Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The worldwide African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church) is divided into 20 regional districts. These include thirteen districts in the United States of America (Episcopal Districts 1-13), six districts on the African continent, namely Episcopal Districts 14, 15 and 17-20 and one that comprises Suriname-Guyana, South America, the Caribbean, Windward Islands, Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic, Haiti Jamaica, London and the Netherlands (Episcopal District 16). Each of these districts is administered by a bishop assigned at the seat of the General Conference which is conducted every four year. The General Conference is the highest decision-making body of the AME Church. This research project focuses on the relationship between the American and the African districts of the African Methodist Episcopal Church during the period from 1896 to 2004. It investigates the factors which led to the tensions emerged in the relationship between the American districts and the African districts. It specifically investigates the reasons for the five secession movements that took place in the 15th and 19th Districts of the AME Church in 1899, 1904, 1908, 1980 and 1998. The research problem investigated in this thesis is therefore one of a historical reconstruction, namely to identify, describe and assess the configurations of factors which contributed to such tensions in relationship between the AME Church in America and Africa. The relationships between the American and the African districts of the AME Church have been characterised by various tensions around the sovereignty of the African districts. Such tensions surfaced, for example, in five protest movements, which eventually led to secessions from the AME Church in South Africa. The people of the African continent merged with the American based AME Church with the expectation that they would be assisted in their quest for self-determination. The quest for self-determination in the AME Church in Africa has a long history. The Ethiopian Movement was established by Mangena Maake Mokone in 1892 as a protest movement against white supremacy and domination in the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

The purpose of this writing is to bring to light and to trace the historical development of the religious education program of the Episcopal Church in Utah from its first organized attempts to the present time.The writer has gone to as many original or near original sources as possible. Considerable dependence was placed upon a careful survey of historical books and articles published by the Episcopal Church. These sources were supplemented by personal interviews with Mrs. Elizabeth T. Corr, headmistress of Rowland Hall, and Right Rev. Richard S. Watson, Bishop of the Episcopal Missionary District of Utah, who were most helpful.A doctoral dissertation by Laverne Bane, prepared at Stanford University was very helpful.Many newspaper clippings and pamphlets were available at the Utah Historical Society.

The Right Reverend William Henry Marmion was consecrated as bishop of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia on May 13, 1954, days prior to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and just over a decade after the Episcopal Church's General Convention formally opposed racial discrimination. A diocesan conference center in Hungry Mother State Park, purchased soon after his consecration, sparked a controversy that was to smolder and flame for the first decade of Marmion's 25 years as bishop. Marmion led the move to desegregate the diocesan conference center, Hemlock Haven, in 1958 and subsequently effected integration by closing three of the four black churches in the diocese and inviting members to choose a neighboring church to join. The initial integration of the diocese was a turbulent process that centered around Hemlock Haven. The diocese moved with some difficulty towards racial integration in a microcosm of what was happening in the wider Church and in the United States. Historical documents, secondary sources, interviews, and theoretical understanding of minority responses to oppression help me to describe this time of racial desegregation of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia and its implications. Critical theory gleaned from W. E. B. Du Bois and from Homi Bhabha informs my understanding of some of the implications as well as many of the actions and outcomes. Du Bois's notion of double consciousness and Bhbaba's similar term hybridity, both of which acknowledge a dual locus of identity and of power, are relevant to understanding some of the interactions revealed by primary source correspondence. I will focus on Hemlock Haven as the entry point into desegregation and on the black churches in the diocese, both before and after that critical point, adding the witness of black voices to the white narrative of this history. A historical look at the trajectory of race and race relations in the Episcopal Church informs the moment of the caesura--an interruption--the desegregation of Hemlock Haven, and the fate of the four black churches in the diocese. From the point of the rupture comes identification, the emergence of a new space, a cultural reboot. / Ph. D.

