Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Philo Hutcheson, committee chair; Joel Meyers, Deron Boyles, Linda Buchanan, committee members. Description based on contents viewed Nov. 10, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 280-288).

No description available.

During the period 1884-1925 Ethiopian-type schisms from mission churches occurred for a number of reasons. Generalisations of these reasons have been made by numerous authors. By generalising the causes of schism the particular reasons why each independent church 1 eader 1 eft the mission church are ignored. The thesis shows how each schism was due to unique circumstances in the mission church as well as to factors, for example, the personal feelings of the independent church leader. In each case there was a point of no return when the founder of the independent church no longer felt he could accept the status quo. There were two government commissions that investigated the independent or "separatist" churches during these years - the South African Native Affairs Commission of 1903-1905 and the 1925 South African Native Affairs Commission which investigated the "Separatist Churches". The testimony of the white government officials and missionaries and the black church leaders has been compared with the findings in the reports. Four case studies are investigated to show how general causes of schism may occur for a number of years until a reason, peculiar to the particular independent church, manifests itself and leads to the formation of an independent church. The case studies are the Ethiopian Church and related independent groups, the independent churches which joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1896 with the Ethiopian Church but later left to form their own churches, for example the Order of Ethiopia, schisms from the Presbyterian Church during the 1890' s and the Independent Methodist Church. / Christian, Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th (Church History)

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2007. / Abstract. Description based on Microfiche version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-142).

During the period 1884-1925 Ethiopian-type schisms from mission churches occurred for a number of reasons. Generalisations of these reasons have been made by numerous authors. By generalising the causes of schism the particular reasons why each independent church 1 eader 1 eft the mission church are ignored. The thesis shows how each schism was due to unique circumstances in the mission church as well as to factors, for example, the personal feelings of the independent church leader. In each case there was a point of no return when the founder of the independent church no longer felt he could accept the status quo. There were two government commissions that investigated the independent or "separatist" churches during these years - the South African Native Affairs Commission of 1903-1905 and the 1925 South African Native Affairs Commission which investigated the "Separatist Churches". The testimony of the white government officials and missionaries and the black church leaders has been compared with the findings in the reports. Four case studies are investigated to show how general causes of schism may occur for a number of years until a reason, peculiar to the particular independent church, manifests itself and leads to the formation of an independent church. The case studies are the Ethiopian Church and related independent groups, the independent churches which joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1896 with the Ethiopian Church but later left to form their own churches, for example the Order of Ethiopia, schisms from the Presbyterian Church during the 1890' s and the Independent Methodist Church. / Christian, Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th (Church History)

The purpose of this thesis is to develop and test the Advanced Integrated Model, a typological model in the tradition of Weber’s interpretive sociology, as an asset in explaining recent transformations in American Episcopal-Anglican organizations. The study includes an assessment of the church-sect tradition in the sociology of religion and a summary overview of Weber’s interpretive sociology with special emphasis on the nature and construction of idealtypes and their use in analysis. To illustrate the effectiveness of the model a number of institutional rivalries confronting contemporary Episcopal-Anglican organizations are identified and shown to be explainable only from a sociological perspective and not simply as “in house” institutional problems. The present work sheds light on parent-child conflicts in religious organizations and reopens discussion about the theoretical value of ideal-types in general, and church-sect typologies in particular, when utilized from a comparative-historical perspective

The aim of this research is to present an important but forgotten Tiffany interior, that of All Saints Episcopal Church, and focuses on the source for the Saunders memorial window, Christ Resurrection. After portraying the Saunders Family and the context of the window and church interior as an important part of Richmond’s history, this thesis sets up a number of inquiries regarding Christ Resurrection. What are the literary sources; what are the formal sources, from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century; and what is the meaning of the composition? This thesis utilizes an art historical method of archival, connoisseurial, and iconological research. The analysis of the third chapter illustrates that Frederick Wilson’s composition of Christ Resurrection does not follow any one of the Evangelists. Rather it comes from an extensive pictorial tradition from Resurrection scenes of the 14th century leading into the 17th.

