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<p> The analysis in this thesis is centered around a technical examination which I conducted based on the Pseudo-Clementine research of Bernhard Rehm, Georg Strecker, H. U. Meijboom and F. Stanley Jones along with the inquiry of Brenda Dean Schildgen regarding the reception of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament. The first goal is to revise the Markan Pseudo-Clementine correlations of Rehm, Strecker and Meijboom. The second goal is to present a more correct and accessible list of Markan correlations for future research of the reception of scripture into the Pseudo-Clementines. The third goal is to determine which author or authors of the Pseudo-Clementines used the Gospel of Mark and to what purpose. The most important goal is to further the scholarly research on the reception of the Gospel of Mark. It is my hope that this research prompts scholars in the future to search more thoroughly for the reception of Mark in the PseudoClementines.</p>

In 1978, James Dobson, psychologist and founder of the conservative evangelical group Focus on the Family, Inc., published Preparing for Adolescence: Advice from One of America's Foremost Family Psychologists on How to Survive the Coming Years of Change. Over the next twenty years Dobson's pocket-sized advice manual went on to sell over a million copies and symbolized the desire of white conservative evangelicals to control the moral and social development of adolescents---and in turn the nation. During the same period, black conservative evangelicals were engaged in a separate yet equally vocal struggle to support adolescents and their families against generations-old stereotypes of sexual deviance. Despite their differing goals, both white and black conservative evangelicals viewed the education of young people as critical to the health and influence of their respective communities. Remarkably, however, young peoples' lived experience is rarely studied as a distinct field within American religious history and studies. Moreover, historians often exclude conservative black evangelicals from studies of evangelical Christianity and instead subsume them under the generic and artificial grouping of "The Black Church." This dissertation critically analyzes how conservative evangelicals understood the relationship between sexuality, gender and race in the development of adolescent sex education and ethical leadership. I argue that the critical factoring distinguishing the two groups was not politics, but diverging ideas of American citizenship. Moreover, this project reclaims evangelicalism as a theological identity rather than a political one and illustrates the symbiotic relationship between faith, the human body, and notions of belonging.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 23, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4347. Adviser: Paul V. Spade.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Sydney, 2009. / Title from title screen (viewed October 8, 2009) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy to the Centre for Medieval Studies, Faculty of Arts. Appendix: leaves 158-162. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

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This thesis explores Darwin's life in London in the context of the social relationships he formed there. Recent studies have highlighted the paradox between his speculative work, with its dangerous associations with political radicalism and infidelity, and his intense desire for social respectability, evidenced by his determination to shun controversy and by his retirement to the security of family life in the Kent countryside. How Darwin coped with the tension arising from this mismatch of intellectual radicalism and social conservatism has not been explained; it is widely assumed that it was a major factor in prompting his prolonged and frequent attacks of debilitating illness. The problem is addressed here by looking at the support Darwin drew from the friends he made in London. His experiences during the Beagle voyage had led him to focus on philosophical issues which had not previously troubled him. Having returned to England, he deliberately chose to surround himself with friends who were not afraid to adopt heterodox positions on religion and society; in their company his personal anxieties were assuaged and he could pursue new ideas with enthusiasm. These friends had specialist knowledge in subjects which had a close bearing on Darwin's theories. His relationship with them throws light on issues such as how the debate about religion influenced his evolutionary thinking, and the nature of the contribution made to it by Malthus. The esteem in which they were held, notwithstanding their intellectual radicalism, explains how Darwin was able to find in their company the self-confidence to develop his iconoclastic conclusions. His identification with them, and their contribution to the intellectual re-evaluation of the 1830s and 1840s, helps to account for the wide acceptance of Darwin's views, published twenty years later, when the social ideology being formulated in his youth had become the prevailing orthodoxy of mid-Victorian England.

This study examines the development of theories of civil religion in Hanoverian Britain. In the aftermath of the seventeenth-century wars of religion, theorists of civil religion sought to render Protestant Christianity a faith whose ecclesiology was compatible with the civil state and whose practice encouraged civilised society. It presents lay thinkers including Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Edward Gibbon, and David Hume, alongside clergymen such as Edmund Gibson, bishop of London, William Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, and Conyers Middleton. It considers such Dissenters as Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, who refashioned civil religion variously along Unitarian and congregational lines. In contrast to the usual scholarly preoccupation with the argument of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that Christianity could never become a civil religion, this study demonstrates how Hanoverian intellectuals constructed a Christian civil religion. They sought to purge the civil state and society of superstition, priestcraft, and enthusiasm by creating a religion of virtue, sociability, and happiness. They drew on the church-state relationship generated during the ‘long Reformation’ in England and Scotland by which the secular civil magistrate governed the national church and regulated its priests, who were to preach the simple morality of the gospel. Hanoverian theorists of civil religion synthesised primitive Christianity with the ancient civil religions, relying above all on Cicero. Irrespective of their inward views about the normative truths of the articles of faith of the churches of England and Scotland, civil religionists sought to reconcile them with civil ends. They believed that outward observance of the Reformed religion was a criterion for belonging within the Christian commonwealth of Hanoverian Britain.

Religious leaders were key figures within African American society in the late antebellum South. They undertook a vital religious function within both the plantation slave community and the institutionalised biracial and independent black church and many became a focal point for African American Christianity amongst slaves and free blacks. These religious leaders also took on a number of secular responsibilities, becoming counsellors, mediators, and advisors, individuals that blacks would frequently seek out for their opinion, advice and solace. African American religious leaders held a position considered to be vital and prestigious. But such a position was also perilous. Black religious leaders had to reconcile the conflicting demands of two groups whose needs were almost diametrically opposed. Slaves and free blacks wanted to hear a message of hope, but the Southern elite wanted to hear a message of obedience to ensure that their authority remained unchallenged. Appeasing both groups was an almost impossible task. Failing to meet their demands, however, could be disastrous for black religious leaders. Slaves and free blacks who heard a message of obedience to the Southern white elite rejected the authority of the black preacher, who was then often unable to continue his ministrations. Conversely, those who were considered to be teaching a message that was undermining the planter's authority faced reprisals from white society. These reprisals could be violent. In order to survive, black religious leaders had to chart a difficult course between the two groups, giving a sense of hope to the enslaved but in a manner that did not appear to undermine white authority. Within historical scholarship, it has been argued that African American religious leaders shared a common role. By the late antebellum period, however, a divide had emerged amongst black religious leaders. Although they continued to share many of the same goals, responsibilities, and challenges, the form of Christianity practiced by black preachers on the plantation was not the same as that practiced by licensed black ministers in the biracial and independent black church. Christianity within the plantation slave community continued to include African traditions and rituals that had survived the transatlantic crossing. Christianity within the biracial and independent black church, however, had begun to reject these African traditions as backward and outdated, and had moved instead towards a form of religion that, whilst still emotional and uplifting, was also more formal and hierarchical, resembling the Christianity of white Southern evangelicals.Black preachers and licensed black ministers were preaching Christianity in the face of adversity and had the potential to become political leaders within the African American community. The realisation of this potential was hindered, not only by the constant supervision of these religious leaders by the white elite but also through the refusal of black preachers and ministers to use Christianity to justify acts of resistance. This research adds new insight to the role of African American religious leaders through a detailed understanding of their different approaches in delivering the Christian message.

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