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This thesis focuses on the religious aspects of William Shakespeare's Hamlet which, I argue, form the foundation of Hamlet's plot and are critical to understanding Hamlet's character and his dilemmas. Early modern culture was particularly saturated with religious allusions. The advent of the Reformation and emergence of printing resulted in an explosive growth in the publication of new Bible translations and other religious materials. While I note that most early modern writers of general literature made frequent use of biblical texts and themes, I add that Shakespeare's use of the Bible and Christian doctrine in Hamlet is especially subtle and substantial. Shakespeare achieves this by establishing Hamlet as a particularly devout Christian Prince who is a student at the University of Wittenberg. I argue that it is Hamlet's theological pedantry which makes him procrastinate throughout the play. Additionally, Hamlet's Christian characteristics exhibit syncretic - Catholic and Protestant - Christianity as represented by Elizabethan religious culture. Shakespeare incorporates contemporary religious beliefs in the play not for dogmatic purposes but rather for dramatic expedience. I compare Hamlet to other contemporary revenge tragedies and establish how the underlying Christian themes, as revealed in Hamlet's character through his soliloquies, set Hamlet apart from other revenge plays. Finally I argue that Hamlet exacts his revenge through a particular performance that operates exclusively within his Christian worldview. Ultimately, as I conclude in the third chapter, through the character of Hamlet, Shakespeare also makes the best dramatic use of contemporary religious beliefs and contentions to make his audience ponder the big question that concerned them: the eventual fate of the human soul.

This dissertation attempts to answer the following question: Does Scripture call all churches to be as ethnically diverse as their communities? Chapter 1 introduces the "multi-ethnic mandate," the belief the Scripture instructs all churches to be ethnically diverse. Chapter 2 isolates seven arguments in favor of the multi-ethnic mandate: the Babel/Pentecost argument, the hospitality/love argument, the argument based on Christ's ministry, the unity argument, the Jew/Gentile argument, the heaven argument, and the argument based on NT examples. Chapter 3 argues that these seven reasons do not provide compelling proof for the multi-ethnic mandate. Chapter 4 highlights four biblical values that mono-ethnic churches support: God cares about preserving culture, Christians retain their ethnic identities, contextualization can make ministry more effective, and God uses the natural connectedness of people to expand his kingdom. Chapter 5 summarizes the thesis, warns of some potential dangers of affirming the multi-ethnic mandate, and points to possible areas of further research. The over-arching point of the dissertation is to demonstrate that churches need to reach out to all ethnicities to the best of their abilities, but if the natural byproduct of such ministry is a mono-ethnic church, then such a church is not unbiblical or unhealthy.

This is a study of folklore in fishing communities using oral narrative as its major source, and analysing the evidence using the methodologies of both oral history and ethnology to illustrate the identity of the group studied. I am particularly concerned with the type of folklore which historian Leonard Primiano describes as ‘vernacular religion’, i.e. rituals and beliefs which demonstrate the religious, spiritual life ‘as lived’ rather than that which is prescribed by the church. The study encompasses fishing communities in the North-East of Scotland, the Outer Hebrides and Shetland, which represent both the historic and contemporary centres of the Scottish fishing industry. It is my contention that we can learn a great deal about fisher identity — its substance and mechanism — through the study of personal narratives, the stories fishermen tell about themselves, their heritage, their environment and their skills. The major themes of this study are faith and fear, the former encompassing a range of strategies — some supernatural, some rational — which fishermen employ to cope with the latter. In building a picture of fisher identity, I also contextualise fishermen’s supernatural and spiritual beliefs within the larger community of those who operate at sea. In turn, I consider the factors which isolate fishermen from society at large, and those fishers have used to deliberately isolate themselves from the landward community, and even from other fishermen, often their economic rivals at sea. This study demonstrates that belief/faith, as it is lived, is a major facet of fisher identity in Scotland. Those beliefs and the working environment are what create, shape and define the fishers’ identities, both the larger, communal ‘macro’ identity and the smaller, individual ‘micro’ identity, separating them from those who work and live on the land. The expression of the fisher identity extended back into the past and forward into the future by the continual telling and retelling of personal narratives while their context exists: the sea.

In this thesis, I investigate the centrality of the sacrifice in the interrelationship between eucharistic sacrifice, real presence and sacramental communion in recent Roman Catholic theology. I explore different ways in which the Eucharist is understood in today’s world. First, I analyse texts of the Second Vatican Council and post-conciliar texts. The Second Vatican Council and post-conciliar official texts present new ways of discussing the Eucharist, which has put into relief diverse aspects which contribute to a deeper understanding of it. Then, I examine texts from the theologians Joseph Ratzinger, Edward Schillebeeckx and David Power and evaluate their work in the light of Vatican II and the post-conciliar texts. These theologians were chosen because Ratzinger and Schillebeeckx shared the advantage of being close to the proceedings of the Council, Ratzinger as a peritus and Schillebeeckx as an advisor to Cardinal Archbishop Alfrink from Utrecht, whereas Power did not participate at the Council. All agree on the teachings of Vatican II but each has responded to the unique event of the Council in his own way. I find great variations in their eucharistic theology that are complementary and thus contribute to deeper understanding of the vast complexity of the Eucharist. Ratzinger finds that the heart of the Eucharist lies in the sacrifice. His contributions have an apostolic and hierarchical emphasis. With a communio-ecclesiology and an emphasis on the People of God he relates unity and union, but does this in a way that might be interpreted as exclusive and narrow. Schillebeeckx aimed at rethinking classical Christology in the light of historical criticism of Scripture. Sacraments are perceived as relational events of an encounter with God. Liturgy is the celebration of God’s interruption into ordinary life giving glimpses of his kingdom. The Eucharist is a performance challenged by the juxtaposition between the verbal and the physical. Power’s contribution is the presentation of the eucharistic sacrifice as an “eventing” of God’s grace with a great emphasis on the kenosis of Christ as gift. He develops creative interpretations of the sacrament of the Eucharist which he flexibly uses when discussing the eucharistic sacrifice. In his theology he preserves both the unity of the faith as well as allowing its expression in diversity. Finally, my study confirms that the eucharistic sacrifice is the central act upon which the real presence and communion depend. The Eucharist is the re-presentation of the sacrifice of the cross; and, as such, it expresses the passion, death, resurrection, ascension and the continual presence of Christ in the sacrament, which has its aim in sacramental communion. Although the Eucharist can be expressed in various ways, it embodies the centrality of the sacrificial act.

