Thesis (Ph.D.)--Deakin University, Victoria, 2005. / Submitted to the School of Education of the Faculty of Education, Deakin University. Degree conferred 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-225)

The commandment to honour one's father and mother is not limited to honouring parents while they are living. In Zulu culture, for both the traditionalist and Christian Zulu, honouring parents, whether alive or dead, is to relate to them with great respect. Unfortunately, this respect for the ancestors has been misunderstood by many and labeled as "worship" or, more recently, as "veneration". Affixing a religious connotation ("worship", etc.) to the relationship led to the expectation that Zulu Christians would reject their ancestors and all the rites and practices associated with them. In spite of injunctions from the Church, a marked shift is occurring among Zulu Christians as many reincorporate their ancestors into their family process. This dissertation, an exploratory study, addresses this process of reincorporation by offering a new, non-religious interpretation of the relationship. Historically, the Zulu have sought and welcomed the presence of the ancestors during stressful family transitions such as marriage, birth, puberty and death. If the Church focused on the increased anxiety and destabilization associated with these family transitions, new insights could be gained into the functional importance of the ancestors (as anxiety binders) in the family process. The application of Bowen theory, a new paradigm for practical theology, to the research data provides new perspectives and understanding into the functional importance of the ancestors for Zulu families. Central to Bowen theory is the concept of the family as an emotional unit that includes all generations, including the ancestors. This concept correlates closely with the Zulu understanding of kinship. The concepts of multigenerational transmission process and triangulation in Bowen theory offer effective theoretical bases for interpreting the ongoing relationship Zulu families have with their ancestors. This dissertation critiques certain Church practices and offers a practical theological response that can inform and enrich the Church's pastoral care. By developing a practical theology of relationships'one informed by Bowen theory, Scripture and the traditions of the Church'the Church can assist Zulu Christians pastorally as they reincorporate their ancestors into their family process. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Th. (Practical Theology)

Summaries in German and English / This thesis is a missiological case study analysing the reasons for conversions to Islam and Christianity among Kyrgyz people in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz people have a rich religious heritage with a history of more than 2,200 years. The uprooting of religion and the atheistic indoctrination by the Soviet government created a religious vacuum after the breakdown of the Soviet Union and caused a revival of religious receptivity in the society. Renewed receptivity to religion in the newly established sovereign Kyrgyzstan was followed by a rise in religious activity of Muslims and Christians beginning in the late 20th century. In only 15 years the number of mosques rose from 39 to 1,600 and the number of professing Christians increased from a few dozen to more than 7,000. This change between 1990 and 2005 developed in three stages through religious instability, an increase in missionary activity and the posturing of religious ideology during the government’s democratization process. A research of individual conversions produced complex results. Muslims were more attune to traditional religious thinking than were Christians. Most Muslims committed themselves to Islam because of their ancestral heritage. The secularization of society facilitated the Kyrgyz to convert to Christianity and turn to Christ due to a crisis in personal identity. Among Christians, conversions were primarily affected by relatives and friends persuading them through testimony and example. Most Kyrgyz becoming Muslims were significantly influenced by their parents. Faith in the existence of God was the basic prerequisite for both Muslim and Christian commitment to their respective beliefs. For Muslims it meant to obey the commandments of Allah, but Christians were led to confession of sins and to conversion. Changes in lifestyles and mindsets Muslims traced back to the Islamic religious tradition. For Christians, lives were affected through a relationship to Jesus Christ. / Die vorliegende Thesis ist eine missiologische Fallstudie, die die Gruinde der Hinwendung der Kyrgyzen in der post-sovietischen Zeit zum Islam und Christentum untersucht. Die Kyrgyzen haben ein reiches religioses Erbe einer uber 2200 jahrigen Geschichte. Doch mit der religiosen, Entwurzelung und der atheistischen Indoktrination durch die Sovietregierung entwickelte sich nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sovietunion ein religioses ,Vakuum" und bewirkten ein Wiedererwachen der religiosen Rezeptivitat in der Gesellschaft. Aufgrund der neuen religiosen Rahmenbedingungen in dem seit 1991 souveranen Kyrgyzstan folgte vonseiten der Muslime und Christen ein starker Anstieg religioser Aktivitaten. In nur 15 Jahren stieg die Anzahl der registrierten Moscheen von 39 auf uber 1600 und die Anzahl der Christen im gleichen Zeitraum von ein paar Dutzend auf uber 7000. Diese Entwicklung verlief im Zeitraum von 1990 bis 2005 in drei Abschnitten und war gekennzeichnet von anfanglichen religiosen Aufbruchen, einer Zunahme missionarischer Aktivitaten und einer religiosen Positionierung im Demokratiesierungsprozess. Die Untersuchung der individuell erlebten Hinwendungen brachte vielschichtige Ergebnisse hervor. So war der farmiliare Hintergrund der Muslime im allgemeinen religioser als der der Christen. Die meisten Muslime bekannten sich aufgrund ihrer Abstammung zum Islam. Die Sakularisierung der Familien begunstigte die Hinwendung der Kyrgyzen zum Christentum, die sich vor allem aufgrund einer existenziellen Auseinandersetzung zu Jesus wandten. Bei Christen waren es vor allem Verwandte und Freunde, die mit Worten und Leben auf Jesus hinwiesen, bei Muslimen die Eltern. Sowohl bei Muslimen als auch Christen war der Glaube an die Exitenz Gottes die wesentliche Vorraussetzung, wobei dies die Muslime zur Befolgung der Gebote Allahs, Christen zur Sundenerkenntnis und einer Bekehrung bewegte. Eine Lebens- und Sinnesanderung fuhrten Muslime auf den Islam und Christen auf ihre Beziehung zu Jesus Christus zuruck. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This dissertation aims at finding out the religious significance of Basotho ritual practices at births, weddings and funerals in Lesotho. The researcher combines literature review of scholars who have studied the Basotho socio-cultural life, with personal field study through dissemination of questionnaires, interviews and personal observations. Through this approach he finds out the various ritual practices that dot the Basotho life through the rites of passage, and then studies their religiousness in terms of traditional beliefs. He also finds out how these ritual practices have persisted in the face of Christian influence and western education, and how far they have been influenced. There is also an attempt to look into the importance of ancestor veneration in connection with Basotho beliefs and practices. The study reveals that the religious connotation of the ritual practices lies in how people seek transcendental meaning to life through the ritual practices. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M.A. (Religious Studies)

