This dissertation is a study of the shifting presence of religious groups in nineteenth-century British public life. It concentrates on Unitarians, a denomination little studied by historians but who were one of the key groups enfranchised in the period around 1830, and examines how religious leaders made sense of both increasing political opportunities and increasing religious sectarianism. Its focus is James Martineau and the generation of denominational leaders who came of age after 1830 and their use of Romanticism to transform the traditional Nonconformist principle of religious liberty into a call for free theological inquiry. Making use of letters, diaries, newspapers, pamphlets and magazine articles, this dissertation shows how Martineau and his allies moved beyond the theological legacy of Joseph Priestley, transformed congregational life, reformed the denomination and reached out to other religious liberals in mid-Victorian Britain. They were among the first religious thinkers to endorse developmental science and German Biblical scholarship. In sharp contrast to many evangelical Nonconformists who radicalized religious liberty into a campaign for the abolition of Established Churches, Martineau and his followers hoped that the government would guarantee free theological inquiry. Martineau hoped to reform the Church of England into a non-dogmatic national religious community, but the growth of agnostic science and the Liberal embrace of popular politics undermined Martineau's vision. Although Martineau's career ended in failure, the demise of a vision of public life grounded in Nonconformist principles underscores the paradoxically conservative nature of religious change in nineteenth-century Britain. Martineau and his allies played a crucial role in broadening British religious and intellectual life, but the Anglican Church and its associated educational institutions proved much more successful representatives of that culture.

For the last decade Dominic Crossan has been at the forefront of the movement from an historical to a language-based paradigm for interpretation of the New Testament. Much of his work during this time has addressed the theological interpretation of reversals in Jesus' parables. Many reviewers of Crossan's work have expressed concern that in his theology of story the "common world" which is created in language is disqualified as a place where God may be encountered. This distortion results from Crossan's use of literary critical methodologies, which falsify the relation of language to the human life-world. A phenomenological reflection on the spoken word and on the temporal and relational characteristics of oral communication leads to a more appropriate linguistic/theological context for interpreting reversals in the parables.

Of several rhymed offices written for the Feast of the Visitation in the late fourteenth century, John of Jenstein's Office, Exurgens autem Maria, is possibly the first composed for the newly promulgated feast. Composed to implore the intercession of the Virgin to end the Great Schism, the office contains both poetic and prose liturgical items set to chant for the singing of the complete office cycle. Chants display characteristics of late medieval melodic style and compositional techniques. Being carefully planned, the office displays great unity of text and music throughout.

The Reformation could not have occurred without the invention of printing. However, it is a mistake to identify the Reformation with textuality. Orality played a role in the movement. In the Reformation, there were controversies based on a tension between orality and textuality. This tension was not the result of printing but influences based on a tradition of textuality. This can be traced through nominalism, Augustine, and the Platonic-Aristotelean tradition. The tension between orality and textuality has roots in the Greek tradition. Platonic philosophy was made possible by the invention of writing which created a focus other than oral tradition. Such a shift established the individual as distinct from the synthesis of the oral community. However, this shift also resulted in alienation which inspired the development of mysticism to restore the synthesis of orality. Augustine is an example of the transition from orality to textuality. Augustine's educational and cultural situation shaped his oral perspective. Social and economic crises created a sense of alienation. Augustine retreated from the anxiety of alienation to the gnosticism of the Manichaeans. Later, his association with neo-Platonism deconstructed the oral theology of Manichaeanism in favor of a theology of differentiation characterized by the Christian concept of a Trinitarian God. A similar situation can be observed in the late Middle Ages. The breakdown of the oral synthesis of Medieval Catholicism resulted in alienation. The growth of mysticism can be linked to alienation. Luther's oral background suggests that the influence of mysticism must be taken seriously. Nevertheless, he remains an ambiguous, transitional figure, insofar as his Theology of the Cross appears to be a product of a textual theology. The implications of a textual perspective are not to be found in Luther but in the humanistic theologians of the Reformation. There we may observe the incorporation of textuality into theology. Zwingli, Bucer, Melanchthon, and Calvin serve as models for such a textual theology. There we see the emphasis on the separation of sign from signified, and the hermeneutical role of the Spirit, as the vehicle for reconciling the separation of sign from signified, while not abolishing their autonomy.

Using a developmental model as a heuristic tool for understanding the main contours of socioeconomic and cultural development in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century South Carolina, and following Samuel S. Hill's advice that southern religious historians "must consider how religion is related to developments in other aspects of southern life ... as time passes," this work brings into serious question the widely held, and in no small way reductionist conviction among most historians that religious concerns did not assume the importance in colonial South Carolina and the South in general as they did in New England and the Middle colonies. According to conventional wisdom, there was--for a variety of reasons--an almost complete breakdown of institutional religion and a concomitant rise in secularism in the southern colonies, and, although there were occasional, isolated religious revivals after the 1740s, there was no significant reversal in this trend until the so-called second Great Awakening at the beginning of the nineteenth century. If, in emphasizing the discontinuities between the intensely religious early national period and the spiritually flabby colonial period, historians have--to one degree or another--tended to belittle the importance of religion in the pre-Revolutionary South, so too have they prevented us from understanding the general thrust and character of religious developments and the rise of evangelicalism. For far from simply being awash in a static sea of religious apathy, as this work shows was the case for South Carolina, southerners developed a vital, dynamic religious culture during the eighteenth century; and, the influence of evangelicalism began to manifest itself very early on. As the number of evangelical churches and ministers increased in the half century or so before 1800, a unique and profoundly subjective religious belief system emerged and became ever more widespread. This belief system was partly a cause and partly a result of the process of sublimating the pursuit of self and developing an alternative morality that more accurately reflected prevailing modes of behavior.

