This study examines the formation and maintenance of young peoples' attitude to Christianity and seeks to ascertain which are the salient factors, or group of factors, involved in such processes. It was stimulated by the apparent gradient of decline in young people's active participation in the life of the Church in many parts of Scotland and by the thought that such decline may be due in some measure to young people's fundamental attitudes to Christianity. The empirical research, which forms the kernel of the study, was undertaken in 1986 among 6,838 secondary school pupils, aged 11 to 17 years, in non-denominational, denominational and independent schools within the Dundee area. Questionnaires relating to attitudes to religion and science were administered by teachers, mainly from Religious Education departments within the schools. The Francis Attitude towards Christianity Scale (ASC 4B) was used in connection with the attitudes to religion items. The data was analysed by means of the SPSSX statistical package. Each section of the study investigates available research literature relevant to the topic considered. Chapter 4 looks in detail at the main variables involved in the formation and maintenance of young people's attitudes to Christianity, viz. Pupils' sex, age, personal Church attendance and Sunday School attendance, parental Church attendance and parental encouragement, social class differences, peer group influence, type of school attended and attitudes to science. The effects of television viewing on young people's perceptions, including their perceptions of religion on television, was also considered. Among the basic conclusions reached by this study are there: - Parental example and encouragement are the most salient elements in the religious socialization of young people. Peer group influence is also shown to be a significant factor in the transmission of young people's attitudes to Christianity. Pupils' Church attendance has considerable influence on their attitudes to Christianity and the continuance of these and their attitudes to science are shown to have special importance for their attitudes to religion. The 13 to 15 year age period merits further and deeper examination. This appears to be a decisive stage in adolescent development, when significant changes occur in young people's perceptions of religion and in their attitudes to Christianity.

This thesis looks at the poetry of three markedly different contemporary poets, Geoffrey Hill, Les Murray and R. S. Thomas. They are linked by at least tacit belief in Christianity and the Christian world-view, and this belief shapes everything they write, whether explicitly 'religious' or otherwise. My focus throughout the thesis is on Hill, Murray and Thomas's differing conceptions of God, and my explorations of their poetic and religious stances take God as both their starting point and destination. The opening chapter is a general introduction to the possibilities of religious poetry in the modern world, before turning, in chapter two, to Hill, Murray and Thomas themselves and an identification of their religious concerns and sensibilities. The remaining thematic chapters concern themselves with Hill and Murray's explorations of suffering and evil, post-1945; the place of humour and laughter in the religious visions of Murray and Hill; Murray's remarkable sequence of animal poems, 'Presence'; and the figure of Christ in the poetry of Thomas. I conclude with a discussion of T. S. Eliot's misgivings concerning religious poetry, and how Hill, Murray and Thomas avoid writing the limited poetry he identifies. My method throughout is to base my discussion of these three poets on close readings of their individual poems.

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This dissertation aims to explore the phenomenon of the worship of abstract concepts in personified form and its development in the Archaic and Classical periods. An introductory chapter surveys previous scholarly literature on the subject and covers some general theoretical issues: i) definitions; ii) problems of sources and methodology; iii) the question of the predominantly feminine gender of these figures; iv) ancient and modern theories on deified abstractions as a class. Six chapters then look at a selection of individual cults in roughly chronological sequence, each exemplifying one or more of the general questions raised by such cults. Themis provides a good example of the very "mythological" deified abstractions of the Archaic period and the problems of tracing the origins and early history of personification cults. Nemesis was probably worshipped at Rhamnous from the sixth century, but acquires unique status in the fifth from an association with the battle of Marathon; the cult of the two Nemeseis at Smyrna, I argue, is a fourth-century innovation. Peitho is often associated with rhetoric, but a survey of her cult associations in a variety of locations emphasises her erotic side, an aspect further revealed in vase-painting. These three figures all have roots in archaic literature, whereas Hygieia, though soon mythologised as daughter of Asklepios, does not appear in any medium before her arrival in Athens in 420 BC in the healing god's wake. Her cult particularly raises the question of how seriously personifications could be taken as deities, since the concept which she embodies is so patently a human desideratum. Later innovations are similarly often dismissed as "mere" allegory or propaganda, as is illustrated by the case of Eirene in fourth-century Athens, most famously represented in Kephisodotos' group of Peace holding the child Wealth, her cult introduced in response to quite specific political circumstances. The problems of correlating archaeological and literary sources are particularly acute in the case of the most "abstract", figure to be considered, Eleos, eponymous deity of the Athenian "altar of Pity"; although the altar dates from the late sixth century, its insubstantial god is probably a later development. From these six case studies some provisional conclusions can be offered on the place of deified abstract ideas in Greek religious thought and practice.

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