In our interconnected, multi-religious world, how should religious people engage with religious others? What and how can theologians learn from religious others, from their traditions and their scriptures? Amongst those who engage in theological reasoning about these issues, two distinct approaches have been identified. The established discipline of theology of religions considers it necessary to examine the sources of one’s own tradition to come to some broad assessment about the value of religious diversity – usually identified through some version of the classic typology of inclusivism, exclusivism and pluralism (Alan Race). Others have criticised theology of religions, seeing it as prescriptive, biased towards pluralism, distorting of religious difference, and as making definitive judgments as to the presence of truth and possibility of salvation through other religions (e.g. Francis Clooney, George Lindbeck and Michael Barnes). These critics, working within the emerging field of interreligious hermeneutics, prefer direct engagement with other traditions in their particularities, learning from the religious other, yet often without reflecting on internal sources or arguing theologically for the possibility of finding truth in other religions. This thesis seeks to make a contribution to this discourse about method in the theological engagement to the religious other. It argues that the work of theology of religions is necessary to support theological learning from the religious other, particularly given that the scriptures of major religions (notably the New Testament, Qur’an and Pali Canon) are generally perceived to discourage this kind of activity. It also responds to criticisms, and works to make theology of religions more attuned to the insights of interreligious hermeneutics, so that it can be seen as capable of attending to the complexity and uncertainty that is inevitable in any realistic attempt to relate religious traditions to one another. Chapters 1 and 2 survey the development of theology of religions and of the alternative approaches found in the emerging field of interreligious hermeneutics. These are examined and as a result an adapted typology is presented which may be related fruitfully to interreligious hermeneutics. Chapters 3 and 4 explore interreligious hermeneutics further through two of its most prominent practices, scriptural reasoning and comparative theology, as carried out by some of its most notable practitioners. The extent to which these practices can be regarded as theologically ‘truth-seeking’ is analysed, and the usefulness of the adapted typology in reviewing the findings of these practices is assessed. Chapter 5 offers a detailed example of the kind of approach to the religious other present in a particular religious scripture, by focusing on the Buddha’s approach to the Brahmins as recorded in the Pali canon. This is done in order to demonstrate that the ‘plain sense’ of scriptures often does not support the approach to religious others advocated by scholars of interreligious hermeneutics. Finally, Chapter 6 outlines ‘soft pluralism’ as a particular approach within theology of religions which can support interreligious hermeneutics of the deepest, most adventurous ‘truth-seeking’ kind, without succumbing to the problems associated with pluralism in its classic (hard) form. This position can be supported by the work of a growing number of scholars (including Catherine Cornille, Rose Drew and Marianne Moyaert) who, far from seeking to eschew or downplay deep differences between traditions, believe that it is precisely at these points of tension or impasse, where traditions are offering insights that cannot be simply reconciled to one another, that we stand to learn the most from the religious other.

Chapters 1 and 2 deal with the relationship between the Church in Wales and its clergy; the way in which ministerial working arrangements might be interpreted by the secular courts and the civil law consequences which would flow from this interpretation. The study begins with an analysis of the relationship in the general context of employment law. From this examination it emerges that civil law does not adopt a single, universal definition of employment status, but categorizes working agreements differently for different purposes. Consequently, the discussion moves on to look at how the working arrangements of Church in Wales clergy would be construed in relation to vicarious liability in tort, concluding that vicarious liability would almost certainly attach to torts committed in the course of performing ministerial duties. Having established that the church will be vicariously liable, Chapters 3 and 4 go on to consider the scope of the potential liability in connection with trespass and negligence respectively. The common theme which emerges from these chapters, is the difficulty of defining the boundaries of ministerial duties, given the breadth of activities which these duties can encompass, and the underlying Anglican belief that Holy Orders confer not just a set of tasks but a permanent state of being. The conclusion in chapter 5 proposes dealing with this challenge by analysing the clerical role for the purposes of tort in relation to the professional tasks, expertise and undertakings set out in the Clergy Terms of Service. This analysis can be separated from the theological understanding adopted by the church in the context of doctrine, and gives a workable framework for establishing the scope of tortious liability. This approach is then tested and illustrated with a series of case studies.

