The best interest test is the legal mechanism which governs decision making on behalf of adults who lack the capacity to make their own health care treatment decisions. The test has attracted considerable criticism from health professionals, academics, judges and lawyers for being ill-defined and non-specific. The question of what is meant by 'best interests' remains largely unanswered. As a consequence, the test gives medical and legal decision makers considerable discretion to apply their personal value judgements within supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks - unreasoned and opaque decision making processes are the inevitable result. Because of the dominance of supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks, the place of values in decision making is not always fully understood. Reasoning is not possible without values, which stem from our emotions and passions, our upbringing, our religion, our cultures, our processes of socialisation and from our life experiences. Values help us make sense of our daily lives. I argue that law - like any other social institution - is essentially a human, values based construct. I put forward a theory of values-based law which argues for the recognition that laws, rules and conventions are based on, and contain, individual values. Currently, medical and legal decision makers justify grave decisions on behalf of society's most vulnerable citizens without revealing, or even acknowledging the values which drive and inform their decisions. Any opportunities to scrutinise or debate the values driving decisions are lost. Ultimately, values-based law argues that values underlying best interest determinations must be exposed to facilitate honest, transparent and fulsome decision making on behalf of adults who lack capacity. By applying the theory of values-based law, supposedly value-free decision making processes are exposed as insufficient to facilitate fulsome, honest and transparent legal reasoning.

The majority of established legal systems are predisposed to the express recognition of good faith in contract. The apparent pressure for harmonisation of contract law arising from globalisation and political union will necessitate the Anglo-Commonwealth common law countries addressing their historical resistance to the observance of a general obligation of good faith. Accordingly this thesis appraises whether there is a requirement for a universal doctrine of good faith in New Zealand contractual relationships. The manuscript focuses on a prospective common law doctrine operating primarily as a rule of construction. It identifies the limits of such a judicial doctrine including its probable lack of application to non-contractual dealings and the likely need for a legislative duty if contracting parties are to be precluded from excluding the obligation. The characteristics of the subject doctrine are explored including the potential definition and uses of good faith. Whilst it is shown that good faith serves an important role in contract law, the analysis reveals that there is no current requirement for an express doctrine within New Zealand. The entrenched ‘piecemeal’ approach synonymous with Anglo-New Zealand contract law is not demonstrably deficient when gauged against the reasonable expectations of contracting parties. The current methodology is preferred to a general, unfamiliar and uncertain good faith principle which is likely to be reduced to equate with the existing New Zealand law in any event. Further, duties consonant with good faith may enhance economic efficiency but not in some instances. Good faith is therefore best imposed in specific circumstances rather than as a universal doctrine. Likewise, there is insufficient evidence to suggest that New Zealand is impaired in the international arena due to a lack of good faith despite pressure for New Zealand to accord with widespread overseas practice. The principle is of minimal utility in international trade where commercial certitude is paramount. Although an imperfect exemplar, the unresolved issues pertaining to contractual good faith in domestic American law confirms the identified reservations associated with the subject doctrine.

This study offers a response to the question facing the Australian Anglican Church about how the mission of Anglican schools is aligned with the mission of the whole Church. The study explores two Anglican school principals’ faith formation leadership, as they engage in this mission. Fundamental to understanding the context of this study is awareness of Anglicanism’s broad variety of expression balanced with unity through Scripture, Reason and Tradition. In spite of differences, the Anglican Church seeks the ‘Via Media’, the middle way, held together in a dynamic tension of debate. Anglican school principals lead faith formation in this context of diversity, which leads to the purpose of this study: to explore two Australian Anglican school principals’ perceptions of their role and capability as school leaders of faith formation within the Anglican Church’s mission. The three questions guiding this study relate to the ways in which the principals understand their role, their capability for the role, and the ways in which the Anglican Church has equipped them to be faith formation leaders in their schools. Various Anglican sources note that these questions have been on the Anglican Church’s agenda for several decades. A recent report on the governance relationship between an Australian Anglican Diocese and its schools noted lack of Anglican identity and role definition of schools’ mission in the Church as significant issues (Nicholson, 2007), and this appears to be the case in faith formation leadership also. Underpinning this study are assumptions that the nurturing of the Christian faith in the Anglican tradition is a core task of Anglican schools as agents of Anglican mission, and that the principal of an Anglican school plays a key role in leading faith formation by authentic personal Christian witness. In this study, Anglican school faith formation leadership has been explored in cultural and symbolic dimensions of leadership. Catholic and Lutheran schools’ faith formation leadership practices are reviewed to inform the study. This exploratory, qualitative study has an orientation of social constructionism, seeking two purposively sampled Australian Anglican school principals‟ perceptions from an open research stance. A theoretical framework of symbolic interactionsism has valued the participants’ context. A phenomenological research methodology has used data gathering methods of interview, survey questionnaire, observation and documentary analysis. The study indicates that areas for further study include the shared faith formation leadership roles of principals and school chaplains; the fostering of a culture of research about Anglican school faith leadership; the provision of professional mentoring for principals; the relationship of principals to the Anglican Church; and provision by the Anglican Church of guiding statements and training to equip principals for their faith leadership roles.

