This research analyzed the factors contributing to the decline of protestant churches in metropolitan centers. Houston, Texas, was named as the metropolitan center. The research concern is that there is a lack of current and recent knowledge of factors leading to the decline of Protestant churches in metropolitan centers. The purpose of this study was to identify the biblical and theological, leadership and organizational, cultural, and demographic factors contributing to the decline of Protestant churches. Precedent literature reviews the literature written in the area of church growth and decline. Five areas are researched: Church growth specialists is a review of leading contributors to the church growth movement. Biblical and theological concerns is a review of God's loving relationship with his people and the people's rebellion and decline. Leadership and organizational concerns is a review of the effects of leadership and organization on the churches today. Cultural concerns is a review of the effects of culture on the church today. It reviews both Christianity in culture and culture in the church. And, demographic concerns is a review of how demographic changes have affected the church. It reviews the contextual factors leading to church decline and the life-cycle of the church. The methodological design of the study was a survey of Protestant churches in Houston, Texas. The sampling of 542 churches was taken from 842 Protestant churches of nine major denominations. A Likert response scale survey was created based on the research found in the precedent literature. Two surveys were created and distributed: an electronic response survey the pastors responded to online and a paper survey mailed out to the churches. The analysis of findings reviewed the one hundred churches that responded to the survey. In all, nineteen factors within the areas of concern were researched and analyzed. The results demonstrate that biblical and theological concerns illustrate no differences between growing and declining churches. Leadership and organizational concerns, cultural concerns and demographic concerns all demonstrate a difference between growing and declining churches. The conclusion was that there are many factors that contribute to church decline. The declining churches had numerous factors that were contributing to the decline. Decisive actions must be taken for the churches to turn into healthy and productive growing churches. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

The aim of this thesis was to test whether the protestant faith or the protestant tradition is the cause of the protestant suppressive effect on corruption and whether this effect prevails on an individual level. This was done using multilevel hierarchical regression models and over 350 000 survey questionnaires to avoid bias as well as national and cultural effects. This thesis shows that identifying oneself as protestant has a significant effect on ones tolerance of corruption, but this effect is severely reduced when controlling for socioeconomic and political factors. We further show that the level of religiosity is a relevant predictor in individual tolerance for corruption for protestants. The individual religious identity is, however, not as strong a predictor as documented aggregated levels of Protestantism, indicating that, while still relevant, national factors are more important in explaining variation in corruption. / <p>2019-06-04</p>

Thesis advisor: Virginia Reinburg / Thesis advisor: Sarah G. Ross / Bernardino Ochino (1487-1564) has long been a misinterpreted historical figure. Even to specialists Ochino’s Siena is less well-known than Luther’s Wittenburg or Calvin’s Geneva. A once-famous Capuchin preacher turned “heretic,” Ochino was forced into exile in 1542 upon the re-establishment of the Roman Inquisition. Ochino’s life has often been defined in terms of success and failure, his exile as a personal tragedy, and his theological ideas as unclassifiable. An examination of some of his most important letters as well as a selection of his sermons, dialogues, and his catechism, however, illustrate that Ochino’s exile actually provided him with opportunities that allowed him to become the teacher of Italian reformed thought to his followers in Italy and throughout Europe. This was made possible largely by his now unimpeded access to the printing press, the medium to which he resorted after his preaching was silenced. From his state of exile he, quite literally, helped to compose the Italian Reformation and his story speaks to the growing interest among historians in conceptualizing exile and mobility as preconditions of religious transformation and the international Reformation. Ochino’s corpus of works reveals a man intimately engaged with the Protestant Reformation throughout Europe. His writings betray the influence of Luther and Calvin, while maintaining a certain Italian “anti-dogmatism” that historians have long recognized in Ochino’s work and in the Italian Reformation more broadly. Ochino’s eclecticism is a reminder that the Italian Reformation must be appreciated in its own right, as a crucial element of the international Reformation and not simply as a catalyst for the Counter or Catholic Reformation, as it is often portrayed. Ochino’s works—printed abroad and frequently transported clandestinely back to Italy—reveal the existence of a community of men and women who hoped to be agents of religious reform, not simply heretics who hoped to avoid the gaze of the Inquisition. Theirs was a religion that begged to be lived, not one that was meant to be hidden. Ochino was their leader.

Anne, Lady Bacon (c.1S2B-1610) is chiefly remembered as the translator of several important religious texts and as the mother of Francis and Anthony Bacon. This thesis seeks to re-evaluate her fulfilment of her role as a mother, translator and religious patron through an examination of her correspondence and an assessment of her published works. In doing so it demonstrates that Anne was adept at utilising epistolary conventions in order to achieve her politico-religious aims, and was far more capable at negotiating complex webs of power than has hitherto been acknowledged. Over one hundred of her letters survive, most of which are written to Anthony between the 1592 and 1596, and only a few of which have been published. I have transcribed all these extant letters, and through a close analysis of their content and material construction I offer an outline of her epistolary habits, and demonstrate how her letter-writing practice was influenced by the practical elements of sixteenth-century epistolary culture. I describe the factors that influenced Anne's relationship with her sons, and analyse how both parties performed or neglected their duties. The second half of my thesis focuses on Anne's religious patronage. I describe the iconographic significance of the female translator, and examine Anne's contribution to the nascent Protestant literary culture. Faced with a political climate that was becoming increasingly hostile to expressions of nonconformity, I look at how Anne harnessed other means by which to support the puritan cause, and assess the extent to which she directed the religious tenor of her local parishes.