In this ethnography, writing as both practitioner and researcher, I represent and analyse the opinions and reflections of Anglican chaplains in English and Welsh prisons in order to locate their self - perception of role and identity. The Anglican chaplain has been a statutory appointment in every prison since 1779 and was a central figure in penal practice throughout the first half of the 19th century. Several chaplains wrote at length about their ministry and its significance; this conscious utterance in the public domain dwindled sharply from the 1860s onwards. My research presents current chaplains’ perspectives on their role and identity, configured by a social context which is perceived to be secular and in which other world faiths have a strong presence. Four main areas of focus emerge from the data: working with prisoners, working with staff, the apparently contradictory, ritual nature of secular and religious engagement, and issues of gendered interaction. These data are contextualised by respondents’ perceptions of prisons as parishes, the construction of Anglican chaplains’ identity by events within and outwith prisons and churches, and perceived relations with the Church of England and the Church in Wales. Having recognised other models of prison ministry, the thesis ends by identifying modes of potential, structured cooperation between church and chaplaincy. The epistemological con text derives from Goffman’s theory of total institutions but recognises subsequent reinterpretations of his work. The methodological reference points are Turner’s theory of liminality, Bell’s theory of ritual - like activities and Foucault’s heterotopia of deviance. The thesis offers a perspective on a traditional public form of ministry, that of the chaplains themselves, unexplored and not analysed for over a century. It is submitted as a further development in the growing discourse around practical theology and religious ministry in prisons.

Since the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1871 there has been negligible academic exploration and scrutiny of its laws. This enterprise seeks to advance scholarship of that law generally. As an initial contribution, the sources of law of the Church of Ireland, until now never the subject of singular study, are identified and investigated. Part One identifies the sources: in the law of the State; in the Church’s primary and secondary sources; and in tertiary sources (quasi-legislation and soft law), including putative sources – custom, the wider Anglican legal economy, and ecumenical input. In Part Two, case studies in each of the arenas – civil, primary and secondary, and tertiary – investigate three concerns. First, the increasing impact of civil law on church law is evaluated as a recent phenomenon. Second, the internal church sources are examined to assesstheir accessibility, a test fundamental to the Rule of Law. Third, the extensive materials of recent decades are scrutinised and demonstrate an ever-growing reliance on informal instruments – quasi-legislation and soft law – governing the life of the Church. A detailed survey of the opinions and knowledge of church members undertaken in 2011 tests and informs the analysis of the sources. Throughout the study, however, the principal reliance is on a formidable array of primary materials: a broad spectrum of State laws; contemporary ecclesiastical legal materials (national and local); a wide range of historical documents, including the original papers of the General Convention 1870, the Minutes of the Legal Committee, one-hundred and forty-four Journals of the General Synod, eight centuries of pre-disestablishment statutes, and one thousand and fifty-four statutes of the General Synod. This identification and investigation of the sources of law of the Church of Ireland highlights weaknesses and makes the case for reform. The conclusion sets out the proposals for reform.

The episcopal office, and the individuals who held it, were fundamental to the political, religious, social and cultural development of ducal Normandy. Not only men of great political power, many strove to create vibrant centres of learning in their dioceses, and accounts of their efforts to reform the Norman Church spread throughout Europe. However, while the episcopate of twelfth-century Normandy continues to be the subject of various studies, such as that published recently by Jörg Peltzer, there are few works, especially in English, which examine the careers of their predecessors in any real detail. This thesis is intended, therefore, as the first comprehensive analysis of the tenth and eleventh-century episcopate, and their role in the emergence of the Norman and Anglo-Norman realms. Using chronicles, ducal and episcopal acta, published conciliar records, architecture, and a wide variety of unpublished material in both French and English archives, this thesis traces the origins of the bishops, their recruitment and relations with the dukes of Normandy, their role in Normandy before the Conquest of England and in the governance of the Anglo-Norman realm, their secular role and connections, and their role as cultural patrons. It also includes, in various appendices, critical editions of texts either associated with, or created by, members of the episcopate, including the texts of over eighty episcopal acta.

