There has been a great deal of research into Victorian religious ideas and organisations carried out in recent years. However, the research tends to focus on areas in which evidence is most manageable - that is, on denominations and sects which have a relatively limited and well-defined membership, or, if the Church of Ireland is concerned, on the activities of the professional full-time representatives of the Church, the clergy. In choosing to study the role of the laity in the Church of England, I have attempted to extend the circle of research a little further from the centre towards which it ordinarily tends to contract. [continued in text ...]

While historians of Britain in the 1640s have long been attracted by the English New Model Army and in recent years by the English royalist armies, the armies fielded by the Scottish Covenanters have suffered a strange neglect. It was not until the work on this thesis was well- advanced that the crude nature of previous efforts became apparent. In an attempt to provide a basic understanding of the Covenanting forces, this thesis synthesizes a mass of material relating to the religious aspects of the armies. Two crucial questions emerged: did the military reflect Scottish society or any part of it; were the Covenanters' forces godly armies seeking to evangelize the areas they occupied? These themes have been interpreted broadly to include the rules of war, the army chaplains, religious manifestations in military life, the moral behaviour of the soldiers, and the role of the armies in spreading the presbyterian faith. In addition to those topics, an examination of the soldiers' relations with civilians and the political activities of the military have been included. The first most clearly allows one to determine whether the Covenanting armies attained the status of godly armies. The political question arises out of the close relationship between religious and political activities in the period. With the exception of family legal papers the entire spectrum of Scottish seventeenth-century sources was inspected. The records of the 1.Estates and its committees, the General Assembly and its Commission, form the basic sources for a view of national developments. At the local level the burgh, presbytery, family and kirk session records proved invaluable. Unfortunately few diaries, memoirs or letters survived. English materials primarily state papers, pamphlets and news books were also helpful. The findings of this thesis suggest that the armies of the Covenanters failed to achieve the ideals set for them.

Thesis (M. Div. with Concentration: Church History)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74).

Thesis (M. Div. with Concentration: Church History)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74).

Thesis (M. Div. with Concentration: Church History)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74).

No description available.

The years 1870 to 1920 saw an extraordinary efflorescence of English historical writing, dominated by historians who were committed members of the Church of England, many of them in holy orders. At a time when both history and religion were central to cultural life, when history was becoming a modern academic discipline, and when the relationship between Christianity and advanced knowledge was under unprecedented scrutiny, this was a phenomenon of considerable intellectual significance. To understand why this came about, it is necessary to understand the intellectual and institutional conditions in the Church of England at the time. The Oxford Movement and the rise of incarnational theology had drawn Anglicans in ever greater numbers towards the study of the past. At the same time, it was still widely held that the Church of England should be a ‘learned church’: it therefore encouraged scholarship, sacred and secular, amongst its laity and clergy. The result was to produce historians who approached the past with a new set of priorities. The history of the English nation and its constitution was rewritten to show that the church – and especially the medieval church – was the originator and guarantor of modern nationality and liberty. Attitudes to the Reformation shifted from the celebratory to the sceptical, or even the downright hostile. Economic historians even came to see the Reformation as a social revolution – as the origin of modern poverty or capitalism. New and distinctive ideas about progress and divine providence were developed and articulated. Most of all, an examination of Anglican historical scholarship shows the continued vitality of the Church of England and the limitations to the idea that intellectual life was secularised over the course of the nineteenth century. Instead, historiography continued to be shaped by Anglican thought and institutions at this critical stage in its development.

Although by 1900, over 60% of the British missionary workforce in South Asia was female, women’s role in mission has often been overlooked. This thesis focuses upon women of the two leading Anglican societies – the high-Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the evangelical Church Missionary Society (CMS) – during a particularly underexplored and eventful period in mission history. It uses primary material from the archives of SPG at Rhodes House, Oxford, CMS at the University of Birmingham, St Stephen’s Community, Delhi, and the United Theological College, Bangalore, to extend previous research on the beginnings of women’s service in the late-nineteenth century, exploring the ways in which women missionaries responded to unprecedented upheaval in Britain, India, and the worldwide Anglican Communion in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In so doing, it contributes to multiple overlapping historiographies: not simply to the history of Church and mission, but also to that of gender, the British Empire, Indian nationalism, and decolonisation. Women missionaries were products of the expansion of female education, professional opportunities, and philanthropic activity in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Britain. Their vocation was tested by living conditions in India, as well as by contradictory calls to marriage, career advancement, familial duties, or the Religious Life. Their educational, medical, and evangelistic work altered considerably between 1917 and 1950 owing to ‘Indianisation’ and ‘Diocesanisation,’ which sought to establish a self-governing ‘native’ Church. Women’s absorption in local affairs meant they were usually uninterested in imperial, nationalist, and Anglican politics, and sometimes became estranged from the home Church. Their service was far more than an attempt to ‘colonise’ Indian hearts and minds and propagate Western ideology. In reality, women missionaries’ engagement with India and Indians had a far more profound impact upon them than upon the Indians they came to serve.

"Based on the thesis submitted by the author for the degree 'Doctor of Philosophy' to the Senate of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in 1976"--P. viii. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-275) and indexes.

This study examines the role of the Austin Friars in pre-Reformation English society, as distinct both from the Austin Friars of Europe and from other English mendicant orders. By examining how the Austins formulated their origins story in a distinctly English context, this thesis argues that the hagiographical writings of the Austin Friars regarding Augustine of Hippo, whom they claimed as their putative founder, had profound consequences for their religious platform. As their definition of Augustine's religious life was less restrictive than that of the European Austin Friars and did not look to a recent, charismatic leader, such as Dominic or Francis, the English Austin Friars developed a religious adaptability visible in their pastoral, theological, and secular activity. This flexibility contributed to their durability by allowing them to adapt to religious needs as they arose rather than being constrained to what had been validated by their heritage. The behaviour of these friars can be characterised foremost by their ceaseless advancement of the interests of their own order through their creation of a network of influence and the manoeuvring of their confrères into socially and economically expedient positions. Given the propensity of the Austin Friars towards reform, this study seeks to understand its place within and interaction with English society, both religious and secular, in an effort to reconstruct the religious culture of this order. It therefore investigates their interaction with the laity and patronage, with heresy and reform, and with secular powers. It emphasises, above all, the distinctiveness of the English Austin Friars both from other mendicant orders and from the European Austin Friars, whose rigid interpretations of the religious example of Augustine led them to a strict demarcation of the Augustinian life as eremitical in nature and to hostile relations with the Augustinian Canons. Ultimately, this thesis interrogates the significance of being an Austin Friar in fifteenth- or sixteenth-century England and their role in the religious landscape, exploring the exceptional variability to their behaviour and their ability to take on accepted forms of behaviour.