Text in English / The phenomenon of the 2007/8 post-election violence in Kenya is complex and has numerous facets. This is because of the historical and socio-political dimensions connected with it, some of which the present study has attempted to discuss. The main objective of this research is to develop a missiological model of reconciliation by understanding and addressing the underlying causes of the 2007/8 post-election violence through an interpretive and missiological reading of the 2008 report of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. The concepts of politics, ethnicity, human rights and violence are chosen as analytical units for this study and through an integrated approach to their interconnectedness, a more adequate framework to identify and analyze the causes of violence is created. The churches in Kenya have played ambiguous roles in the social-political arena and this study surveys these roles and suggests different missional approaches through which the churches in Kenya can participate in the mission of reconciliation. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M.Th. (Missiology)

Text in English / This dissertation investigates the problem of significance conflict resolution as a meaningful ministry of the Church in ecclesial, social and political conflict. Recognising the fact that conflict has been an experience of humankind since the beginning of time the research focuses on the Church's role in socio-political conflict during the years of the National Party rule in South Africa. A number of theological and practical questions arise from the problem of conflict and its resolution in relation to the Church. The question is raised: does conflict resolution as a concept and strategy have a credible theological content. In order to explore this problem the dissertation first develops a theology of conflict. The theology of conflict forms the basis for a theology of conflict resolution. The thesis is that conflict, inherent in all human experience, is not good or evil. Rather it has the potential for destruction and transformation. It is the transformatory possibility that needs to be promoted. The thesis examines conflict resolution strategies of leading theorists and practitioners and tests them as viable approaches to be adopted by the Church. However it finds that conflict resolution will be accepted as a role of the Church if it can be formulated in convincing theological principles. An analysis of reconciliation and conflict resolution focuses on the way reconciliation is perceived in the political context. It then probes the theological relationship between reconciliation and conflict resolution. Reconciliation is more than conflict resolution. The scope of reconciliation includes (a) the initiative of God, (b) addressing the predicament of alienation, brokenness and distress ( c) through the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ the Mediator (d) who reconciles the universe to God. However, conflict resolution has an indispensable role in the reconciliation process. Through the ministry of conflict resolution the Church facilitates confrontation between individuals or groups and contributes towards transformation in relationships where there is conflict. The thesis then probes the possibilities for conflict resolution to be an integral part of of on-going pastoral ministry in the belief that pro-active conflict resolution is a source of social and ecclesial transformation. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Th. (Practical Theology)

What did it mean to be a Catholic elite in Protestant England? The relationship between the Protestant crown and its Catholic subjects may be examined fruitfully through a study of an individual and his world. This thesis examines this relationship through the example of Sir Thomas Tresham, who has often been seen as the archetypal Catholic loyalist. It is argued that the notion of Catholic loyalism must be reconfigured to account for the complexities inherent in the relationship between Catholics and the government. The duty to honour the monarch's authority was bound up with social and national sentiment, but it often accompanied criticisms of the practice of that authority, and the ways in which it encroached on personal experience. Intractable tensions lay behind expressions of loyalty, and this thesis travels in these undercurrents of cultural, social, religious, and political conflict to investigate the nuanced relationship between English Catholics and English society. Political resistance as classically understood - actions which directly opposed and undermined government policy - risks the exclusion of culture and identity, through which resistance was redefined. It is argued that Tresham's participation in elite activities became vehicles for resistance in the Catholic context. Book-collecting, reading, and the donation of books to an institutional library are framed as forms of resistance which countered the spirit of government legislation, and provided for the continuation of a robust tradition of Catholic scholarship on English soil. Through artistic and architectural projects, Tresham found ways to participate in elite culture which were not closed off to him, and in which Catholicism and gentility could sit side by side. These activities were also avenues for resistance, whereby the erection of stone testaments to Tresham's faith defied the government's attempts to redefine Englishness and gentility in Protestant terms, to the devastation of Catholicism. These artistic works combined piety, gentility, and resistance, and, together with Tresham's two Catholic libraries, they were to be his legacy.

