This study examines and interprets eight funerary banquet frescoes (wall-paintings) dating c. 280--320AD from the catacomb of SS. Marcellino e Pietro, Rome for visual evidence of women's roles in ritual in early Christian communities in the city of Rome. It pioneers the use of a ground-breaking socio-historical method known as "Visual Hermeneutics" (the term was coined by Dr. Margaret Miles in Image as Insight [1985]) on visual data from early Christian Funerary Art. The method, (1) challenges presuppositions often brought to the study of this visual data and (2) identifies preconditions for understanding visual art, making it available to the cultural historian as a source of historical information. Thus the phrase: "In imagine veritas.": There is truth to be found in images. By this method I demonstrate that a gender bias is evident in the interpretative writings of past and contemporary scholars on female figures in early Christian Funerary Art. This finding is important because previous research in this field has uncritically interpreted female bodies found in this earliest form of Christian visual representation as 'abstract signs'. On the other hand, unknown male figures in early Christian Funerary Art (with the exception of the Good Shepherd) are frequently interpreted as real or actual individuals. Such an a priori reading disallows historical interpretation for any female figure that appears in early Christian Funerary Art. This interpretative bias is particularly relevant for, though by no means limited to, female figures which do not correspond directly to a textual reference in any of the books of the New Testament. In addition, by applying this method, I show that even where a female figure in early Christian Funerary Art has a textual referent in the New Testament (as is the case in the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well, John 4:7--42), the Samaritan woman's translation into a female figure in early Christian Funerary Art has been enough to interpret her as a 'Symbol'---specifically a personification (ex. the Christian congregation)---by contemporary male scholars. In order to interpret the eight banquet scenes, which have both male and female figures, more accurately I re-establish the images in their original archaeological and social-historical settings using a comparative analysis with pagan Roman Funerary Art and Inscriptions. This comparison reveals that a Roman understanding of 'Ordinary' (sequential) and 'Mythical' (ritual, eternal or non-sequential) time is at work in the eight banquet scenes and that these modalities are in the process of being redefined. The recognition that ordinary and mythical time function in new ways in these images, both in the speech-action of the inscription (painted on the fresco) and in the image-action of the visual narrative, confirms the Christian identification of the wall-paintings. It also suggests that far from being personifications, the female figures raising cups in the banquet scenes of SS. Marcellino e Pietro are representations of historical (real) ritual agents who mediate the care of their deceased relatives in the after-life through these private funeral feasts for the Christian dead. Finally, this study offers a new interpretation of these eight banquet frescoes which places early Christian women in Rome at the centre of funerary rituals as the leaders and co-leaders of a cup-offering rite on behalf of the Christian dead.

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This study is a social history of Canadian Mennonite women's societies in the two largest Russian Mennonite denominations in Canada--the Conference of Mennonites in Canada (CMC) and the Mennonite Brethren (MB). Using archival materials and information generated by the author's survey, the thesis traces the growth and decline of Mennonite women's societies in Canada within CMC and MB churches established during the three periods of Russian immigration to Canada. Set within the historical context of the role of Mennonite women from the time of Anabaptism in the Netherlands, and through subsequent migrations to Prussia and Russia, it explores the development of Mennonite women's societies in Canada in the light of the changing role of Mennonite women both in the church and in society. It suggests that, in the early years, Mennonite women's societies gave Mennonite women an opportunity to serve God and fully participate in worship at a time when their roles were restricted in the church. In later years, interest in Mennonite women's societies declined. This thesis argues that Mennonite women's societies became a context for women's service to God. Motivated by the call of God through the biblical text, it was here that they organized for the support of missions as they raised money in their own creative ways. It was a context as well for fellowship and mutual support as women. For Mennonite women, their societies were also an avenue for spiritual growth. In their regular meetings they developed a worship ritual that was so strikingly similar to the components of the Sunday morning worship service in the church that we could say Mennonite women's societies functioned as a parallel church for Mennonite women. The decline of Mennonite women's societies occurred along with other trends in the church and society. Women were gradually being included within the official church structure. First they were granted the vote at church business meetings. Then their role was enlarged and they were able to take positions on church boards and committees. Not only were women becoming more involved in the church, they were also becoming more integrated into Canadian society. The women's movement did not leave Mennonite women untouched. From the late 1960s, they began to pursue higher education and employment outside the home. Concurrent with the changes in women's roles in church and society came a self-questioning of the usefulness of Mennonite women's societies as interest in membership was declining.

This thesis addresses two fundamental questions: What is the meaning given to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)? Where does the meaning of AIDS come from? In a psychological investigation it appears that the most predominant meaning given to AIDS is homophobic meaning, expressing a profound fear and dread of homosexuality. Homophobia can be traced to two main historical sources. Both of these sources are located within Christian tradition: the Sodom story (Genesis XIX), and discourse on human sexuality originating in the New Testament writing of Paul. These two sources can be shown to influence many attitudes that are expressed in this society towards homosexuality generally and towards the AIDS epidemic in particular. Homophobic attitudes situated in the context of western society seem to exist in close proximity with prevalent Christian definitions of homosexuality. Much of the meaning given to homosexuality within Christian tradition can be followed as it influences moral systems, psychiatry and homosexual experience itself. The understanding of homosexuality which develops in much Christian tradition seems to provide a central point of reference for the ways homosexuality is perceived and experienced. A psychodynamic model also ascertains that homophobia is partially structured in the unconscious as a form of prohibition against homosexual desire. By taking both conscious and unconscious aspects of homophobia into consideration, the meaning of AIDS and some of the sources of this meaning can be put forward. The meanings which predicate the AIDS epidemic are religious and psychological in nature. By taking homophobia apart with the tools of psychological deconstruction, the meaning of AIDS may be approached, and some of the implications of this meaning for society, for Christian tradition and for the homosexual person may be demonstrated.

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This paper considers the religious meaning of earliest contact between Europeans and North American indigenous peoples as it focuses upon the meeting of the French and the Mi'kmaq in Acadia during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the trade in commodities which initiated and maintained their cultural interaction during this period. Religion in this context is defined as the fundamental orientation of the human which is achieved through reciprocity; in other words, it is the process by which the human being arrives at a notion of meaning in the world and it is realized through exchanges in materiality. This definition provides a locus for the discussion of two issues; first, what is referred to a the 'problem' of the modern study of religion; and second, the problematic nature of the meaning of colonialism itself.

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By the end of the nineteenth century, The Salvation Army, an offshoot of British Methodism, had become a respected feature on the Victorian cultural landscape. The fierce opposition the Army faced in its earliest days, for the manner in which it adapted forms of working class popular culture as a means of religious expression, and for its controversial use of women as preachers or "Hallelujah lasses," had been replaced by popular admiration for its philanthropic work among the poor and the socially marginalized. This thesis analyzes the course of this transition. Much of the rehabilitation of reputation can be attributed to the work of a second wave of women recruits who assumed less socially transgressive ministry roles as rescue workers or nurses in the Army's expanding network of social services. Informed by a "heroic" spirituality which emphasized social duty, self-sacrifice and moral influence, these "Social Officers" dramatically embodied an idealized late nineteenth-century behavioural ethos and won the movement admirers if not adherents. The Salvation Army's concerted commitment to a "principle of noncontroversy" broadened its cultural acceptability and invited some unusual alliances. This can be particularly demonstrated in the denomination's interaction with a range of Victorian health reform movements: hydropathy, homoeopathy and vegetarianism.