In spite of the realities of an increasingly post-ecclesial world, sacrament continues to appear as a theme in contemporary culture, often in places least expected. What it means to describe something – a text, ritual, experience, etc – as “sacramental” derives from the unique yet complex conception of sacrament as practiced (liturgy) and theorized (theology) within the Christian tradition. Indeed, whilst simultaneously upheld as the “constitutive” action and foundational sacrament of Christ's Body called church, the Eucharist has confounded the Christian faith throughout its history. Its symbolism points to the paradox of the incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth, and his sacrificial death on Calvary, which St. Paul describes as a stumbling-block (skandalon) and foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23). And yet this scandalous quality of sacramentality, not only illustrated by but enacted in the Eucharist, has not been sufficiently accounted for in the ecclesiologies and sacramental theologies of the Christian tradition. Following the image from the Fourth gospel of “the word made flesh,” this interdisciplinary study examines the scandal of sacramentality along the two-pronged thematic of the scandal of language (word) and the scandal of the body (flesh). While sacred theology can think through this scandal only at significant risk to its own stability, the fictional discourses of literature and the arts are free to explore this scandal in a manner that simultaneously augments and challenges notions of sacrament and sacramentality, and by extension, what it means to describe the Church as a “eucharistic community.” Our aim is less a reassertion of the vitality of traditional sacramental rituals even within contemporary culture and more an effort to understand why the notion of sacrament and sacramentality has held such staying power, despite significant cultural shifts and movement away from the traditional practices of the Christian faith. Why do novelists, artists, theologians, philosophers and religious communities continue to make use of and draw upon the language and evocation of ‘sacrament’? Our thesis is that it is precisely the scandalous, subversive power of the eucharistic mystery, the thematic and symbolic tensions and destabilizing effect inherent to sacramentality, that make it such a fertile trope for artists and writers, especially within a postmodern context preoccupied with the themes of language, embodiment, presence/absence, immanence/transcendence, and so on.