The most important part of the research or the central part of this work is the inculturation which may be understood as the emergence of a local church in a place (Bate 1994, 100). By a local church I mean the manifestation of the one church of Christ as the community of faith in a particular context. Essential for this emergence are two apparently opposed forces whose dialectical resolution motivates the inculturation process. The first of these forces is the unifying, creative and redemptive power of God seeking the oneness of creation and salvation, so that God may be all in all. The second is the incarnational locus of all creation and salvation which moves the Word to take on flesh in a time, place and culture and the Spirit to take the church to the ends of the earth. The resolution of this dialectic may be expressed as the emergence of unity in diversity or as a communion of communities. The papal document emerging from the African Synod, Ecclesia in Africa, describes the resolution of this dialectic as showing respect for two criteria in the inculturation process, namely ‘compatibility with the Christian message and communion with the Universal Church’ (EA62; cf RM 54). These two criteria highlight the importance of unity in the inculturation process. They affirm the relatedness of all Christian consciousness, ethos and mission which is expressed so well by Paul: ‘There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and the father of all, over all, through all and with all’ (Eph 4: 6). / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

La sépulture est souvent appréhendée à titre d’exception ou par une superposition de notions : copropriété familiale, bien familial, chose hors commerce, indivision perpétuelle, droit réel spécial... Cette approche disparate dissimule l’existence d’un droit des sépultures qui peine, en conséquence, à constituer un droit unifié. Le droit des sépultures se trouve fractionné en plusieurs branches : droit civil, droit pénal et droit public. A travers elles, apparaissent de nombreuses problématiques, liées à la nature et au régime proposés. Pour ces raisons, il est nécessaire d’aborder le droit des sépultures par la recherche de ses fondements, inchangés depuis le droit romain et le droit médiéval. Le premier fondement est le sacré ; le second la communauté. Tous deux prennent leur source dans l’histoire du droit et continuent d’exister dans le droit positif. Ils font apparaître une unité du droit des sépultures, autour d’une double fonction : assurer la séparation du mort et du vivant et perpétuer le culte des morts. Du point de vue anthropologique, le sacré, premier fondement, se distingue du religieux, et se manifeste selon deux opérations : la délimitation d’une frontière entre sacré et profane par la séparation, puis la protection de ce nouvel espace délimité par la répression de toute atteinte. Pour les sépultures, ces deux opérations sont effectuées respectivement par l’extracommercialité et par la protection pénale. Le premier mécanisme est issu du droit romain et montre une protection originale de la sépulture ; toute activité juridique qui n’est pas incompatible avec le respect des morts est autorisée. L’autre mécanisme concerne l’incrimination de violation de sépulture, qui perpétue sa dimension sacrée. Le second fondement est communautaire : il est apparu pour les sépultures de famille avec les communautés médiévales, à une époque où les biens et les personnes étaient soudés en un groupe familial unique. Désormais adapté par l’affectation familiale, un tel fondement se maintient dans notre droit avec un régime de propriété collective, à travers la transmission successorale restreinte au groupe familial et un principe égalitaire, ce qui fait de la sépulture une véritable propriété communautaire. Bien sacré, propriété communautaire, les fondements des sépultures mettent en exergue des dimensions originales de la propriété. / Burials are often considered in terms of acceptions or superimpositions of notions: family co-ownership, family property, off-trade affairs, joint possession, specific real right… This multi-entry approach conceals the existence of a right of burial which, as a consequence, is difficult to define as a unified right. The right of burial is divided up into various branches— civil law, criminal law, public law—which rise various questions linked to the very nature if the different systems. For this reason, it