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My thesis argues for the significance of individual spiritual counselling within post-Reformation English Protestantism. In particular, it demonstrates the prevalence of pastoral letter-writing and explores the purpose and dynamics of these networks. This research represents the first large-scale, comparative examination of a frequently neglected topic. It draws on many little-known letter collections and a number of unexplored manuscripts, alongside some more familiar epistolary sources. Chapter one situates my research in relation to existing literature on individual spiritual counselling and confession. As a counterpoint to the scholarly claim that contemporary accounts of the post-Reformation ministry emphasise the centrality of preaching at the expense of almost all other pastoral functions, I demonstrate the importance which many divines attributed to directing individual consciences, as well as highlighting contemporary thought on the role of the laity as providers of religious counselling. Chapter two uses Nehemiah Wallington's manuscript volume of exemplary spiritual correspondence to demonstrate the importance of epistolary counselling in the ministries of several early modern clergymen. The second section of the chapter argues that Wallington's own engagement with epistolary counselling ultimately served to uphold ministerial authority. Chapter three investigates the spiritual letter-writing relationships of early seventeenth-century Protestant ministers and their gentry patrons and demonstrates the significant potential which existed for clergymen to exercise religious agency and influence with pious elites. Chapter four explores the authoritative and spiritually intimate correspondences in which Richard Baxter engaged with laypeople from across the social spectrum during the 1650s. Current knowledge of his counselling of the Derbyshire gentlewoman, Katherine Gell, is extended through an original reflection on the significance of networks of pastoral direction in early modern English Protestantism. Chapter five explores the nature of religious advice-giving amongst the laity and uncovers its pious motivations. This characteristically 'godly' activity is both compared and contrasted with contemporary clerical counselling.

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The Church Growth movement, originating with Donald McGavran in 1955 and popularised principally by C Peter Wagner since 1971, has influenced evangelical mission internationally. Though originating in the context of cross-cultural `missionary' work, it is perhaps now identified as a typically American approach, apparently relying on method and technique to accomplish its objective, which as the name implies, is the growth of the church, both locally and world-wide, since this is understood as the requirement of the `Great Commission' (Matthew 28: 18-20). The Salvation Army (founded 1865) has been in decline in Britain certainly since the Second World War, and probably since the 1930s. In 1986 the Army formally Espoused the Church Growth approach to mission. There has been little published research into the effectiveness of Church Growth methods, especially in the UK, despite voluminous outpourings of inspirational and motivational literature. Virtually the only test of the principles (Turning the Tide) was produced in 1981 by Paul Beasley-Murray and Alan Wilkinson, investigating the reliability of Wagner's` Vital Signs' in larger Baptist churches in England. This thesis follows Beasley-Murray and Wilkinson by testing the principles in the specific context of The Salvation Army in the UK. The approach adopted, a questionnaire survey with reference to statistical trends, follows the pragmatism of Church Growth itself, asking whether the approach works, rather than whether it is theologically sound, though such issues are considered where relevant. The opportunity has also been taken to consider specific Salvation Anny issues (uniform, music etc. ) and their effect on growth and decline. The work falls into four sections: - The Salvation Army; - The Church Growth Movement; - The Questionnaire Survey; - Conclusions and Recommendations.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-166).

Zugl.: Erlangen, Nürnberg, Univ., Diss., 2006

Thesis (M.A. History)--University of Waikato, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-141). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This thesis discusses the British government's decision to maintain colonial rule in Hong Kong beyond 1997 between 1967 and 1979. After the 1967 riots, the Labour and Conservative governments started considering the negotiation of Hong Kong's future in the 1980s. Their views on Hong Kong's future evolved from the Labour's uncertainty, to Conservative's optimism, and finally to Labour's attempts to erase the 1997 deadline and to retain Hong Kong as a colony permanently. Factors taken into their considerations included Cold War, decolonisation, China's policies on Hong Kong, and Britain-Hong Kong relations. Both Labour and Conservative insisted on preserving British sovereignty over disputed colonies such as Hong Kong, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar regardless of the worldwide decolonisation. Besides, their eagerness to contain Communism and maintain Britain's international status, and Hong Kong's strategic and psychological value in Cold War outweighed the deficiencies of Britain-Hong Kong relations and China's unpredictable policies. Therefore, Labour and Conservative governments intended to run Hong Kong as a colony perpetually rather than decolonise it as did in other colonies. To achieve this goal, the British government adopted a reform-oriented colonialism. It empowered the Hong Kong government to deliver social reforms to improve the colony's living standard, which were used to prepare a colony's decolonisation. After the 1967 riots, although Governor David Trench implemented this colonial idea regarding Hong Kong's future, he remained as a housekeeper and only looked for the short term. Succeeding Trench in 1971, Murray MacLehose established a responsive colonial administration and delivered the Conservative's long-term strategy--to widen the living standard between Hong Kong and China--to deter China from recovering the territory. Notable reforms were on government-people relations, housing, education, social welfare and medical and health services. By 1974, the Labour government followed and modified this strategy to justify British colonial rule in Hong Kong domestically and internationally. In this process, Hong Kong was able to design its social reforms, to counter Britain's interests and to reshape its relations with Britain into a partnership. Yet Britain delegated Hong Kong to do so only to remain ultimate control rather than decolonised it. In other words, delegation of power and improvement of living standard were Britain's tools to retain its colonial rule in Hong Kong perpetually. Colonialism and decolonisation were thus interrelated.

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This thesis explores the modern historical lineage of absolutism in Bahrain, and the history of challenges to absolutist state authority during the peak of British influence in the Persian Gulf, the period between the First World War to the Suez crisis of 1956. It rewrites the history of Bahrain and British colonialism in the Persian Gulf through two distinct narrative threads. First, it presents a new history of the colonial-dynastic state in Bahrain and the longer tradition of indirect rule from which its architects drew, and second, it retrieves the history of the popular movements that came to challenge it. This entails an examination of not only how colonial and dynastic authority was jointly exercised, but the ideas that justified such authority over a population conceived of as a set of cultural, and more specifically religious communities governed by their own 'custom' - the conceptual centerpiece of indirect colonial rule. Both these narrative strands constitute part of a broader history of the ideological clash between late colonial ideologies of rule and anticolonial nationalism in the twentieth-century Persian Gulf - a region that was never formally colonized, nor became the site of any successful popular nationalism. Yet both these forces exerted a profound influence on the nation-states that would emerge in the late twentieth century, especially on Bahrain. To chart that historical conjuncture, the thesis begins with the creation of the modern colonial-dynastic state in Bahrain in 1923. It ends in 1956 with the last and most important uprising in Bahrain's during the 20th century, one that was largely a revolt against the political and institutional structures that colonial reformers had established three decades earlier. At its broadest, the thesis argues that the process of state-building under indirect colonial rule in Bahrain derived from a body of colonial thought on native political life and behaviour, and particularly, on the prevention of rebellion that has its origins in mid nineteenth century North India. In Bahrain and the Persian Gulf, as elsewhere in the late colonial world, ideas about empire, the state, authority and rebellion are the intertwined threads that shaped political life and the prose of history.