The Westminster Assembly is a useful starting point for detailed discussions of the development of covenantal thought, particularly in view of the direction taken by recent studies which place a strong dichotomy between the early Reformers and their seventeenth-century successors, notably between John Calvin and those who have traditionally been designated 'Calvinists'. The most extreme, or virulent, of these is an unsparing attack upon the Westminster Confession as one of the principal reservoirs of 'a plague that had long infected the Reformed churches'. In seeking to overthrow what he described as 'the treasured confession of my mother church', the author made the astonishing claim, which puts this basic issue in a curious nutshell: 'It was Calvin who rescued me from the Calvinists". And the deadly virus identified as the cause of this plague was the Confession's covenantal statements, of which it was said, 'Calvin knew nothing, for these theological innovations were the work of his successors'. In order to set the scene, therefore, Part One of the thesis has been devoted to a consideration of the background to the Westminster Assembly and its documents, and examination of the sources and content of the theology of the covenant expressed in the standards, and also a critical survey of the historiography of the covenant from around the middle of the last century to the present time. The historical background to the Assembly as it relates to both the English and Scottish churches is designed to get the feel of the general ecclesiastical climate and theological orientation in which the divines and their immediate predecessors lived and moved, while the examination of sources and content more particularly indentifies the direction from which the doctrine of the covenant came to be embodied in the Confession and Catechisms, and also the issues which are emphasized in, and immediately related to, the chapters dealing specifically with the covenant. The scriptural origin of the Reformed doctrine of the covenant is indisputable , so that serious research in this area has never been considered necessary. The temptation to include a section on Scripture in this study has likewise been resisted, but its importance has been kept in mind throughout. In order to demonstrate that the idea of the covenant as held by the Reformed church, even in many of its particular aspects, was no new thing, Part Two picks up some of the threads offered by forerunners in the field. These include several of the church fathers, notably Augustine. The survival and use of the idea in both its political and theological applications during the medieval period has not been overlooked. It was found that the idea of the covenant had specific government, hermeneutical and sotcriological functions in medieval thought which were by no means despised or abandoned in the reaction of the Reformation against medieval scholasticism. Among the early reformers, Luther's theology held firmly to the basic concepts underlying covenantal theology, but it was in the Reformed camp that the importance of the doctrine was chiefly recognized and utilized in the controversies of the tome, first by Occolampadius and Zwingli and then more distinctly by Bullinger, whose little monograph De Testamento seu fordere tlei unico el aelerno was the first to appear on the subject. The findings of this research into Bullingcr's work interact strongly with those studies which regard Bullingcr's view of the covenant as strictly bilateral and consequently portray him as the founder of a separate Reformed tradition, distinct from that which emanated from Calvin and the Genevan school. Part Three is devoted entirely to Geneva, showing the seminal influence of Calvin's work in the development and transmission of covenantal though. In demonstrating that the covenant in both its unilateral and bilateral aspects was an essential part of Calvin's overall theological structure, the disputed questions as to whether Calvin was a 'convenant theologian', and whether he taught a covenant of works is carefully considered in its proper theological context and not merely with respect to the use of terms. For the first lime in any study of covenantal thought, detailed sttention has been given in this research to the work of Theodore Beza. Beza has been consistently singled out by those who oppose the Calvinists to Calvin, supralapsarian, scholastic orthodoxy which diverged manifestly from Calvin's warm, christocentric, humanistic, biblical theology. Just as consistently he has been denied any interest in the theology of the covencnt, with the result that 'covenant theology' has been interpreted as a reaction against Bezcan orthodoxy in an effort to recover a place for responsible man in the economy of salvation. The evidence, however, supplied by a wider consultation of Beza's works than his merely controversial writings, supports a contrary argument. Beza's basic fidelity to Calvin becomes apparent in controverted areas and the warm heart of a concerned pastor is heard to beat in his sermonic material. More importantly for this research Beza is found to have a keen interest in the covenant both unilaterally and bilaterally, particularly in relation to the doctrine of the union between Christ and his church, just as Calvin had before him and the Calvinists after him. In the final part of the thesis the issues and arguments already raised are followed through in representative writers from three main interrelated locations of post-reformation development in Reformed theology. One is the influence of the Heidelberg theologians, Ursinus and Olevianus, in the Palatinate Church of Germany. The others arc the English Puritan movement, dominated mainly by the influence of Willian Perkins, and the Scottish connection in the writings of Knox, Rollock anf Howie. It is the conclusion of this research that while covenantal theology inevitably underwent a process of refining and expansion, and was given fuller defination and varying emphases by later writers, that it nevertheless remained true to the central idea or ideas of the covenant as taught by the Reformers. Such a process cannot be constructed as constituting a fundamental shift or departure from the theology of the early Reformers. Rather there is a general agreement, a unity which makes the Westminster divines in this respect the worthy successors of Calvin and his colleagues.

This thesis reports on an extensive qualitative study of women ministers in the Church of Scotland. It examines the literature in relation to women clergy in other denominations in the UK and the USA and considers ways in which the Church of Scotland clergy are similar and dissimilar to their counterparts. The research included a quantitative survey, the examination of data from the Church of Scotland Yearbook and thirty one ‘ministry-story’ interviews. The Survey and the Yearbook produced basic demographic data about women ministers in the Kirk showing an increasing age profile and a shortage of younger women ministers. The survey also found that women ministers considered themselves to be different from male ministers most especially in the fields of collaboration and leadership style. The interviews considered factors in the path to ministry, women ministers in the exercise of their ministry, relationships with congregations, colleagues and the institutional Church. Whilst there was considerable progress in terms of the acceptance of women’s ministry by congregations and the wider community, there was also evidence of a lack of acceptance from some male ministers and an unwillingness to confront the issue on the part of the institution. Women ministers consider there to have been some progress towards integration of women’s ministry within the Church of Scotland but are also uncertain about the future and whether a backlash against women will be experienced. Although women have been ordained to ministry of word and sacrament within the Church of Scotland since 1968, this represents the first major study of women ministers within the Kirk and will provide a background for further study and exploration.

