This dissertation is a study of the mission of the Women's Manyano in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, beginning from 1907 to 1997. It focuses on the barriers and successes this organisation has experienced during the years of its mission. It also examines the history of the formation and objectives of the organisation especially within the structures of the church. It attempts to analyse the reaction of the hierarchy of the church in order to understand why the organisation had no representation at executive meetings at the national level for a very long time. It will compare similarities and differences between the organisations that are within the church and the influence that it has on other organisations inside and outside the church. The organisation did not agree when the church called for the unification of all the churchwomen's organisations. Manyano saw this as a call to its downfall because they had no real similarities with other women's organisations within the church. Although the Women's Manyano is the largest in the church, her representation at national conferences was still minima. At the same time the church proclaim a message of Priesthood of all believers. Women's Manyano is the backbone of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. Without such an organisation the church could not have grown very fast. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2002.

"This paper is limited to a study of a sample of churches receiving support from the Commission on Minimum Salary of the North Texas Conference of the Methodist Church. It is further limited to the phases of membership, budgets, World Service, and minimum salary. The period to be covered is the four years from June, 1949, to June, 1953, during which time the Commission operated under the same principles and officers."-- leaf 1.

This study sets out to suggest a theological and methodological framework that assists the evangelical movement in Africa, and in Zambia in particular, to engage its missionary task with greater effectiveness. The study is located within the radical evangelical theological tradition. In this regard, firstly, the study posits that the evangelical movement has a heritage of sociopolitical engagement that can be traced back to its origins in the great evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century. Secondly, the study posits that the evangelical movement abandoned its heritage of socio-political engagement during the first thirty years of the twentieth century due to a number of seemingly unrelated factors that, nevertheless, worked in concert. Thirdly, the study posits that during the third quarter of the twentieth century, evangelicalism engaged in a process through which it inadvertently began to recover its heritage of socio-political engagement. This process began with the International Congress on World Evangelisation in Lausanne, Switzerland in July 1974 (Lausanne 1974). It was an inadvertent recovery in that Lausanne 1974 did not set out to recover the lost heritage of evangelical socio-political engagement, but to plan strategically and to encourage evangelicals in the task of worldwide evangelism. However, during the proceedings of Lausanne 1974, a group of radical evangelicals became dissatisfied with the Lausanne Covenant’s proviso on the question of socio-political engagement, in its ‘two-mandate’ approach to the missionary task of the church. This study however, argues that though the Lausanne movement has become a rallying point and the Lausanne Covenant its expression of evangelical unity and purpose, it falls short of providing an adequate theological and methodological framework for evangelical sociopolitical engagement in Africa. The study posits that with key insights from José Míguez Bonino’s theological and methodological works: socio-analytic mediation, hermeneutic mediation and practical mediation, evangelicals in Africa, and in Zambia in particular, will be enabled to engage in its missionary task with greater effectiveness. When these missional tools from Míguez Bonino are engaged, evangelicals in Africa will be equipped to engage a process of missional reflection on the contextual reality and thus engage effectively in missional activities. Employing these key insights from Míguez Bonino, the study argues for a process that will free evangelicalism in Africa from the Northern American and European ‘theological imperialism’ that prevented the development of its own theology and missiology. The study further argues that such a process, as will assist evangelicalism in Africa to free itself from such influence, will invariably lead evangelicalism in Africa to develop a theology and missiology that will be more responsive to the African context. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.