Master of Arts / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / After years of selecting, editing, omitting, reducing and correcting what would become printed as over fourteen thousand pages of devotional literature for a young Methodist movement in the wake of the English Evangelical Revival, John Wesley pronounced his A Christian library: consisting of extracts from, and abridgments of, the choicest Pieces of practical divinity which have been published in the English tongue in fifty volumes (1749-1755) an underappreciated treasure and an overtaxing expenditure. Taking their lead from Wesley’s comments, scholars and historians of Wesley studies and Methodism have neglected to take a closer look at the ways the library may have been successful. This study argues that despite being initially a marketing disappointment and an expensive liability, John Wesley’s Christian library was influential in helping to shape the spiritual lives of “serious readers” within Methodism, particularly from 1752-1778. In the preface to the Christian library, Wesley revealed his standard for measuring the influence of the Library. However, despite offering a premature and partial assessment of the library in his journal entry at the end of 1752, providing some public responses to criticisms of the library in 1760 and again in the early 1770s, and writing some personal letters that recommended the library to others in the 1780s, Wesley did not publish an evaluation of what he believed the Christian library had accomplished during his life. Thus, based on the collaborative evidence gathered from the personal accounts of early Methodist preachers and the final address of Francis Asbury to American Methodists, this study makes the case that Wesley’s Christian library had a substantial positive influence on Methodism.

Since the 1992 republication of On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot, most academic work on Apess has focused on his Methodism, his Native American identity, or the intersection between these two parts of his life and work. Dr. Tim Fulford is the only scholar to have written about Apess and Romanticism. In his book Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, and Transatlantic Culture, 1756-1830, Fulford illustrates the elegiac modes often present in the work of Apess. This thesis will examine William Apess’ Son of the Forest as an expression of early nineteenth century American Romanticism from a post-colonial standpoint. Apess uses Romantic rhetoric to define Native American identity and through that identity, argue for Native American political agency.

This thesis is a study of the ‘race relations’ work of Christians in the sixties in England, with specific reference to a Methodist church in Notting Hill, London. As such, it is also a study of English racisms: how they were fought against and how they were denied and facilitated. Additionally, the thesis pays attention to the interface of ‘religion’ and politics and the radical restatement of Christianity in the sixties. Despite a preponderance of sociological literature on 'race relations' and 'religion' in England, there has been a dearth of historical studies of either area in the post-war period. Therefore, this thesis is an important revision to the existing historiography in that it adds flesh to the bones of the story of post-war Christian involvement in the politics of 'race', and gives further texture and detail to the history of racism, 'race relations', and anti-racist struggles in England. Moreover, the thesis implicitly challenges the received wisdom of the decline of the churches in the sixties and shows an active engagement of Christians with politics. Using a wide range of private and public archives and interviews, the thesis takes a micro-study of the Notting Hill Methodist Church and places it within its wider contexts: how English Christians approached 'race' and 'race relations', what kinds of racialised political engagements existed in Notting Hill, and what kinds of racisms were expressed in England. The contextualised and detailed micro-study has enabled the thesis to capture the texture and depth which is needed to better understand 'race' and 'race relations' in post-war England. In doing so, the thesis sheds detailed light on some active 'civil rights' struggles in England and therefore challenges the received wisdom which views these struggles as being an American rather than an English (or British) story.

A comparison between Ware, Forbes, and Soulsby from The Damnation of Theron Ware provides a glimpse into one aspect of the theological upheaval of the time. A comparison between Ware, Forbes, and Algarcife, from Phases of an Inferior Planet, however, hearkens forward to the alienation and questioning of identity so much a part of the Twentieth Century. By viewing Ware as a foil for Forbes and Soulsby in tandem with Algarcife, a more complete picture of the transition between nineteenth and twentieth-century religion and theology may be found. Understanding the encounter between the traditional and the liberal clergy requires a close examination of the way Ware, Forbes, Soulsby, and Algarcife interact with religions and theologies and adjust their actions in order to maintain the balance between the two, and how each character's interaction with the figure of the aesthete aids in the negotiation. Ware cannot aspire to the erudition of scholars like Forbes and Algarcife, nor is he able to understand the aestheticism, the "art for art," of Madden, from Damnation, and Musin, from Phases. He is unable to maintain a dogmatic theology in the service of religion like Soulsby. He is an anachronism, caught between centuries, caught between two religious, theological, and aesthetic historical moments.

This is a study of American Methodist Mission in Sweden and how this mission eventually formed the Methodist Church in Sweden 1876. The mission began as a consequence of returning Swedish emigrants and sailors who had encountered Methodism in America, mainly through the works of Swedish-American missionary Olof Gustaf Hedström on the Bethel ship in New York. During the 1850’s Methodist missionaries were sent to Scandinavia by the American Missions Society. The first to come to Sweden was Johan Peter Larsson, who spent two years in Sweden in 1854 before he was transferred to Norway. He returned in 1865 and was followed by a number of missionaries during the next years. Most important of these were Victor Witting who arrived in Gothenburg at the end of 1867. During 1868 the first congregations and a national association for missionaries were formed. The bylaws of the association for missionaries relates to the section in Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church about The Annual Conference. Methodist mission expanded fast in Sweden, at first along the coasts, and during the 1870’s equally fast on land. Up to the forming of a church in 1876 the mission never expanded further north than Orsa. The establishment of the Methodist Church in Sweden shares a lot of similarities with the development in Denmark, Finland and Norway. The expansion in Sweden was faster compared to the other countries. One reason for this was the large amount of missionaries that were sent to Sweden. All four churches formed according to new religious legislation and were the first to do so in all four countries.