O propósito dessa dissertação é investigar a presença ascendente de representantes do pentecostalismo evangélico e dos católicos carismáticos nas legislaturas alagoanas, a partir dos anos de 1990, consolidando-se na primeira década do século XXI. Refletimos as repercussões políticas da intensa movimentação no campo religioso brasileiro a partir de 1980, provocado pelo crescimento das doutrinas evangélicas pentecostais e da reação dos católicos carismáticos. Buscamos compreender a estratégias religiosas e políticas desses segmentos na busca por mais espaço na sociedade, e na arena política. Nesse cenário representantes e líderes dessas doutrinas religiosas passam a transitar entre o púlpito da igreja e o plenário das casas legislativas. Realidade essa também presente em Alagoas, onde parlamentares evangélicos e católicos apresentam uma agenda comprometida com o assistencialismo social e projetos políticos assentados na moral-cristã. Na década de 1990, no contexto das políticas neoliberais, Alagoas, que historicamente apresentava graves índices socioeconômicos, mergulhou numa crise política sem precedentes atingindo o executivo estadual e, diretamente, as oligarquias tradicionais agrárias ali representadas. No legislativo, abriu espaço para novos personagens que já se destacavam com um forte trabalho assistencial e doutrinário por meio de iniciativas próprias, ou interligadas as suas respectivas igrejas. Esses personagens, suas trajetórias pessoais, políticas e religiosas e o panorama histórico desses acontecimentos configuram essa pesquisa. Vale salientar que na elaboração desse trabalho recorremos às fontes bibliográficas e documentais: nos apoiamos nos postulados teóricos de Joanildo Burity, Leonildo de Campos, Paul Freston, René Remond e André Cellard. / This dissertation purpose is to research the ascendant presence of evangelical Pentecostalism and charismatic Catholics representatives in Alagoas legislatures, beginning in the 1990s and consolidating in the first decade of 21st century. We reflect on the political repercussions of the intense movement in the Brazilian religious field since 1980, provoked by the growth of Pentecostal evangelical doctrines and by the reaction of charismatic Catholics. Seeking to understand the religious and political strategies of these segments in the search for more space in society and in the political arena. In this scenario, representatives and leaders of these religious doctrines pass between the church pulpit and the legislatives houses plenary. This reality is also present in Alagoas, where evangelical and Catholic parliamentarians present an agenda committed to social assistance and political projects based on Christian morality. In the 1990s, in the neoliberal policies context, Alagoas, which historically had severe socioeconomic indexes, plunged into an unprecedented economic and social crisis, affecting the state executive and directly affecting the traditional agrarian oligarchies represented there. In the legislative, a new space was open for new characters that had already stood out with a strong welfare and doctrinal work through their own initiatives, or interconnected by their respective Churches. These characters, their personal, political and religious trajectories, and the historical panorama of these events configure this research. It is noteworthy that in preparation for work we rely in bibliographical and documentary sources: we support the theoretical postulates of Joanildo Burity, Leonildo de Campos, Paul Freston, René Remond and André Cellard.

L’Église de Jésus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours, ou « Église mormone », émargea au cours de la première moitié du XIXe siècle dans une Amérique en proie à des mutations sociales et religieuses. Joseph Smith, son prophète-fondateur, l’inscrivit dès le départ dans une radicalité doctrinale en « protestant » les fondamentaux du christianisme tels qu’ils avaient été définis et acceptés auparavant. Il s’attira de ce fait le courroux des « Églises établies », en particulier de celles du protestantisme évangélique. Malgré une américanité foncière, sa religion fut affublée de l’étiquette « un-american » et ses disciples furent persécutés, poussés à édifier leur « Sion » sur la « Frontière », puis dans l’Ouest, à la périphérie de la société américaine. Contrairement à bien d’autres groupes religieux ou de mouvements utopiques, les « mormons » réussirent à transformer leur marginalisation en force, développant par la même occasion des particularismes qui firent d’eux un « peuple à part ». Or, ils s’éveillèrent aussi à l’évidence que pour échapper aux persécutions, ils devaient se positionner au cœur de l’action politique du pays. L’investiture de Mitt Romney par le Parti républicain pour l’élection présidentielle de 2012 témoigne de leur réussite. Mais comment cela fut-il possible ? Romney fut aussi l’objet d’une formidable opposition religieuse au cours de la phase des primaires du Parti qui n’est pas sans rappeler celles fomentées par les protestants contre les catholiques Al Smith (1928) et John F. Kennedy (1960). Comment expliquer ce refus de voir un mormon à la Maison blanche ? Nous répondons dans cette thèse à ces questions, et à bien d’autres, notamment en illustrant le fait que Romney, J. F. Kennedy et Al Smith eurent un prédécesseur en Reed Smoot, apôtre mormon dont l’élection en 1902 au Sénat fédéral fut à l’origine du plus grand procès politico-religieux d’Amérique. / The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or “Mormon Church,” emerged during the first half of the 19th century while America was undergoing social and religious changes. Right from the outset, Joseph Smith, the prophet-founder, set the Church in a radical opposition, “protesting” the dogma of traditional Christianity as they had been defined and accepted for centuries. He attracted the ire of the “established Churches” of Evangelical Protestantism. In spite of the profound Americanness of his religion, it was labeled un-american and his followers were persecuted, driven out, and forced to build their “Zion” on the Frontier, and then in the West, on the margins of American society. Unlike several other religious groups and utopian movements, the “Mormons” managed to turn their marginalization into strength, developing thereby traits that made them “a peculiar people.” Yet, they also realized that to escape persecutions, they had to be at the center of the nation’s politics. The nomination of Mitt Romney by the Republican Party for the 2012 presidential election testifies to their success. How did that come about? Romney was also the object of a sturdy religious opposition during the Party’s primaries that reminded the ones set up by the Protestants in the cases of Al Smith (1928) and of John F. Kennedy (1960). How does one account for this refusal to see a Mormon in the White House? In this dissertation, we answer these questions, and to many more, particularly as we illustrate the fact that Romney, J. F. Kennedy and Al Smith had a predecessor in Reed Smoot, a Mormon apostle whose election in 1902 to the U.S. Senate set the tone for the greatest religiously and politically-motivated trial ever in American history.