is necessary to tackle the right of burial from the point of view of its foundations, which have not changed since the establishment of Roman law and Medieval law.The first founding principle concerns the sacred; the second is about the community. Both originate in legal history and are still valid in the field of positive law. They show a unity in the right of burial as regards two main functions: ensure the separation between the living and the dead and keep up the traditional practice of ancestor worship. From the anthropological viewpoint, the sacred—the first principle—distinguishes from the religious, and is expressed in two main missions: the definition of a frontier between the sacred and the profane by the separation, then the protection of this new space delineated by the suppression of any violation. For the burials, these two missions are respectively accomplished by a position out of commerce and by the criminal procedure. The first mechanism comes from Roman law and shows an original protection of the burial process; every legal activity which is not incompatible with the respect of the dead is allowed. The other mechanism concerns the incrimination of the violation of the burial process and its sacred nature. The second founding principle is about the community: it was created for family burials by medieval communities, at a time when properties and people were seen as a unique family unit. Nowadays adapted by the family affectation, such a principle is maintained in our legal system because of a collective ownership regime, through the transmission of the succession restricted to the family and an egalitarian principle, which turn burials into a property of the community. Sacred property, property of the community, the founding principles of burials bring to light specific dimensions of the concept of property.

In this thesis, the main objects of study are probability measures on the isomorphism classes of countable, connected rooted graphs. An important class of such measures is formed by unimodular measures, which satisfy a certain equation, sometimes referred to as the intrinsic mass transport principle. The so-called law of a finite graph is an example of a unimodular measure. We say that a measure is sustained by a countable graph if the set of rooted connected components of the graph has full measure. We demonstrate several new results involving sustained unimodular measures, and provide thorough arguments for known ones. In particular, we give a criterion for unimodularity on connected graphs, deduce that connected graphs sustain at most one unimodular measure, and prove that unimodular measures sustained by disconnected graphs are convex combinations. Furthermore, we discuss weak limits of laws of finite graphs, and construct counterexamples to seemingly reasonable conjectures.

German text / Die vorliegende wissenschaftliche Arbeit befasst sich mit den amaZioni, die den größten Teil der südafrikanischen AIC-Bewegung („African Independent/Indigenous/Initiated Churches“) ausmachen. Für die meisten Theologen stellen die amaZioni eine synkretistische christliche Kirchenbewegung dar, die in ihren Ritualen und Gottesdienstformen starke Einflüsse von traditionellen afrikanischen Religionen (ATR) aufweist. Nicht desto trotz öffnen sich viele der amaZioni-Kirchen gegenüber biblischer Lehre durch Missionare. Um eine solide Grundlage für die Missionsarbeit zu schaffen, befasst sich die vorgeschlagene Arbeit damit, wichtige Bedürfnisse der amaZioni zu erforschen, so dass diese als Anknüpfungspunkte für die weitere Evangeliumsverkündigung genutzt werden können. / The proposed research examines the needs of the amaZioni, who are part of the South African AIC-movement. The amaZioni, as one of the largest religious groups in South Africa, are viewed by most theologicans as syncretistic christian churches. It is obvious that their common believe system as well as their rituals show a strong influence of african traditional religions (ATR). But nevertheless, many of the members of the Zion-churches are opening up for bible teaching provided by missionaries. In order to establish a solid base for the future mission work the proposed research focuses on finding out the amaZioni's needs, so that this needs can be used as reference points in the endeavour of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the missionaries. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

