My PhD project is called ”Learning to be Norwegian. Religion and national identity in religious education in Norway.” It is a case study of how religion is mobilised in the construction of national identity, both from above and below. The "above" perspective is operationalised as a discourse analysis of Curricula in Norway from 1974 to 2008. The “below” perspective is operationalised as participant observation in classrooms, following 15 teachers in 3 secondary schools in Eastern Norway. In terms of theoretical questions asked of this material, I engage with the literature on multiculturalism in Western Europe (Barry 2001, Baumann 1996, 1999, Eriksen 2007, Fuglerud and Eriksen 2007, Joppke 2004, 2009, Modood 2007, Parekh 2006, Phillips 2007). I identify a distinction between liberalists, multiculturalists and hybridists in terms of the key question: What is the best way to understand groups with identity claims? My main claim to originality in is that people can be described as engaging in fluidising and solidifying practices – making social structures more fluid or more solid through their social activities. This implies that there are different levels of viscosity in how solid or fluid groups with identity claims are. Theorists dealing with groups with identity claims, including the sociology of religion, education and identity, would benefit from a variable social ontology of groups. I propose that the terms “Viscosity” - “boundaries” and “work”, taken together provide one such framework that works well with my data. Significant empirical findings include a shift over time in the meaning of the term “values”. In 1974, the word “values” was connected primarily with ethics in the formal curricula. By the 1990s this had changed. It was now also, and dominantly, connected to notions of identity. Religion is consistently mobilised for identity through metaphors of personal stability, or and through establishing metaphorical connections that make the nation appear as sharing crucial features with the individual self. These ideas are revisited in classroom ethnographic data. The assumptions found in the curriculum are challenged by the practices of teachers and pupils. It is clear that the most important concepts of identity, such as “Muslim” or “Norwegian” are being worked on by defining what and who is on the inside and what and who is on the outside. Nevertheless, the classrooms become effective learning communities, though more through shared actions, shared discussions and well-managed disagreement than through sameness and shared values. Teachers and pupils use the concept of “facts” both to further their own normative arguments, but also to remain out of the reach of accusations of cultural or religious insensitivity. Finally, my study undermines static conceptions of how discourses affect the social world. As an alternative, I try to develop an understanding of actors engaging in fluidising and solidifying practices.

The present work considers the novel of Joseph and Aseneth (J & A) as an allegorical text which was transmitted in various cultural environments, potentially from the poly-cultural background of Hellenistic Judaism to the time of the novel's extant manuscripts in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. While positing that J & A was conceived as a versatile text around the time of the rise of the ancient Greek novel, the thesis highlights the sophisticated literary features of this religious text. In fact, the imagery of J & A is loaded with further significance, touching upon mystical themes which can be compared with pagan testimonies of arcane lore and mysteries. Moreover, typical scenes in J & A are devised by means of complex rhetorical strategies, which contributed to the addition of further senses to the story. Indeed, the allegorical discourse which can be detected in J & A conferred to the novel a plain narrative surface, while leaving a deeper significance for its readers and interpreters to decode. In this respect, J & A is brought closer to Classical texts such as the ancient novels and Homeric literature, because its narrative allowed subsequent interpretations and even adaptations of the story in different cultural and religious contexts. While points of contact between J & A and pagan, Jewish and Christian allegorical texts may be only suggestive, the present analysis hopes to envisions a few proposals for the early purpose and aftermath of J & A from its hypothetical original milieu in Hellenistic Judaism to the end of Antiquity.

The dominant theories in the sociological literature identify religion with propositional belief in the transcendent and belonging to and attendance at religious services. This understanding of religion replicates a past Protestant model that fails to account for contemporary religious forms, including Protestant forms. Drawing on Georg Simmel, one of the fathers of sociology, the thesis makes a theoretical contribution by reinterpreting and systematising Simmel’s notions of religiosity as a sensitivity, and of belief as trust, to enhance the understanding of contemporary individual religious identity. The use of these notions and of Simmel’s nuanced perspective on individuality enables the development of a theoretical framework for the understanding of authenticity. The study focuses on individual religiosity, which has been largely neglected by the literature. The most influential theories that have paid attention to the role of the individual – rational choice theory and spirituality studies – have centred on individual self authority and neglected to conceptualise the self. Accordingly, the thesis provides a relational account of the self, on which to ground authenticity as a process of identity formation. The narratives and practices, which emerged from the empirical research, have revealed the construction of Christianity through the prism of authenticity, as a distinctive and ‘truer’ way of living. This construction of authentic Christianity testifies to a shift from doctrinal adherence to a more pluralistic discourse by emphasising an overarching ethics of compassion over exclusive claims to truth. Thus, pluralism offers Christian evangelicals the platform to articulate the particularistic tradition of Christianity, whilst retaining a claim to – what they understand to be – universal truth.