This thesis looks at Blessed are the Poor?, a document presented to the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church that sought to outline Liberation Theology to the Church. In response to this the Synod voted £1,000,000 of its resources to be used specifically in projects in the poorest parts of Scotland. The thesis outlines those projects and the way in which they sought to embody the "Option for the Poor". The thesis closes by looking at whether Blessed are the Poor? faithfully represented Liberation Theology and the "Option"; whether the projects represented that theology and concluding that they did not, recognises that it is the nature of both the "Option" and the institutional Church that such a task could never be achieved. In order to understand the pastoral project this thesis outlines the historical development of Liberation Theology after the Second Vatican Council and in Latin America with particular emphasis on the "Option for the Poor". This thesis proceeds to look at the development of an "Option for the Poor" in the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez, the leading Liberation Theologian. The critiques of that work from the Vatican, Pablo Richard and Hugo Assmann are then considered. Gutiérrez’s works are used to develop a theological matrix that identifies the essential elements of the “Option for the Poor”. Having considered the notion of the "Option for the Poor" the thesis proceeds to look at how the "Option" was taken forward in the Churches in Britain before focussing on the specific response of the Scottish Episcopal Church. The matrix is used as a tool to assess whether the various parts of the response truly reflected the “Option for the Poor”.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, 1983. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 344-348).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, 1983. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 344-348).

This thesis investigated the factors contributing to the tense relationship between the congregations of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in Piketberg during 1903-1972. It investigated the reasons why two congregations of colour in a small town as Piketberg were established. The problem that was investigated was a social, historical and religious one of determining which factors contributed to such tension.

Scholars have evaluated the causes of clergy political preferences and behavior for decades. As with party ID in the study of mass behavior, personal ideological preferences have been the relevant clergy literature's dominant behavioral predictor. Yet to the extent that clergy operate in bounded and specialized institutions, it is possible that much of the clergy political puzzle can be more effectively solved by recognizing these elites as institutionally-situated actors, with their preferences and behaviors influenced by the institutional groups with which they interact. I argue that institutional reference groups help to determine clergy political preferences and behavior. Drawing on three theories derived from neo-institutionalism, I assess reference group influence on clergy in two mainline Protestant denominations-the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Episcopal Church, USA. In addition to their wider and more traditional socializing influence, reference groups in close proximity to clergy induce them to behave strategically-in ways that are contrary to their sincerely held political preferences. These proximate reference groups comprise mainly parishioners, suggesting that clergy political behavior, which is often believed to affect laity political engagement, may be predicated on clergy anticipation of potentially unfavorable reactions from their followers. The results show a set of political elites (the clergy) to be highly responsive to strategic pressure from below. This turns the traditional relationship between elites and masses on its head, and suggests that further examination of institutional reference group influence on clergy, and other political elites, is warranted.

The purpose of this project was to develop an environmental education program guidebook for use by the Episcopal Church.

The African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, like many historically black denomination over the years, has been actively involved in social change and racial uplift. The concepts of racial uplift and self-determination dominated black social, political, and economic thought throughout the late-eighteenth into the nineteenth century. Having created many firsts for blacks in America, the A.M.E. Church is recognized as leading blacks in implementing the rhetoric of racial uplift and self-determination. Racial uplift was a broad concept that covered issues such as equal rights, moral, spiritual, and intellectual development, and institutional and organizational building. The rhetoric of racial uplift and self-determination help to create many black leaders and institutions such as churches, schools, and newspapers. This is a historical study in which I examined how education and educational institutions sponsored by a black church can be methods of social change and racial uplift. The A.M.E. Church was the first black institution (secular or religious) to create, support, and maintain institutions of higher education for blacks. I explored the question of why before slavery had even ended and it was legal for blacks to learn to read and write, the A.M.E. Church became interested in and created institution of learning. I answer this question by looking at the creation of these institutions as the A.M.E. Church’s way of promoting and implementing racial uplift and self-determination. This examination includes the analysis of language used in articles, sermons, and speeches given by various A.M.E. Church-affiliated persons who promoted education as a method to uplift the Negro race.