The Old Testament, which is one of the first books in the Malagasy language, plays an important role in the religious and cultural life of most people in Madagascar, for instance in an increasing tendency to use Old Testament texts in Malagasy religious contexts, which is noticeable both within and outside mainstream Christianity. The first such case illustrating this trend within the Church is the Malagasy Roman Catholic Church's (MRCC's) application of certain texts in the famadihana (turning of the dead), a custom reflecting traditional Malagasy practices in their strongest form. Almost all the Malagasy churches from their beginning have unsuccessfully attempted to abolish it. Therefore, the MRCC decided to base it on biblical texts and incorporated it in her liturgy in order to make it a Christian celebration. Among the texts used here are: Genesis 49: 33-50: 13; Exodus 13: 19 and Exodus 20: 12. The second case is the Malagasy Lutheran Church's (MLC's) employment of Old Testament texts to create certain items for Nenilava (Tall mother), the founder of the revival movement of Ankaramalaza, who was acknowledged by this Church and the members of this movement as a prophetess and priestess. To demonstrate these roles, and at the same time to confirm her consecration, the MLC and the `children of Ankaramalaza' made for her a priestly robe modelled on the high priest's garments described in Exodus 28 and a silver crown related to Deuteronomy 28. The use of the Old Testament outside the Church is illustrated by the third case, investigating traditio-practitioners' applications of Old Testament texts in their religious practices. Examples include: 1) Exodus 3:1-3; Leviticus 14: 1-8; Jeremiah 8: 22, used in traditional healing; 2) Exodus 3: 5b; Job 33: 6a; Psalm 121: 8a, employed as religious slogans; 3) Leviticus 1-6, applied in traditional sacrifices and offerings; and 4) Psalm 113: 5-6; Genesis 2: 18, 22, employed as references for morality. This project, which describes and analyses how and why the Old Testament is used by different people, Christian and traditionalist, in Malagasy religious contexts, is aimed at developing an interpretive model based on these three cases. More specifically, it seeks to show how the Old Testament can be interpreted and used in contemporary Madagascar/Africa. / Biblical and Ancient studies / D. Th (Old Testament)

The Old Testament, which is one of the first books in the Malagasy language, plays an important role in the religious and cultural life of most people in Madagascar, for instance in an increasing tendency to use Old Testament texts in Malagasy religious contexts, which is noticeable both within and outside mainstream Christianity. The first such case illustrating this trend within the Church is the Malagasy Roman Catholic Church's (MRCC's) application of certain texts in the famadihana (turning of the dead), a custom reflecting traditional Malagasy practices in their strongest form. Almost all the Malagasy churches from their beginning have unsuccessfully attempted to abolish it. Therefore, the MRCC decided to base it on biblical texts and incorporated it in her liturgy in order to make it a Christian celebration. Among the texts used here are: Genesis 49: 33-50: 13; Exodus 13: 19 and Exodus 20: 12. The second case is the Malagasy Lutheran Church's (MLC's) employment of Old Testament texts to create certain items for Nenilava (Tall mother), the founder of the revival movement of Ankaramalaza, who was acknowledged by this Church and the members of this movement as a prophetess and priestess. To demonstrate these roles, and at the same time to confirm her consecration, the MLC and the `children of Ankaramalaza' made for her a priestly robe modelled on the high priest's garments described in Exodus 28 and a silver crown related to Deuteronomy 28. The use of the Old Testament outside the Church is illustrated by the third case, investigating traditio-practitioners' applications of Old Testament texts in their religious practices. Examples include: 1) Exodus 3:1-3; Leviticus 14: 1-8; Jeremiah 8: 22, used in traditional healing; 2) Exodus 3: 5b; Job 33: 6a; Psalm 121: 8a, employed as religious slogans; 3) Leviticus 1-6, applied in traditional sacrifices and offerings; and 4) Psalm 113: 5-6; Genesis 2: 18, 22, employed as references for morality. This project, which describes and analyses how and why the Old Testament is used by different people, Christian and traditionalist, in Malagasy religious contexts, is aimed at developing an interpretive model based on these three cases. More specifically, it seeks to show how the Old Testament can be interpreted and used in contemporary Madagascar/Africa. / Biblical and Ancient studies / D. Th (Old Testament)