarities with a larger pattern taking place throughout Protestant Christianity in America over the same period. This research makes original contributions to scholarship in three ways. Firstly, it analyses a particularly influential group among evangelical American Quakers during the twentieth-century. Secondly, it starts to redress the dearth of scholarship specific to evangelical Quakerism, and, thirdly it adds to the scholarship on twentieth-century American Protestantism by focusing on an understudied region and denomination.

This thesis is a study of the Roho churches of Vihiga District, Western Kenya, from their beginnings in 1927 to the present. After an initial historical overview of this group of African Independent Churches, it examines their creation of a vernacular theology – the founders’ vision. This was characterized by a strong pneumatology, in which the Holy Spirit acts as guardian of the community. The thesis locates this vision, and its rejection of modernist, western, and capitalist modes of development, in the articulation of the traditional communal mode of production in contradistinction to the European industrial capitalism characteristic of Kenya in the 1930s. It examines the desire of Roho leaders to play a role in the public sphere and recounts their attempt to influence national political life through an indigenous conciliar movement at the time of political independence. Finally, it examines the process of re-envisioning undertaken by Roho leaders and members to meet the dual challenges of pauperization and modernization at the present day.

This thesis explores the lives of four British Quaker women—Isabella Ford, Isabel Fry, Margery Fry, and Ruth Fry—focusing on the way they engaged in peace issues in the early twentieth century. In order to examine the complexity and diversity of their experiences, this thesis investigates the characteristics of their Quakerism, pacifism and wider political and personal life, as well as the connections between them. In contrast to O’Donnell’s view that most radical Victorian Quaker women left Quakerism to follow their political pursuits with like-minded friends outside of Quakerism, Isabella Ford, one of the most radical socialists, and feminists among Quakers remained as a Quaker. British Quakers were divided on peace issues but those who disagreed with the general Quaker approach resigned and were not disowned; the case of Isabel Fry is a good example of this. This thesis argues that the experiences of four Quaker women highlight the permissive approach Quakerism afforded its participants in the early twentieth century, challenging previous interpretations of Quakerism as a mono-culture. Highlighting the swift change within Quakerism from being the closed group of the nineteenth to a more open group in the twentieth century, this thesis describes the varied and varying levels of commitment these women had to the group as ‘elastic Quakerism’.

This thesis contends that contemporary work processes shape fundamentally Quaker practice in the everyday context. This qualitative research is based on semi-structured interviews of opportunistically acquired participants. It is therefore an in-depth, if not statistically representative, study of the contemporary Quaker tradition. Participants in the research are overwhelmingly adult converts who frame conversion to the Quaker church in liberating terms. The interviewees depict the prescription of religion by mainstream Christian churches as oppressing the individual religious enterprise. Rather, Quakers in the research tend to see their religious journey as a primarily individual project which is affirmed by their conversion to the church. Tensions are also evidenced, however, between affiliates’ highly individualised re-imagination of the Quaker tradition and conformity to the collective concern. The interviewees claim an intention to improve the world, matching Quaker horizons with those espoused by their work organisations. Lived religion and work are thus conflated by affiliates with regard to their everyday social practice. Workaday tensions, however, show that the claimed utopian compact between affiliates and the work setting is provisional. The thesis concludes that, whilst the contemporary work organisation sets out the terms of affiliates’ social practice, these Quakers tend towards pragmatism in the everyday.

This thesis is a contribution to the organisational history of Methodism. It seeks to investigate and record the origins, development and significance of the circuit in the connexional structure of Methodism. This in order to rectify what is an omission in Methodist histories and to inform future reflection on organisation. The field of research is Wesleyan and Primitive Methodism in England from c. 1740 to 1914. Originally the route of an itinerant preacher, the circuit soon became a ‘sub-regional’ unit of oversight, ministry and administration within a connexional structure. Itinerancy however remained an essential element of the connexional system. After addressing circuit origins and the transition, this thesis proceeds to investigate its development, both in the context of the Connexion and internally. The number, size and shape of circuits is explored, together with influencing factors. The main internal elements: the quarterly meeting, the local preachers’ meeting and the role of assistant (later superintendent) receive individual attention, as do the ‘temporal affairs’ of the circuit. Examination of the suitability of the circuit and itinerant system for inner city work in the late nineteenth century shows its limitations in this respect. In addressing the circuit in organisational terms, the implications, benefits and tensions of being part of a Connexion are brought to light. This includes the relationship between the conference and the circuits, and the expectations and understandings of lay people (including local preachers) against those of the itinerants. The significant differences between Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist organisational practice are identified.

This thesis examines Inwardness in the faith and practice of British Quakers. Inwardness is identified within the spiritual and mystical component of individual Friends’ experiences and discussed in terms of personal experiential knowing. Both academic and devotional discourses are used to clarify what is meant by ‘spiritual consciousness’, framed both within corporate, albeit mainly tacit, formulations of Inwardness, and expressed by leading exponents of Quakerism, at two different stages of the history of the Religious Society of Friends. The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship in three ways: it identifies a distinct view of Quaker Inwardness in terms of process and state; it provides a new model of spiritual development through the Quaker worship practice; and it offers an explanation of spiritual maturity. The latter is identified with reference to an understanding of Interiority, which has consequences. Two Conditions and seven Elements of the process of gaining the state of Inwardness are identified and are found to be consistent between seventeenth and twenty-first century Quakers. Throughout the thesis analysis, reference to expansion of consciousness is interpreted in relation to mysticism, and proposes finally a new perspective on Quaker theology.