Washington National Cathedral sits atop Mt. St. Alban’s hill in Washington, D.C. declaring itself the nation’s cathedral and spiritual home for the nation. The idea of a national church serving national purposes was first envisioned by L’Enfant in the District’s original plan. Left aside in the times of nation building, the idea of a national church slumbered until 1893 when a group of Episcopalians petitioned and received a Congressional charter to begin a church and school in Washington, D.C. The first bishop of Washington, Henry Y. Satterlee, began his bishopric with the understanding that this cathedral being built by the Protestant Episcopal Church Foundation was to be a house of prayer for all people. Using Jasinksi’s constructivist orientation to reveal the one hundred year rhetorical history defining what constitutes a “national cathedral” within the narrative paradigm first established by Walter Fisher, this work utilizes a rhetorical biographical approach to uncover the various discourses of those speaking of and about the Cathedral. This biographical approach claims that Washington National Cathedral possesses an ethos that differentiates the national cathedral from the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul even though the two names refer to the same building. The WNC ethos is one that allows a constant “becoming” of a national cathedral, and this ability to “become” allows for a rhetorical voice of the entity we call Washington National Cathedral. Four loci of rhetorical construction weave through this dissertation in the guiding question of how the Cathedral rhetorically created and how it sustains itself as Washington National Cathedral: rhetoric about the Cathedral, the Cathedral as rhetoric, the Cathedral as context, and Cathedral Dean Francis Sayre, Jr. as synecdoche with the Cathedral. This dissertation is divided into eight rhetorical moments of change that take the idea of a national church from L’Enfant’s 1791 plan of the City through the January 2013 announcement allowing same-sex weddings at the Cathedral and Obama’s second inaugural prayer service. The result of this rhetorical exploration is a more nuanced understanding of the place and how it functions in an otherwise secular society for which there is no precedent for the establishment of a national cathedral completely separated from the national government. The narrative strains that wind through Cathedral discourse create a braid of text, context, and moral imperative that ultimately allows for the unique construction of Washington National Cathedral, a construction of what defines “national” created entirely by the Cathedral.

Recent historians who have written about the development of Methodist religious identity in Upper Canada have based their narratives primarily on readings of documents concerned with ecclesiastical polity and colonial politics. This study attempts to complicate these narratives by examining the way religious identity in the province was affected by the cultural production and distribution of books as denominational status objects in a wider North American market before the middle of the nineteenth century. The first chapter examines the rhetorical strategies the Methodist Book Concern developed to protect its domestic market in the United States from the products of competitors by equating patronage with denominational identity. The remaining chapters unfold the influence a protracted consumption of such cultural commodities had on the religious identity of Methodists living in Upper Canada. For more than a decade after the War of 1812, the Methodist Book Concern relied on a corps of Methodist preachers to distribute its commodities north of the border. This denominational infrastructure conferred the accidental but strategic advantage of concealing the extent of the Concern’s market and its rhetoric from the colony’s increasingly anti-American elite. The Concern’s access to its Upper Canadian market became compromised, however, when Egerton Ryerson initiated a debate over religious equality in the province’s emergent public sphere in the mid-1820s. This inadvertently drew attention to Methodist textual practices in the province that led to later efforts on the part of Upper Canadians to sever the Concern’s access to its market north of the border. When these attempts failed, Canadian Methodists found ways to decouple the material and cultural dimensions of the Concern’s products in order to continue patronizing the Concern without compromising recent gains achieved by strategically refashioning themselves as loyal Wesleyans within the colony’s conservative political environment. The result was the emergence of a stable and enduring transnational market for Methodist printed commodities that both blunted the cultural influence of British Wesleyans and prepared the ground for a later secularization of Methodist publishing into and beyond the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

Recent historians who have written about the development of Methodist religious identity in Upper Canada have based their narratives primarily on readings of documents concerned with ecclesiastical polity and colonial politics. This study attempts to complicate these narratives by examining the way religious identity in the province was affected by the cultural production and distribution of books as denominational status objects in a wider North American market before the middle of the nineteenth century. The first chapter examines the rhetorical strategies the Methodist Book Concern developed to protect its domestic market in the United States from the products of competitors by equating patronage with denominational identity. The remaining chapters unfold the influence a protracted consumption of such cultural commodities had on the religious identity of Methodists living in Upper Canada. For more than a decade after the War of 1812, the Methodist Book Concern relied on a corps of Methodist preachers to distribute its commodities north of the border. This denominational infrastructure conferred the accidental but strategic advantage of concealing the extent of the Concern’s market and its rhetoric from the colony’s increasingly anti-American elite. The Concern’s access to its Upper Canadian market became compromised, however, when Egerton Ryerson initiated a debate over religious equality in the province’s emergent public sphere in the mid-1820s. This inadvertently drew attention to Methodist textual practices in the province that led to later efforts on the part of Upper Canadians to sever the Concern’s access to its market north of the border. When these attempts failed, Canadian Methodists found ways to decouple the material and cultural dimensions of the Concern’s products in order to continue patronizing the Concern without compromising recent gains achieved by strategically refashioning themselves as loyal Wesleyans within the colony’s conservative political environment. The result was the emergence of a stable and enduring transnational market for Methodist printed commodities that both blunted the cultural influence of British Wesleyans and prepared the ground for a later secularization of Methodist publishing into and beyond the middle decades of the nineteenth century.