This thesis deals with the term layman in the church background, especially in the Protestant one. It searches for roots of understanding of laicism in Bible, in the history of the church and in the present Protestant environment of Czech Republic. It defines the term layman in relation to its church counterpart, which is usually considered clergy. It observes, what kind of activities are within the authority of laymen and what kind of activities are beyond their power. It investigates proper ecclesiological models, that allow laymen to be used in the biblical way according to their charisma. It proposes a change of terminology and a new point of view on the role of laymen in the church practices. Keywords Layman, general priesthood, ordination, hierarchy, laos

My dissertation, Unspeakable Joy: Rejoicing in Early Modern England, claims that the act of rejoicing--expressing religious joy--was a crucial rhetorical element of literary works in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century in England. The expression of religious joy in literature functioned as a sign of belief and sanctification in English Protestant theology, and became the emotive articulation of a hopeful union between earthly passion and an anticipated heavenly feeling. By taking into account the historical-theological definitions of joy in the reformed tradition, I offer new readings of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century texts, including the Sidney Psalms, Donne's sermons, Spenser's Epithalamion, Richard Rogers's spiritual diaries, and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. I suggest that much of early modern poetics stems from a desire, on behalf of writers, to articulate the ineffable joy so often described by sermons and tracts. By establishing Renaissance emotional expression as a source of religious epistemology and negotiating the cognitive and constructive understandings of emotion, I show that religious rejoicing in Elizabethan Protestantism consists of a series of emotive speech acts designed to imitate the hoped-for joys of heaven. Finally, these readings emphasize the ways in which rejoicing not only functions as a reaffirmation of belief in and commitment to the state church but also becomes the primary agent for spiritual affect by bestowing grace on an individual believer.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Sociology

Originally presented as the author's Lizentiatsarbeit--Universität Bern, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

The Christian Church has since its inception formulated various ways of relating its claims regarding the decisive and universal significance of the Christ-event to the religious traditions and experience of people of other faiths. A common theme that undergirds several of the approaches that have emerged in the history of the Christian engagement with other religions is the fulfilment concept. The fulfilment concept, with its roots in the New Testament and the early church fathers, continues to find prominence and creative theological expression in Roman Catholic circles. Protestant fulfilment theology, however, reached the peak of its development in the early years of the twentieth century, and subsequently fell into decline. This study presents a case for the revitalization of the Protestant fulfilment tradition based on a recovery and assessment of the fulfilment approaches of Indian Christian converts in the pre-independence period, focussing especially on the views of Krishna Mohan Banerjea and Sadhu Sundar Singh. Our analyses of the fulfilment approaches of Indian converts furnish us with a conceptual framework for a cumulative fulfilment proposal which complements the nineteenth century Protestant fulfilment tradition. The experience of Indian converts affords significant evidence to c9nfirm the fulfilment claim that there are elements in the Hindu tradition that can serve as a 'pedagogy' to Christ. It offers empirical verification of a trinitarian scheme of progressive, differentiated and complementary divine revelation for affirming revelational continuity between Christianity and Hinduism. It also provides components for a theologically coherent Christology upon which to base the fulfilment proposal.The fulfilment approaches of Indian converts help authenticate the plausibility of fulfilment theology, confirming its adequacy over alternative explanations, in affirming the particular truth claims of the Christian faith while ascribing genuine value to the religious traditions and experience of people of other faiths. The recovery of Protestant fulfilment theology requires attention to several pending tasks, including the development of a Christian hermeneutic of non-Christian texts, and a careful assessment of the influence of the fulfilment concept among Hindu converts and "non-baptised believers in Christ" today. This study contributes towards that recovery.

"Christian Slavery" shows how Protestant missionaries in the early modern Atlantic World developed a new vision for slavery that integrated Christianity with human bondage. Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries arrived in the Caribbean intending to "convert" enslaved Africans to Christianity, but their actions formed only one part of a dialogue that engaged ideas about family, kinship, sex, and language. Enslaved people perceived these newcomers alternately as advocates, enemies, interlopers, and powerful spiritual practitioners, and they sought to utilize their presence for pragmatic, political, and religious reasons. Protestant slave owners fiercely guarded their Christian rituals from non-white outsiders and rebuffed the efforts of Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries to convert the enslaved population. For planters, Protestantism was a sign of mastery and freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. The planters’ exclusive vision of Protestantism was challenged on two fronts: by missionaries, who articulated a new ideology of "Christian slavery," and by enslaved men and women who sought baptism for themselves and their children. In spite of planter intransigence, a small number of enslaved and free Africans advocated and won access to Protestant rites. As they did so, "whiteness" emerged as a new way to separate enslaved and free black converts from Christian masters. Enslaved and free blacks who joined Protestant churches also forced Europeans to reinterpret key points of Scripture and reconsider their ideas about "true" Christian practice. As missionaries and slaves came to new agreements and interpretations, they remade Protestantism as an Atlantic institution. Missionaries argued that slave conversion would solidify planter power, make slaves more obedient and hardworking, and make slavery into a viable Protestant institution. They also encouraged the development of a race-based justification for slavery and sought to pass legislation that confirmed the legality of enslaving black Christians. In so doing, they redefined the practice of religion, the meaning of freedom, and the construction of race in the early modern Atlantic World.Their arguments helped to form the foundation of the proslavery ideology that would emerge in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.