This dissertation explores the reconfiguration of religion in modern global society with a focus on Koreans’ use of the category of religion. Using textual and structural analysis, this study examines how the notion of religion is structurally and semantically contextualized in the public sphere of modern Korea. I scrutinize the operation of the differentiated communication systems that produces a variety of discourses and imaginaries on religion and religions in modern Korea. Rather than narrowly define religion in terms of the consequence of religious or scientific projects, this dissertation shows the process in which the evolving societal systems such as politics, law, education, and mass media determine and re-determine what counts as religion in the emergence of a globalized Korea. I argue that, ever since the Western notion of religion was introduced to East Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, religion was, unlike in China and Japan, constructed as a positive social component in Korea, because it was considered to be instrumental in maintaining Korean identity and modernizing the Korean nation in the new global context. In twentieth century Korea, the conception of religion was manifest in the representation of the so-called world religions such as Buddhism and Christianity, which were largely re-imagined as resisting colonialism and communism as well as contributing to the integration and democratization of the nation-state. The phenomenal clout and growth of Korea’s mainstream religions can be traced to an established twofold understanding that religion is distinctive, normal, and versatile, while indigenous traditions and new religious groups are abnormal, regressive, and even harmful. I have found that, since the late 1980s, a negative re-formation of religion has been widespread in the public sphere of South Korea, with a growing concern that religion may harbor a parochial attitude against the nation’s new strategies of development. Religion has been increasingly signified as antisocial, conflictual, and sectarian in newly globalized South Korea, because structuralized religious power, in particular that of Protestantism, gets in the way of autonomous evolvement of the secular societal institutions. As such, I conclude by suggesting that the definition of religion was multiply appropriated by the differences in local particularization in contemporary global society. Insofar as religion is regarded as incompatible with the changed location of the national society in the new global society, the semantics assigned to what is called religion continues to be degraded in contemporary South Korea.

The Marillac were one of the most important noble families in early modern France. My analysis of this pivotal and deeply political family during the turbulent era of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1629) examines and explains the importance of the interaction of familial alliances, religion and diplomacy in the making of the state. This period represents a critical moment in the process of state development. In contrast to prevailing studies of early modern state formation that concentrate on a centrally-directed program, this dissertation argues that it was the expansion of family strategy, and its interplay with religion and diplomacy, that drove the ongoing construction of the early modern state. There was no blueprint for the creation of this state. Rather, it was born out of an accretion of policies formed by politically important clans working to advance their familial interests. By closely tracing the fortunes of the Marillac clan through archives and research libraries in France, this study discloses the nature of power in early modern Europe in its daily, practical manifestations. My project reaffirms the agency of the family and the individual in the making of the state. It showcases the importance of religious devotion to the formation of family strategy, and especially how Marillac women were drivers of this devotion. My research demonstrates how one family successfully negotiated the Wars of Religion. Additionally, I discuss the impactful role of the individual diplomat in the practice of foreign affairs. Finally, by tracing the fortunes of the Marillac family, I show how a family not only rises to power, but falls, as well as the consequences and limits of disgrace. My research will therefore contribute to the fields of early modern state-building, diplomacy, religious politics, and women and gender through the prism of Marillac family strategy and its interaction with religion and diplomacy.

No description available.