The distinction between catechesis and religious education in Catholic schools is an important theme in contemporary Catholic educational thought. A firm and nuanced understanding of the nature of this relationship and its historical roots is essential to understanding both fields of study. The nature of this debate has been recognised by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church as crucial to the mission of the Catholic school. While Religious Education is vital to the unique identity of the Catholic school, too close an association with catechesis can lead to a blurring of distinctions. Contemporary Catholic thinking on this matter suggests the following accommodation: religious education is focussed on knowledge of Catholic thinking in theology and related cultural issues; catechesis explicitly focuses on faith development. The theology of communion (communio) assists Catholic educators to harmonise both concepts. Religious Education is thereby understood as a ‘shared project’ between catechesis and Catholic thinking on education.

The epitaphs carved in marble and set up around the city of Rome by Damasus I (366- 384) have long been understood as important in the political and ecclesiastic history of the city and as crucial in the development of its Christian martyr-cult. I have applied principles of collective memory and material culture theories in order to discuss the role of the epitaphs as physical vehicles of cultural value and self-conception for the post- Constantinian Christian community at Rome. / Graduate

During the first half of the nineteenth century (particularly 1820-1845) in Britain a number of laymen and clergymen tenaciously fought against new geological theories. These men became known as the "Scriptural geologists." They held the traditional Christian view that Genesis provided a realiable, historical account of the creation of the universe and the early history of the earth. In particular, they believed that the Noachian deluge was a unique global catastrophe, which produced most of the geological record, and that the earth was roughly 6,000 years old. From this position they responded with equal vigour to the old-earth theories of the uniformitarian and the catastrophist geologists. They also rejected, as misinterpretations of Scripture, the "gap theory", the "day-age theory", the "tranquil flood theory" and the "local flood theory." These writers have received limited scholarly analysis. Gillispie, Millhauser and Yule have given them some attention and are the historians regularly cited by others. Much current research addresses the issue of religion and science in the nineteenth century but none has focused on the Scriptural geologists. They deserve more study because they were "an important irritant and a serious disturbing factor in the scientific geologists' campaign to establish and maintain their own public image as a source of reliable and authoritative knowledge" (Martin Rudwick, 'The Greate Devonian Controversy', 1985, p.43). Also, this thesis demonstrates that they have been seriously misrepresented both by many of the contemporaries and by nearly all later hisotrians. By way of introduction, a brief analysis is given of 1) the intellectual, religious and cultural background leading up the nineteenth century, 2) the history of the interpretation of fossils, sedimentary rocks, and the Genesis account of creation and the flood, 3) a description of the nineteenth century milieu and 4) what constituted geological competence in the early nineteenth century. The central portion of the thesis analyzes the Biblical and geological arguments presented by thirteen representative Scriptural geologists. In the final section, generalizations and conclusions are made about the Scriptural geologists as a group and the nature of the debate with those they opposed.

A study of Christian interpretations of liberalism is important for social theology for two reasons: first, liberalism is the dominant political ideology of modernity, and (especially in the form "liberal democracy") is the most prominent form of public self-definition in the West, its claims often being taken to be self-evidently true. Second, liberalism is historically indebted to Christianity, and the two are susceptible of mutual confusion. A critical theological analysis of liberalism is necessary to ensure the authentically Christian nature of contemporary political theology. This analysis is conducted principally through a discussion of the criticisms of liberalism made by three Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, the American Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), the French Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), and the Canadian George Grant (1918-1988). After an introductory chapter, chapter two presents an interpretation of liberalism, mapping the historical contours and varieties of liberalism from five liberal writers, and elaborating a loose framework of the conceptual structure of liberal thought. Chapter three examines Reinhold Niebuhr's criticisms of liberalism's alleged facile progressivism and optimistic conceptions of human nature and reason, and chapter four looks at George Grant's claim that John Rawls' liberal theory fails to provide the ontological affirmations necessary to defend human beings and liberal values against the dynamics of technology. Jacques Maritain's account of pluralism and the ideal of the secular state, and the contribution he can make to the current debate between liberals and communitarians, are the subjects of chapter five, while chapter six attempts to secure some theological purchase on the issues of Bills of Rights, judicial review, and the constitutional restraint of democratic majorities, with special reference to the British context. In the concluding chapter it is argued that the liberal account of justice is impossible to realize, and that central insights must be borrowed from the Augustinian tradition.

The purpose of this study was to gain understanding of orthodox Christianity in Swedish educational material. The aim was to compare the presentation of orthodox Christianity towards pupils before the new curriculum and after. With the help of an analytical approach by Bergström and Boreu ́s and the interpretation strategy by Quentin Skinner, I have studied material used in school for the subject religion. I have limited my educational material in one way. The material that I have chosen is produced from the year 2003 until 2012. The goal is to recognize how orthodox Christianity is presented to Swedish pupil ́s. The result will contain a discussion about the ways a specific religion is represented in school, what kind of picture is created for this religion and if there is a difference in these presentations in a period of time.