This study examines why Romania's dissidence within the Soviet bloc has not provoked a military response from the Soviet Union during the 1965-1985 period. The hypothesis assumed is that Soviet tolerance is granted to Romania in exchange for its internal orthodoxy. Based on English and Romanian sources of information and on the author's experience having lived in Romania, the following factors are analyzed: Party internal control, its organization, leadership and ideology. The study concludes that Romania's internal orthodoxy, closely resembling Soviet society, has neutralized the country's dissident foreign policy saving it from a Soviet military intervention.

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Previous assessments of the early academies of Protestant dissenters in England and Wales (1660-1720) have celebrated their tutors' achievements in defying the Act of Uniformity and the Test Acts, and have argued that they pioneered a modern curriculum. Despite these views, there has been little scholarly investigation into the academies. This thesis evaluates the available sources for the first time, examining the political, philosophical, and theological controversies in which the academies were involved, as well as examining the lives and careers of their tutors and students in greater detail than has hitherto been possible. The introduction explores the reception of the academies from the late seventeenth century until the present day, exposing the paucity of evidence and the abundance of polemic which have characterised previous accounts. Chapter 1 provides a detailed examination of academies operated by nonconformists prior to the Toleration Act, reassessing the contribution of ejected university tutors, surveying attempted prosecutions, and highlighting political controversies. The second chapter extends the narrative to academies run by Protestant dissenters from the Toleration Act (1689) to the repeal of the Schism Act (1719); it contains the first-ever detailed analysis of the minutes of the London-based denominational Fund Boards, and a survey of the careers of former academy students. Chapter 3 re-evaluates the teaching of philosophy in the dissenters' earliest academies, using newly-identified manuscript works by tutors and students to explore the study of logic, natural philosophy, and ethics. Chapter 4 uses a combination of printed and manuscript sources to examine the teaching of religious subjects at the academies, including preaching, religious history, Jewish antiquities, pneumatology, and theology; it concludes with a survey of the contribution of dissenting tutors and students to debates in the 1710s concerning subscription to an agreed form of words on the Trinity.

The concept of dissident under consideration in this study reveals that political and loyal dissent, non-conformity and well-meaning criticisms of government's wrong doings, and even the quest for democracy exist in China as they do in the West. Political struggle and the leadership's eagerness to gain the support of intellectuals provided Chinese intellectuals with the opportunity to express themselves. Similarly, power struggles within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have also become the spawning ground for some Chinese intellectuals to become dissidents.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2002. / Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-213).

Thesis (doctoral) - Universität, Hamburg, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 416-494).

Religious dissent in Scotland in the years before 1550 is best categorised as evangelical: the two characteristics which mark dissenting activity are the doct[r]ine of justification by faith alone, and the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. Dissent can be found in the southwest from lay preacher Quintin Folkhyrde in 1410 to a small but identifiable group of Lollards in Ayrshire who were tried in 1494 for group Bible reading, eschewing rituals, and challenging the authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. These 'Lollards of Kyle' were associated with the notary public Murdoch Nisbet, whose transcription of a Lollard New Testament into Scots was augmented in 1538 by the further transcription of textual aids from Miles Coverdale's edition. The Lollard group seems to have adopted the solafideism in this material, apart from their continued aversion to swearing. In the east, Luther's ideas were debated at St Andrews University in the 1520s, where Patrick Hamilton adhered to them and was burned in 1528; however, the same message of solafideist theology, Scripture reading, and perseverance in persecution was reiterated by his fellow-students John Gau and John Johnsone, in printed works which they sent home from exile. One of the primary concerns of ecclesiastical and state authorities was the availability of the New Testament in English, or other works reflecting Lutheran theology; they legislated against both owning and discussing such works. Sporadic heresy trials in the 1530s and 1540s reveal heretical belief and practice which is connected to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In the late 1530s, a group of known evangelicals were at the court of James V: Captain John Borthwick tried to convince the king to follow the lead of Henry VIII and lay claim to church lands; Sir David Lindsay of the Mount probably wrote a play exhorting the king to enact reforms; Henry Balnaves was active after James's death in trying to forge a marriage treaty with England, which might have resulted in Henrician reforms. The governor Arran initially supported the court evangelicals, even backing a parliamentary Act allowing the reading, but not discussion, of the Bible in the vernacular. However, he reversed his policy and Balnaves, along with others, was imprisoned in Rouen, where he wrote a lengthy treatise about justification by faith alone, its effects on Christian society, and its help in times of persecution. George Wishart returned to his homeland in 1543, and began a preaching tour which took him from Angus to Kyle to East Lothian. Probably not having been guilty of the Radical beliefs laid to his charge in Bristol, Wishart held a developed Reformed theology, in addition to traditional evangelical concerns calling for a purified church guided by the Scripture principle, and drawing a sharp distinction between true and false churches. After Wishart was executed, John Knox proclaimed the Mass to be idolatrous before being imprisoned. The first Scot who appears to have moved from his basic evangelical beliefs to a functional Protestantism is Adam Wallace, a thorough sacramentarian who had baptised his own child. Upon his return in 1555, Knox took it upon him to convince the evangelicals that attendance at Mass was idolatrous, and he began administering Protestant communions. The central tenets of evangelical faith, however, continued to shape the incipient Protestant kirk.

Shabashniks, as dissenting protagonists of free enterprise within the Soviet economic system did as much or more to undermine the political and economic security and control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) than many of the more well known political dissidents of the Soviet era. While it was never the conscious or primary motivation of those Soviet citizens working as shabashniks to challenge the political primacy of the CPSU in their self proclaimed position as the vanguard of the development of communism in the Soviet Union, the scope and the scale of the private economic activities engaged in by shabashniks represented a significant source of the impetus for the eventual decline in the Party's monopoly on political and economic power. / This study investigates the place of shabashniks within the Soviet system, their contributions to that system and their part in its eventual decline. The narrative created as a result of this study relied primarily on Soviet newspaper, journal and magazine articles to describe the lifestyles of shabashniks. There were no Russian language monographs available on the subject at the time of this study. This study then combined the existing Soviet discussions concerning the private economic activities of shabashniks and the effects of those activities on the Soviet system, as reflected in the Soviet press, with the information gleaned from conversations the author had while working with and interviewing former shabashniks and Soviet citizens in Russia during the fall of 1994 and the winter 1997.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pa.), 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-153).

Thesis (MA(Visual Arts))-University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.