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Based on the observation that “interdisciplinarity” is the essential nature of C. S. Lewis’s religious narratives created by twofold enterprise—imaginative writing and Christian apologetics, this thesis aims to undertake a comprehensive reception of Lewis’s works by considering carefully the inter-mixture of literary art and Christian apologetics within the texts and the relevance of the reader’s role to the textual experience. In other words, the whole study is oriented to combine literary analysis, apologetic reading and “hermeneutical” reflection upon the encounter between reader and text. The purpose in general is to demonstrate that Lewis’s literary world remains artistically engaging, religiously meaningful and existentially significant to the readers beyond his time. The main part of the thesis presents a practice of close reading and multi-faceted discussion of five texts of Lewis, including: The Pilgrim’s Regress (an allegorical account of a modern man’s conversion), The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce (theological fantasies concerning interaction between subjective being and objective reality), Till We Have Faces (a mythic novel about the correlation between self-knowledge and religious experience), and A Grief Observed (a first-person narrative of an inward journey of coming to terms with grief and faith). Varied in literary modes of expression, these texts are read in terms of one common theme about the inter-related problem of faith and self. More specifically, they are treated as works of “literary apologetics”—written to manifest and tackle in an “existentialist” manner the alienated or disrupted relationship between the human self and religious / Christian faith. In the concluding section, the discussion is moved from interpreting the texts to revisiting C. S. Lewis’s mind and rethinking the proper mindset for Lewis’s readers. This part of the discussion is intended firstly to re-estimate the enterprise of C. S. Lewis as a Christian thinker and literary writer through connecting and comparing his ways of thinking and reading with contemporary theologians and hermeneutical thinkers, particularly Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Ricoeur, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Such association between Lewis and the contemporary trends of hermeneutics leads to the conclusion that C. S. Lewis is indeed an intellectually defensible thinker as well as literary figure in and even beyond his time. Moreover, it helps to fulfill the second objective of this final discussion, which is also the chief goal of the whole thesis, namely, to shed light on an appropriate way of reading C. S. Lewis. Methodologically, this research is done on a cross-disciplinary basis in terms of a multiplicity of theoretical ideas concerning such topics as literary tropes, figures of speech, the psychology of religion, literary theory and (Kierkegaard’s) existentialist philosophy of irony, and hermeneutics. Illuminated by these miscellaneous tools of interpretation, the whole research looks to attest to the claim that the genuine experience of Lewis’s texts is not gained through simply appreciating the art of expression or digging out the underlying ideas of Christian apologetics, nor does it rest upon the response of the reader alone, but must rely on the co-working and interplay of all these three aspects of experience.

This thesis examines the ecclesiology, or doctrine of the church, of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), who was one of the leading and most prominent members of the Plymouth Brethren in the nineteenth century. The thesis systematically outlines the structure of Darby's thought on the subject of ecclesiology. It explains how Darby defined the church and understood its nature. His ecclesiology is shown to be foundational to the system of Dispensationalist theology in that the church is seen in occupying a period of time unforeseen in biblical prophecy. Darby's ecclesiology is also shown to be an ecclesiology of crisis in that he believed that the church had fallen into such a state of ruin that no bodies existed that could truly be described as churches. The thesis considers Darby's solution to the ruin or failure of the church found in 'meeting in the name of the Lord.' It examines how Darby's view of how the church should meet successfully synthesized the conflicting concepts of unity and separation. It suggests that other writers have not always recognized how Darby distinguished between separation from individuals and separation from institutions. Nevertheless while arguing that Darby's ecclesiology achieved a stable synthesis between unity and separation, it presents a number of practical problems with Darby's ecclesiology. Attention is given to Darby's teaching on discipline, ministry, church government and sacraments. The thesis considers his ecclesiology within a number of contexts. First, its place within the development of ecclesiology in theological history and in relation specifically to modem ecclesiologies. Second, in his life and involvement with the Brethren movement. Third, his role in the development of American fundamentalism, a major proportion of which has adopted significant aspects of his theology, particularly Dispensationalism, a form of millennial theology that makes a strong distinction between the church and the nation of Israel within salvation history. This thesis argues that while some American fundamentalists adopted Darby's dispensational views, they found very different practical applications for them in their ecclesiastical activity. A number of reasons are considered as to why they did not adopt Darby's ecclesiology in its entirety. Fourthly, the thesis considers the place of Darby's ecclesiology in relation to other ecclesiastical movements in nineteenth century Britain. It argues that Darby's ecclesiology shared similar themes to three ecclesiastical movements.