This thesis presents a reflection on a series of published papers which explore in a systematic way how theoretical and empirical considerations can analyse and illuminate the current condition of the Church of England in rural areas. A fourfold model of belonging through activities, events, people and places is set out and two large data samples are studied. Particular attention is paid to those who attend Church of England services, but on only a few occasions each year. The chapter structure of the thesis illustrates the progressive nature of the research and demonstrates how the component parts come together to form a cumulative and coherent case. As well as demonstrating the validity of the belonging model, implications for the governance of the Church of England and for its income generation model are drawn out and made more explicit than in the original papers. The missional implications for a church that has adopted a model led by a dominant "activity" theme are considered. The power of a cumulative study using a range of empirical tools is shown. It is concluded that, within an Anglican view of inclusivity, the rural Church of England embraces a diverse range of people who express their Anglican identity and their sense of belonging to the Church in ways that can now be better understood.

There are two main historical works on Assemblies of God in Britain. The first is Donald Gee's Wind and Flame (originally published under the title The Pentecostal Movement in 1941; later revised and enlarged for publication in 1967). Gee was intimately involved in much of AoG's development not only in the British Isles but also overseas, There are, however, three things which Donald Gee fails to do and which I decided to attempt in the history which follows. First, and very properly, Gee underestimates his own contribution to the shape of British pentecostalism. A natural modesty prevented Gee from seeing all the value of his own efforts. Second, Gee very rarely gives the source of any information he cites. There is a complete absence of footnotes, references, printed materials and the like in his book. We simply do not know what and whom he consulted when he wrote. And, third, Gee fails to make any mention of the immense social and technological changes which took place in his life time. He gives us the foreground without the background, and yet the background was important. It matters, for example, that ordinary commercial air travel opened up after the 1939-45 war or that telephones became common in the 1950s. The Pentecostal movement did not develop in a vacuum and sometimes successful events are explicable by reference to forgotten factors. For example, the success of the great Stephen Jeffreys crusades makes more sense when one knows that, at one stage, he moved from town to town, each within easy travelling distance of the others; this allowed those who had been attracted by one set of meetings to travel to the next. Or that these crusades took place when the national health service in Britain did not exist and people were more desperate in their search for healing. The second main work is Walter Hollenweger's The Pentecostals (SCM, 1972). This sets British pentecostalism in a world wide context and allows comparisons with Pentecostal churches in Latin America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Continent and North America. Inevitably, therefore, Hollenweger's book paints on a broad canvas and omits many events within British Assemblies of God. At the end of this thesis a list is given of all the people I interviewed or consulted by phone. Not listed, however, because references are given at appropriate places in the text or notes, are the various documents which became available to me. These included letters, handbills, newspaper cuttings, minute books, diaries, reports submitted to the General Conference, accounts, short-lived magazines and, of course, all the volumes of Redemption Tidings. Undoubtedly Redemption Tidings proved to be the richest source of information. It was published continuously from 1924-85 and contained a whole variety of articles, crusade reports, letters, editorials, stenographically recorded sermons, advertisements and the like which, more than any other single source, recreate early pentecostalism. Redemption Tidings was published monthly 1924-33 and then fortnightly 1934-1956 and weekly 1956-1985. So far as the ordering of the following history is concerned, I have simply moved forward decade by decade and with little attempt to group subjects together thematically. This rather unimaginative approach has the virtue of being systematic and it was used by Adrian Hastings in his excellent A History of English Christianity: 1920-1985 (Collins, 1986). At the start of each major section, I have briefly outlined the economic and political events of the era. At the end of each major section, I have paused for sociological comment. These comments are not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, I have used some of the tools and concepts of sociology to illuminate the historical development previously described. Alternation between description and analytic comment is slightly clumsy, but seemed to be the only sensible way of handling the overall task. The events of Pentecostal history are simply not well enough known to take them for granted: they need to be described first. Any attempt to describe them while simultaneously analysing them would have proved confusing in the extreme. It is also necessary to point out that this history pays particular attention to Pentecostalism in Britain and only mentions missionary work overseas to the extent that this it is relevant to what was happening in Britain. In some respects this is unfortunate, but to do justice to the extraordinary work of men and women in various continents of the world would require a separate study of comparable length.

No abstract. From introduction: "On the whole, this thesis is more concerned with reexamining some fundamental questions than with finding all of the answers. What responses are given are to be viewed as suggestions and possibilities, and certainly not as definitive conclusions"

This study examines the religiosity of Mormon college students in Britain and its relationship with higher education and their church. Past research has demonstrated a negative association between the level and length of education and religiosity. However, many American studies identify in Mormon students an exception to this general trend. The initial hypothesis to be tested is that British Mormons will show the same resistance to the secularizing influence of higher education as their American counterparts, despite an apparently less favourable social environment. A further proposal is that various agencies of Church support, particularly the Institutes of Religion, are an important element in sustaining religious commitment. Research methods include questionnaire surveys of students, Church administrators and Institute instructors. Religiosity scales are developed from the student questionnaire through factor analysis, utilizing procedures developed in America. Differences between the British and American scales underline the complex nature of religiosity and reflect the generally contradictory and inconclusive character of wider research in this field. The scales are used to measure student religiosity and correlations with other variables are calculated. Results confirm that for Mormon students in Britain there is no significant association between years of higher education and religiosity. Associations are demonstrated between religiosity and various Church agencies, including Institute, thus supporting the second hypothesis; however the dependency in several relationships is problematic and the influence of these agencies is not conclusive. This result stimulated a consideration of other areas of belief and practice likely to be important; characteristics of LDS faith are identified which may be significant for the resilience of Mormon religiosity.