German text / Gegenstand dieser Studie ist die historische Erforschung der deutschen Glaubens- und Gemeinschaftsmissionen, modern ausgedrückt der evangelikalen Missionen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Die bisherige Forschung hatte diesen Themenkomplex vernachlässigt. Diese Studie beschreibt, wie sich diese Missionsgesellschaften im Umfeld des nationalsozialistischen Unrechtsregimes verhielten. Da die Quellenlage problematisch ist, wird anhand der Missionsblätter aufgezeigt, wie die Glaubens- und Gemeinschaftsmissionen zur Machtergreifung Hitlers standen. Dabei kristallisierte sich heraus, dass man sich überwiegend abseits von Nationalsozialismus, Rassismus und Antisemitismus positionierte. Allerdings blieb man in den Missionsblättern zur Bekennenden Kirche distanziert. Im Hauptteil dieser Studie kommt ein aus dem Quellenmaterial eruiertes Positionenspektrum zum Vorschein, welches von NS-Affinität bis Verfolgung reicht. Dieses ist an acht biographischen Einzelstudien nachgezeichnet. Schließlich hat sich gezeigt, dass die Schuldfrage in der Nachkriegzeit kaum eine Rolle spielte. Als Ergebnis kann konstatiert werden, dass die politische Ethik der Glaubens- und Gemeinschaftsmissionen nur rudimentär vorhanden war und sich lediglich in Obrigkeitsgehorsam und apolitischer Grundhaltung zeigt. / The subject of this study is a historical examination of the German faith-missions (in contemporary terms: evangelical missions) during the period of National Socialism. This topic has been neglected in scholarly research to date. This study describes how these mission agencies acted in the context of the unlawful regime of National Socialism. Due to a problematic source basis, the attitude the faith missions took towards the ursupation of power by Hitler is demonstrated based on their own periodical publications. It emerges that they largely positioned themselves at a distance to National Socialism, racism and anti-semitism. However these publications also demonstrate a distance to the “Confessing Church”. In the main body the examination of eight exemplary biographies based on detailed sources portrays an array of different positions which range from affinity to the NS-system to persecution. Furthermore the study shows that the issue of failure or guilt hardly played any role in the postwar period. This study leads to the conclusion the political ethics of the German faith missions were only rudimentarily developed, and only evinced themselves in an obedience to the powers that be and in a basically apolitical attitude. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This academic study provides a historical background to the unsung hero Dr. Manas Buthelezi. He is amongst many such heroes who contributed enormously to the liberation of South Africa. Buthelezi fought against apartheid by promoting human liberation and rights; just like other circle unrecognized of heroes who were interested in combating the agonies caused by the apartheid system. This academic study presents the work of Buthelezi in the South African political, socio-economic, cultural and ecumenical effort at combating the apartheid policies. The history of Buthelezi‟s contribution can be deliberated in relation to the South African political and socio-economic dimensions. Church history is an alternative engagement to the social struggles hence a church leader like Buthelezi had to participate in the public arena. Not really; the focus is more on issues within the current ELCSA. Broader historical evidence is considered on the theoretical writings in the field of church history. The analytical aim of the study develops how the struggles internal to the church and the understanding of struggle for liberation in South Africa. The study highlights the history of Lutheranism in South Africa as the background of creating an understanding of this research. The findings of the study are that although the Lutherans were fighting against apartheid system in South Africa they were divided on racial identify between the white and the black. This was also operational in the church in South Africa as well. The church in South Africa was theologically challenged around issues of struggle and liberation. The white community was part of the apartheid government aimed as its interests to benefit from the dominant values of racial connections. The dominant apartheid government oppressed the black community through racial discrimination. Study shows how Buthelezi and other theologians critiqued both the church and the state to resistant apartheid that was operational in the church and the society. The study investigates his contribution in this respect. It will be necessary to look at what happened historically in apartheid and Black Theology. The intention of this study is to investigate how Bishop Dr. Manas Buthelezi in South Africa was involved and committed in the struggle against apartheid. I would like to analyse and reflect on his contribution and writing during apartheid, as this has not yet been researched. Buthelezi served the Lutheran Church and the South African Council of Churches (SACC) as its president, from where he viewed apartheid ideology and practice as contradictory to the Word of God and human wholeness of life. One cannot research Buthelezi without considering his Church where I will explore the ordained ministry and the „lay‟ ministry. Questions on teaching, training and service offered by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (ELCSA) raise serious matters about its present and future. In the conclusion, I provide an analysis of the problems outlined and make recommendations which can be considered to be alternatives to challenges that face our South African context and that of the church. My recommendations are opened to everyone, to engage each other to furnish alternative solutions to the problems that face the church and the South African context. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Church History)