Temples in ancient Egypt were confines of restricted sacred space. Only priests had access to the inner workings of the temples and their mysteries. During the great festivals, the gods that dwelled in these sanctuaries went on procession for everyone to see, travelling to other temples in barques of gold and wood. These barques were typical of furniture that was both religious and processional. Study of the lexicography, iconography, and function of ancient Egyptian ritual processional furniture could shed light upon the metanarrative of ancient religious practice. This research identifies the unique characteristics and lexicography of ritual processional furniture as manifest in ancient Egypt between the Old and New Kingdoms. A multidisciplinary approach is taken in regards to the data, utilizing both lexicographic and iconographic sources, to which a seven criteria conceptual framework is applied in order to select the appropriate data. The methodology used in this study is inductive and qualitative, and the conclusions are derived from primary sources. Objects that are discovered to be ritual but not processional are eliminated from further analysis. The analyzed data is synthesized and assimilated to expand the current paradigm of ritual processional objects into a new understanding. In this thesis three primary classes of ritual processional furniture are identified and examined in detail: chests, barques, and palanquin thrones. This project analyzed over sixty lexemes and three hundred fifty instances of iconography. The lexemes for twelve chests, six sacred barques, and six palanquins were found to have been used as ritual processional furniture. The iconographic study examined the pictorial instances by typology and locale. For sacred barques, the results attempted to resolve the ongoing problems concerning identification and inconsistencies between icon and text. The results for palanquin thrones showed that the iconography from sacred barques was appropriated and compressed elevating the king to a focus of religious adoration. This extensive study of Egyptian ritual processional furniture contributes to the ongoing dialogue regarding the material and cultural context of religious expression by synthesizing the paradigm of temple sacred space upon smaller physical objects. The contribution to knowledge has been to flesh out the identities of specific instances of ritual processional furnishing and to assimilate the architectural understanding of sacred space with the available data so as to arrive at a new understanding of the existing paradigm. The significance of these contributions is that they further develop our understanding of the religious cultural context of ancient Egypt.

The god Seth was depicted in both zoomorphic and bimorphic form. In zoomorphic form he was depicted as a canine-like animal with a down curved muzzle, upright squared-off ears and an erect tail, whilst in bimorphic form he was portrayed as a human male with the head of the Seth animal. Although much has been written on the mythology of Seth and identification of the Seth animal, no in-depth research has been undertaken regarding the variations that occur in his images over the dynastic period of Egyptian history. This thesis looks at the variations in the images of Seth and how he was represented in temples, tombs, written texts and in personal adornment. A comparison of the variations of his component parts leads to a comprehensive understanding of the different forms employed and allows the questions to be answered of whether there was ever a fully defined standard representation or if each image was an individual interpretation of a loosely defined theoretical form. Additionally, the study of the use of the zoomorphic and bimorphic Seth images within the Nile Valley and Western Desert oases provides the further understanding of the form of the proscription against Seth.

This thesis develops a pentecostal ecclesiology using the structure of networks that leads to a fresh approach to contextualisation. It addresses the neglect in pentecostal scholarship of church structures beyond the congregation and of critical approaches to contextualisation. The pentecostal systematic methodology of Amos Yong is utilized, based on the synthesis of discerned experience (Spirit), biblical studies (Word) and the traditions of systematic and mission theology (Community). A trinitarian understanding of networks is developed and linked with an approach to the catholicity of the church that has a common essence and mission movement. This is shaped by the missionary nature of pentecostalism and rooted in an understanding of a church marked by Spirit baptism. The character of networks is defined in terms of partnership, a term with a rich mission understanding and seen also in the pentecostal tradition. A three-fold approach to contextualisation arises from the overlap between networks within and outside the church which is based on hospitality. Significantly, this thesis is the first in pentecostal ecclesiology to utilise a pentecostal methodology, to focus on structural and contextual issues and to develop a trinitarian network ecclesiology. It provides a fresh approach to catholicity, Spirit baptism, partnership and contextualisation.

By engaging with Kevin Vanhoozer’s Theo-dramatic paradigm for understanding the metanarrative of salvation history, this thesis sets up and answers the question: What does it mean to produce a fitting Pentecostal/Charismatic performance in the face of seemingly innocent, meaningless suffering when God appears to be absent? The answer offered – classified, in reference to previous and current responses to the problem of evil and suffering, as an ‘Anti-Theodicy’ – provides Biblically rooted, systematic guidance for such a performance by proposing an improvisation on the divine command performance of Jesus during the suffering experienced in the Easter event. In proposing such an improvisation, it is argued that the practice of lament, so prominent in the Old Testament, becomes a Christologically qualified and justified practice to be used in the current scenes of the drama in response to the type of suffering in question. However, rather than simply arguing for recovery of this practice alone, a pneumatological twist is offered in which the Spirit is understood to be given as an aid to help with the practice of lament, post-ascension. In addition, practical suggestions are made regarding how the use of testimony in Pentecostal/Charismatic communities could be modified in the light of this thesis.