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'Such Spiritual Acres': Protestantism, the land and the colonisation of Australia 1788 - 1850Lake, Meredith Elayne January 2008 (has links)
Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis examines the transmission of Protestantism to Australia by the early British colonists and its consequences for their engagement with the land between 1788 and 1850. It explores the ways in which colonists gave religious meaning to their surrounds, particularly their use of exile and exodus narratives to describe journeying to the colony and their sense of their destination as a site of banishment, a wilderness or a Promised Land. The potency of these scriptural images for colonising Europeans has been recognised in North America and elsewhere: this study establishes and details their significance in early colonial Australia. This thesis also considers the ways in which colonists’ Protestant values mediated their engagement with their surrounds and informed their behaviour towards the land and its indigenous inhabitants. It demonstrates that leading Protestants asserted and acted upon their particular values for industry, order, mission and biblicism in ways that contributed to the transformation of Aboriginal land. From the physical changes wrought by industrious agricultural labour through to the spiritual transformations achieved by rites of consecration, their specifically Protestant values enabled Britons to inhabit the land on familiar material and cultural terms. The structural basis for this study is provided by thematic biographies of five prominent colonial Protestants: Richard Johnson, Samuel Marsden, William Grant Broughton, John Wollaston and John Dunmore Lang. The private and public writings of these men are examined in light of the wider literature on religion and colonialism and environmental history. By delineating the significance of Protestantism to individual colonists’ responses to the land, this thesis confirms the trend of much recent British and Australian historiography towards a more religious understanding of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its overarching argument is that Protestantism helped lay the foundation for colonial society by encouraging the transformation of the environment according to the colonists’ values and needs, and by providing ideological support for the British use and occupation of the territory. Prominent Protestants applied their religious ideas to Australia in ways that tended to assist, legitimate or even necessitate the colonisation of the land.
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Evangelistic Performance in New Zealand: The Word and What is Not SaidBond, Greta Jane January 2008 (has links)
In 1518, Martin Luther is reputed to have nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, an act that sparked the Protestant Reformation. Luther sought change in the Catholic Church: a return to an unmediated relationship with God based on a closer understanding of the Word. Since then, Protestant evangelism has been a force for social change: and this is particularly true in New Zealand, where evangelism has gone hand in hand with the colonisation of the country.
This thesis proposes that it is not, in fact, the literal understanding of the Word that gives these services meaning, and that such an understanding is problematic and perhaps even impossible: the Word is always a translation. Instead, it is through what is not said - the performative aspects of evangelistic services, including the use of space, the actions of the evangelist, and pre-existing cultural “horizons of expectation” - that meanings are produced.
Taking as material Samuel Marsden’s first service in New Zealand in 1814, in which the Word was preached in English to a congregation who primarily spoke only Maori, the more contemporary example of televangelist Benny Hinn, who performs miracles to television cameras, and the religious and political performances of Destiny Church’s Brian Tamaki, this thesis uses the tools of performance studies to undertake an ethnographic study of evangelistic services. This brings into focus the ways in which evangelists may create congregations and produce meanings in their services through different modes of performance and the ways in which these ulterior meanings impact, and have impacted, on New Zealand society.
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'Such Spiritual Acres': Protestantism, the land and the colonisation of Australia 1788 - 1850Lake, Meredith Elayne January 2008 (has links)
Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis examines the transmission of Protestantism to Australia by the early British colonists and its consequences for their engagement with the land between 1788 and 1850. It explores the ways in which colonists gave religious meaning to their surrounds, particularly their use of exile and exodus narratives to describe journeying to the colony and their sense of their destination as a site of banishment, a wilderness or a Promised Land. The potency of these scriptural images for colonising Europeans has been recognised in North America and elsewhere: this study establishes and details their significance in early colonial Australia. This thesis also considers the ways in which colonists’ Protestant values mediated their engagement with their surrounds and informed their behaviour towards the land and its indigenous inhabitants. It demonstrates that leading Protestants asserted and acted upon their particular values for industry, order, mission and biblicism in ways that contributed to the transformation of Aboriginal land. From the physical changes wrought by industrious agricultural labour through to the spiritual transformations achieved by rites of consecration, their specifically Protestant values enabled Britons to inhabit the land on familiar material and cultural terms. The structural basis for this study is provided by thematic biographies of five prominent colonial Protestants: Richard Johnson, Samuel Marsden, William Grant Broughton, John Wollaston and John Dunmore Lang. The private and public writings of these men are examined in light of the wider literature on religion and colonialism and environmental history. By delineating the significance of Protestantism to individual colonists’ responses to the land, this thesis confirms the trend of much recent British and Australian historiography towards a more religious understanding of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its overarching argument is that Protestantism helped lay the foundation for colonial society by encouraging the transformation of the environment according to the colonists’ values and needs, and by providing ideological support for the British use and occupation of the territory. Prominent Protestants applied their religious ideas to Australia in ways that tended to assist, legitimate or even necessitate the colonisation of the land.
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