Christianity holds a central place in Religious Education (RE) in England. Since the Education Reform Act of 1988, it has been formally named in legislation relating to Religious Education; formerly its presence in the curriculum was assumed, but there was no specific indication of a requirement to teach particular religions - not even in the Education Act of 1944 which was of particular importance in formalising arrangements for Religious Education. Interpretation of ERA (DfES Circular 1/94) suggested that Christianity should 'predominate' in the RE curriculum. This study arises from recognition of the status accorded to Christianity in RE and the recognition that its representation and the shaping of this have not in the main been addressed by research. My study falls into three main parts. Part 1 considers the shaping of Christianity in RE (Chs.1 and 2) drawing on relevant written sources, among which Agreed Syllabuses hold a key place. Chapter 3 focuses particularly on the representation of Christianity in Agreed Syllabuses from the period 2001-2004, providing necessary background to the research which underpins Part 2. Part 2's concern is the teaching - and thus representation - of Christianity in key stage 3 in schools with and without a religious character. Based on a survey undertaken across England, it draws on data gathered from teachers. It includes an analysis of the content teachers select about Christianity (Chapter 5), and analyses the aspirations teachers have for their pupils' learning about and from Christianity. Teachers' own experience of studying the tradition is discussed in Chapter 7. These chapters in particular offer material relating to the representation of Christianity and the factors which shape this which, as far as I am aware, is unavailable elsewhere. Part 3 takes up my contention at the end of Part 2 (Chapter 9), that a new configuration of Christianity is needed in RE. A case is presented for this (Chapter 10), taking into account especially the changing face of the tradition globally, and drawing out possible implications for RE from some recent studies of Christianity. Chapter 11 takes my own recommendation seriously and explores a possible way forward in reconfiguring Christianity so that RE may offer a more adequate representation of the tradition in the present. A final note reflects on the challenge a new configuration presents to RE. The above summary of my concerns points to the argument I advance: that the representation of Christianity in RE has been shaped by factors extrinsic to a considered study of the tradition; this has allowed the emergence of a 'curriculum Christianity' which fails to do justice to its diverse presence and dynamic, locally and globally. Teachers are heirs to this curriculum tradition and in some measure its guardians and interpreters. The relatively few scholarly attempts to give account of Christianity 'as a religion' bears on their encounter with the tradition in their own studies and, it would seem, on its representation in RE. I argue that a re-conceptualisation of what might be understood by 'Christianity' and the development of new paradigms for its study might contribute to a more authentic representation of Christianity in RE.

This is an ethnographic study of a small sample of Catholic secondary schools in England evaluating their role within the Catholic faith tradition and their contribution to community cohesion. The research is firmly based within an ethnographic framework; it explores the perception of Catholic schools by members, in particular the young people, of the Catholic school community. The ethnographic data was collected through semi-structured focus group interviews and observations. The understanding of religion is developed from the work of Hervieu-Léger on religion as a chain of memory. The concept of social capital in the form of bonding and bridging, and both religious and spiritual capital provides a framework to understand the factors within Catholic schools, which are perceived to create a Catholic community and those which are perceived to develop or hinder cohesion in plural society. The students’ understandings of their Catholic identity were diverse and fragmentary, with precarious links to the Catholic Church as an institution. However, there was a valuing of aspects of the Catholic faith tradition which were used to construct their own understanding of Catholicism, leading to a conclusion that the Catholic school is a source of spiritual capital for its members. The participants perceived their schools to have a Catholic nature, a strong ‘sense of community’. The Catholic schools were good generators of bonding capital, although this was focused on the school rather than the wider Catholic community. Perceptions of the boundaries of the school focused on everyday encounters with outsiders such as ‘the school next door’ rather than members of other faith communities. This research has implications: for the faith school debate and issues concerning social cohesion; for the Catholic school’s role in the transmission of the faith tradition and for an understanding of young people’s Catholic identity.