Movement, change, inconstancy; sinuous line, saturated space, elliptical, open forms; elaborate metaphor, narrative dislocation, excessive affectivity--this familiar topology of the Baroque work all serves to disorient and seduce its reader, beholder and spectator, eventually absorbing him as living presence in the work. In contrast with the perfected distance of Renaissance/Classical constructions, epitomized philosophically by Rene Descartes (+1596, $-$1650), such Baroque absorption of spectatorial presence plays out its tension best in French culture. Prior to the French Classicism and Philosophical Modernity which served to suppress it, a 20th-century return within the Postmodern reactions against the rational legacy is made by the Baroque in its concern with presence. Our analyses situate various facets of Baroque presence in the work, in both its historical period and beyond, through the disciplines of Religion, Philosophy, the Arts and Letters. An initial study of St. Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises (1548) examines the positional evolution of the spiritual exercitant, from a subject before, to a subject within and, finally, to an ambulating Homo Baroccus of the Gospel narrative, or in a passage from perspective to transpective's double stance of Immensity (being-in) and Inhabitation (possession by). These stages of the Baroque subject exercised through the open Baroque work serve to guide the following cross-century analyses: from Descartes' distance to the philosophical proximities of Pierre Gassendi, Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty; from transgressed boundaries of the art work in the Baroque painting of Simon Vouet and Eustache Le Sueur to the metacritical treatment of pictorial framing by Rene Magritte; in actorial/spectatorial transgression from Baroque theater of martyrdom to "Theater of Cruelty"; in figures of sacrificial madness from Jean-Joseph Surin to Antonin Artaud; from the soldier's epic war narrative of Agrippa d'Aubigne to 20th-century post-war narratives of Blaise Cendrars and Claude Simon. Here, presence--problematic, painful, and even comic--fills the work, draws others into its ethos, in a way that allows us to qualify these works of the 16th, 17th and 20th centuries as exemplary of Baroque presence and its Postmodern return in French culture.

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<p> This study examined the measurable religious influence of participating in the Pioneer Trek Reenactment as an adolescent on young adults. A sample of 73 former Pioneer Trek Reenactment participants were surveyed. Both males and females were surveyed, and all respondents were between the ages of 18 and 35.</p><p> The results of this study may bring understanding to the impact of historical reenactment activities, such as the Pioneer Trek Reenactment, on their participants. The study showed how the participants' perception of the Pioneer Trek Reenactment from a religious, recreational, and physical perspective correlated with their current religious activity. This information would be helpful to those who plan and direct outdoor recreation activities, giving insight into how these activities can have a lasting positive impact on youth. The results of this study may help recreation professionals, teachers, and religious leaders build meaningful and effective curriculum for similar experiential learning activities. </p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> Pioneer Trek Reenactment, young adults, religion, recreation</p>

<p> Many historians of religion and politics in the early republic period fail to fully examine the importance of the debate between the Connecticut's Standing Order and religious dissenters concerning the necessity of a religious establishment in America. Relying on sermons, newspaper accounts, this project examines the ideology and justification of Connecticut's Standing Order in defending religious establishment, as well as the ideological reasons Republicans and religious dissenters offered in opposing it. Exploring the value of the church establishment from the perspective of both the supporters of the Standing Order and those who sided with the Jeffersonians offers important insight into how issues of religion shaped the political and social battles in the early republic. </p><p> This work focuses upon the political ideology of Connecticut's established clergy and Federalist allies in relation to the defense of the church establishment. In particular, the motives for those who defended the established church were based not upon selfish ambition, but rather upon well-constructed ideas about how best to maintain the prosperity of the American republic. In Connecticut, the adherents of the Standing Order valued holding the Congregational Church as the established church for the state because traditional social structures and social systems such as churches seemingly benefitted the continued success of the community. </p><p> This project demonstrates that the convictions on both sides of the debate were grounded upon ideas, not ambitions. For the Standing Order, the state church was a fundamental component of stability and prosperity in Connecticut. The established clergy of Standing Order, as well as their dissenter counterparts, believed that the outcome of the ecclesiastical issue was crucial for determining the future prosperity of the republic. Their vision for the nation may have lost out to that of the Jeffersonians and religious dissenters, but it was nonetheless a vision that ultimately had meaningful consequences for the development of the nation and the role of Christianity in shaping the political and social spheres.</p>

Hadji Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto (1882--1934) was one of the leading Indonesian Muslim political figures in the early twentieth century. He was one of the prominent leaders in Sarekat Islam. Beginning in 1912, when he firstly joined Sarekat Islam, Tjokroaminoto devoted alt of his attention to the development of this organization as well as to the political movement in general at that time. This thesis deals with a number of Tjokroaminoto's conceptions of Islam and politics, which reflect his involvement in the political discourses of his time, especially with Communist and secular nationalist groups. His life and his works as well as the political conditions of his time are discussed in order to trace the sources that inspired his vision. In his political ideas, Tjokroaminoto expressed his conceptions of the worth of Indonesian people, socialism and education, as well as the way in which all these ideas are interrelated. His ideas on Islam, which are mainly inspired by his aspiration to create a united Indonesian Muslim community, were highly influential and provided a relatively early definition as to what political Islam should encompass. These ideas are more clearly expressed in his conceptions of the separation between Islam and politics, nationalism, pan-Islamism and the Ummah. Finally, his discussion of Islam and politics marked a new stage in the self-awareness of Indonesians. As such, his ideas were of key importance to the formulation of the movement's goals and its strategies.