<p>This research project focuses on the relationship between the American and the African districts of the African Methodist Episcopal Church during the period from 1896 to 2004. It investigates the factors which led to the tensions emerged in the relationship between the American districts and the African districts. It specifically investigates the reasons for the five secession movements that took place in the 15th and 19th Districts of the AME Church in 1899, 1904, 1908, 1980 and 1998. The research problem investigated in this thesis is therefore one of a historical reconstruction, namely to identify, describe and assess the configurations of factors which contributed to such tensions in relationship between the AME Church in America and Africa. The relationships between the American and the African districts of the AME Church have been characterised by various tensions around the sovereignty of the African districts. Such tensions surfaced, for example, in five protest movements, which eventually led to secessions from the AME Church in South Africa. The people of the African continent merged with the American based AME Church with the expectation that they would be assisted in their quest for self-determination. The quest for self-determination in the AME Church in Africa has a long history. The Ethiopian Movement was established by Mangena Maake Mokone in 1892 as a protest movement against white supremacy and domination in the Wesleyan Methodist Church. However, the lack of infrastructure within the Ethiopian Movement and the constant harassment from the Governments of South Africa in the formation of black indigenous churches compelled Mokone to link with a more established and independent Black Church. The AME Church presented such an opportunity to Mokone. The parallels of subordination in the history of the Ethiopian Movement and the AME Church in America gave Mokone to hope that the quest for self-reliance could be attained within the AME Church...</p>

This dissertation takes up the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC) schism in 1946 in Namibia from the Rhenish Mission Society RMS), due to a protest against the inhumane treatment that the Nama leaders were forced to accept from the German missionaries belonging to the Rhenish Mission Society. The agitation movement of 1946 organized a church separated from the RMS which was started in response to the Africans' need for opportunities for self-expression, fuller involvement in the Church of God, and in society as a whole. It was the answer to a cry for social recognition as human beings, and the means through which a group of people started on a programme which gave them a growing sense of dignity and self respect. The underlying and longer term problems of this first schism in Namibia come out above all in the correspondence between the missionary Christiaan Spellmeyer and Petrus Jod, Markus Witbooi and Zacheus Thomas. These documents shed some light on the policy and attitude of the RMS in Namibia and in Gibeon in particular, mainly during the 1930's and early 1940's. This thesis records the significant role played by the Nama leaders to voice their grievances against the RMS. The involvement of the RMS missionaries in colonial politics has contributed to the subjugation of the black people. By concentrating their efforts on pioneering incentives in education, social care and ordination, the Nama leaders made an outstanding contribution to the establishment of AMEC in Namibia, the church which responds closely to the needs of the Nama people. This study should be of interest to those who are doing research on the history of Christian missions in Southern Africa, and in particular in Namibia. It is hoped that the findings of this study will bring a local perspective on the activities of the AMEC in Namibia, as up to the present, much available information has been written by German missionaries. A complete history of the indigenous clergy in Namibia, is unwritten. Much that would be most interesting and valuable went to the grave with those who had no possible means of transmitting it except by the uncertain and unreliable method of tradition. What made Zacheus Thomas, Markus Witbooi and Petrus Jod different from the Rhenish Mission Society's staff was the fact that they were from the IKhobesin clan, who understand and respect the culture of the Nama people. They could see and appreciate the structures of the Nama society and planned a development project from the African perspective. The researcher presents this work as a tribute to these pioneering Nama leaders whose lives and relationships are a true reflection of their Christian faith. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

<p>Among the numerous commitments late ancient Christians throughout the Roman Empire shared with their non-Christian neighbors was a preoccupation with justice. Not only was the latter one of the celebrated characteristics of God, the New Testament had charged Christians, particularly those who served as bishops or elders, with ensuring and maintaining justice in their communities from the tradition's very origins. In the early fourth century, this aspect of episcopal responsibilities had received an unexpected boost when the Emperor Constantine not only recognized bishops' role in intra-Christian conflict resolution, but expanded their judicial capacity to include even outsiders in the so-called audientia episcopalis, the bishop's court. </p><p>Christians had, of course, never resolved the question of what constituted justice in a vacuum. Yet bishops' increasing integration into the sprawling and frequently amorphous apparatus of the Roman legal system introduced new pressures as well as new opportunities into Christian judicial discourse. Roman law could become an ally in a minister's exegetical or homiletical efforts. Yet it also came to intrude into spheres that had previously regarded themselves as set apart from Roman society, including especially monastic and clerical communities. The latter proved to be particularly permeable to different shades of legal discourse, inasmuch as they served as privileged feeders for episcopal sees. Their members were part of the Christian elites, whose judicial formation promised to bear disproportionate fruit among the laity under their actual or eventual care. This dissertation's task is the examination of the ways in which Christians in these environments throughout the Latin West at the turn of the fifth century thought and wrote about justice. I contend that no single influence proved dominant, but that three strands of judicial discourse emerge as significant throughout these sources: that of popular philosophical thought; that of biblical exegesis; and that of reasoning from Roman legal precept and practice. Late ancient Christian rhetoric consciously and selectively deployed these threads to craft visions of justice, both divine and human, that could be treated as distinctively Christian while remaining intelligible in the broader context of the Roman Empire.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Institute for Worship Studies, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-73).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Davis, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-230).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Capella University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-140).

Thesis (M. A. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, May 2009. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.C.I.T.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 10, 2008). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Colgate Rochester Divinity School/Bexley Hall/Crozer Theological Seminary, 1998. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-174).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-114).