Territory remains a focus for identification and territorial identity an enduring topic of scholarly research. This dissertation explores the territorial identity of Cornwall in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The study does three things; it defines Cornish identity on the basis of concepts of distinction, integration, process, narrative, context and scale; it applies the model of regional identity formation proposed by Anssi Paasi; and it develops the disciplinary approach of the new Cornish Studies. The subject of the dissertation is the period after the fragmentation of a linguistically based ethnic identity and before the reconstruction of a ‘Celtic’ Cornish identity. A comparative investigation of this phase of the history of identity transformation restores continuity between Cornwall’s industrial and post-industrial periods and provides an account of modern Cornish identity. The first part of the dissertation reviews representations of Cornwall and its people in the early nineteenth century. The focus then shifts to discuss the structures and institutions – economic, social and religious – around which identities cohered. The argument of the thesis is that industrialisation based on deep metal mining gave the Cornish a renewed pride as inhabitants of one of Europe’s first centres of industrialisation. In this sense Cornwall resembled other industrial regions in the early nineteenth century British Isles. However, it also differed from them, most notably in its demography, in the social relations produced by rural industrialisation and in the way its historians had re-fashioned a history of the Cornish as a distinct group. By the later nineteenth century a hybrid identity had emerged, one based on a regional pride induced by industrialisation but one that also looked back to symbols of ethnic distinctiveness. This regional identity nested within identities of Englishness and Britishness that constrained its political potential.

This report examines the sectarian backdrop for Galen of Pergamum's medical epistemology. It considers the justificatory role that experience (empeiria) and theoretical accounts (logoi) play in Empiricist and Dogmatist epistemology in an attempt to track how Galen incorporates experience into theoretical accounts as a means by which to undergird them. Finally, it briefly considers the exiguous evidence for Methodism, Galen's main medical rivals in the Roman world and claims that Galen forges a middle path between these sects. / text

The Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) has been plagued by a number of problems. One of this problems has been the breakaway of some of its members. Some of these members have joined other churches (Mainstream and African Indigenous Churches) and others have founded their own churches. One of the major reasons for the breakaways is what I have framed lack of "African Spirituality" in the MCSA. By "African Spirituality" I imply that the African way of life does not distinguish between sacred and secular. African spirituality includes the following component elements: Belief in one God, belief in Divinities, Believe in spirits, veneration of ancestors and practice of medicine. My research in the Thaba-Nchu area confirmed the existence of this problem in the Thaba-Nchu Methodist church. There were three categories of respondents in this research: those who left the church are: those who live between two worlds (belonging to the MCSA and attending services in the African Indigenous Churches at the same time); and those who have single membership. The first two categories, unanimously agreed that the lack African spirituality and that is why they left the church or have dual membership. Ways of addressing this problem, i.e., to remedy the situation, have been suggested by the respondents, some scholars and leaders of the MCSA. These suggestions include the following: (i) singing: use of drums, clapping of hands, etc. (ii) special Sundays for prayers of healing: the church is to use people who are gifted in this, e.g. diviners, sangomas and barapelli. (iii) symbolic things like water to be used. It is hoped that if these suggestions were implemented, the problem would be addressed and the breakaways would stop or slow down and those who have dual membership would be satisfied to stick to the Thaba-Nchu Methodist Church alone. To implement these suggestions, the "top down" communication strategy adopted by the MCSA's leadership on this and other problems has to be revised, the language used must be understandable to the ordinary people (the grassroots or the marginalised) and the material must be easily accessible to them. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.

In this regional study of Methodist development and societal influence throughout the period of industrialisation, recent trends in Methodist historiography at a national level are combined with the research and source material accumulated at a local level, to provide a detailed analysis of Methodist growth in Cornwall between the years 1780 and 1870. The thesis is divided loosely into three sections. In the first, four chapters outline the essential background to interpretative analysis by considering, in turn, recent historiographical developments in Methodist studies; social change in Cornwall during industrialisation; the performance of the Anglican Church in the county as represented in the Visitation Returns for 1779, (as well as historical and structural reasons for its 'failure'); and Methodist growth as expressed through available statistical indices, especially the date of formation of Methodist societies, and the 1851 Ecclesiastical Census. In the second section, one long chapter is devoted to an in-depth, county-wide analysis of Methodist growth, which considers the impact of external factors, particularly socio-economic, and internal circumstances, such as the degree of maturity of pastoral and administrative machinery, and the level of Connexional or lay control over chapel and circuit affairs, on the form and function of Methodism in nine distinct socioeconomic regions within the county. In the third section, four chapters concentrate on West Cornwall, where Methodism was strongest, in order to examine the roots of, and reasons for, the distinctively indigenous form of Methodism which developed there. On the one hand, the pastoral and administrative difficulties in exerting adequate Connexional control are considered; while on the other, an interpretation of the 'folk' functionality of revivals and of Methodism as a 'popular religion' is offered.

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