This thesis presents a broad exploratory analysis of apostasy from religious fundamentalism in light of cognitive developmental theory. Reciprocally, the thesis provides a critique of cognitive developmental theory in light of its application to apostasy from fundamentalism. Autobiographical narratives of approximately 200 apostates from Christian and Muslim fundamentalisms are used to represent the experience of apostasy. Three related and representative cognitive developmental theories are used to inform the analysis of these apostate narratives. These theories include James Fowler’s Stages of Faith (FDT) (1981); Fritz Oser and Paul Gmünder’s Stages of Religious Judgment (RJT) (1991); and Helmut Reich’s Levels of Relational and Contextual Reasoning (RCR) (2002). These three representative theories are used to generate cognitive developmental hypotheses for the experiences of apostates from fundamentalisms. There are three primary hypotheses guiding the research: (i) Fundamentalist contents predispose a particular form of cognitive operations. (ii) Fundamentalist contents suspend equilibration between accommodation and assimilation. And (iii), some forms of apostasy from fundamentalism are the product of a sociocognitive conflict. These hypotheses are addressed through four research questions: (i) How do fundamentalist cultures sponsor or arrest cognitive development? (ii) What are the developmental characteristics of apostates’ experiences? (iii) What are the implications of cognitive development for apostasy and fundamentalism? And (iv), what are the implications of apostasy from fundamentalism for theories of cognitive development? The thesis utilises a paradigm of critical realism and a theory of interactionism. Critical realism assumes the existence of an objective reality, while acknowledging its exclusively subjective mediation. The interactionist approach acknowledges the potential influences of genetic predisposition, social-environmental context, and individual agency affecting cognitive development and apostasy from fundamentalism. A dual methodological approach is used to collect and analyse data relevant to the hypothesis. Data collection involves two phases: (i) Collection of existing unstructured apostate narratives. And (ii), collection of semi-structured apostate responses. The first phase narratives are collected using online databases, published anthologies, and solicited scripts. The second phase responses are collected using a semi-structured survey. The dual methodological analysis combines coded content analysis and narrative analysis. Coding is informed by the three developmental theories. The qualitative thesis findings may be summarised in two parts. The first pertains to apostasy from fundamentalism; the second pertains to cognitive developmental theory. Of the former, the research found: (i) Cognitive development represents a significant and even primary influence in some forms of apostasy from fundamentalism. And (ii), some forms of fundamentalism sponsor stage specific structures. Reflecting on cognitive theories of religious development, the research found: (i) Sociocultural, affective, and noncognitive physical influences may directly and indirectly facilitate or inhibit cognitive development. (ii) Specific stages and structures of cognitive development may be culturally embedded. (iii) Cognitive development may be compartmentalised. (iv) Cognitive development may regress or fracture when faced with transitional crises and environmental changes. (v) There are diverse trajectories of religious development. And (vi), fractured development at one stage may perpetuate fractured development in the next stage. Finally, the thesis discusses implications of these findings for contemporary dialogue on religious development. These collective findings provide support for a religious styles model (i.e. Streib’s Religious Styles Perspective, 2001) that integrates a cognitive stream based on Fowler’s faith development into a more multiperspective understanding of religious development. Such a model would account more adequately for the diverse influences interacting to produce different trajectories of religious development.

Was it worthwhile? The thesis asks this question of the life and work of female faith missionaries who served in Western Australia with the Australian Aborigines’ Mission and/or the United Aborigines’ Mission, during the twentieth century. In 1902, the New South Wales Aborigines’ Mission adopted faith mission principles based on those of the China Inland Mission founded in 1865. The mission expanded into Western Australia in 1908 and changed its name to the Australian Aborigines’ Mission. From 1929, it was known as the United Aborigines’ Mission. The research began with a historiography of the China Inland Mission and the United Aborigines’ Mission and its antecedents. The analysis of the principles of these two missions identified that some characteristics of a faith mission were present in the New South Wales Aborigines’ Mission from the beginning and others were never adopted. It established that from 1902, the New South Wales Aborigines’ Mission upheld the faith principles of trusting God to provide physical needs, not soliciting for funds and not entering into debt. Because most faith missionaries were female, the historiography proceeded to examine texts on women missionaries, including recent work by Australian writers. This recognised that issues of gender, race and class were present within both mission cultures. Five case studies were chosen to cover a period from 1912 when Bertha Telfer arrived in Western Australia until the retirement of Mary Jones in 1971. Using written and oral source material from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, the research studied the work of five female faith missionaries in south-west Australia: Bertha Telfer/Alcorn, Ethel Hamer/Fryer, Hope Malcolm/Wright, Mary Jones and Melvina Langley/Rowley, with a focus on issues of Evangelicalism, race, gender and class. Preliminary investigation of the women recognized that while only one had professional training and two received missionary training, membership of the interdenominational Christian Endeavour youth movement was a formative influence on all these female missionaries. An investigation into the principles of that organisation, founded in North America in 1881, established it was influenced by the 1858-59 Revival within Evangelicalism in England and North America and it placed a strong emphasis on personal conversion and a commitment to mission. Christian Endeavour spread to Australia by 1883 and was found to have provided limited leadership opportunities to women. The research tracked the experience of the female faith missionaries over six decades of living by faith among the Nyungar people and discovered a lack of identification with Indigenous culture that had its roots in a widely held belief in the superiority of western culture. Associated with this was the Evangelical belief in personal conversion that did not address cross-cultural issues. The UAM identification with the rise of fundamentalism from the 1920s coincided with diminished leadership opportunities for women at a time when women were gaining more choices in the wider Australian community. The thesis concludes that the role of faith missionary was costly to women in terms of their health and wellbeing. In the context of oppressive government policies towards Indigenous Australians, the poverty and marginalisation experienced by the women, when combined with compassion, created solidarity with Nyungar people. In some cases, this reduced the barriers of race and gender and resulted in the conversion of some Nyungar people, contributing to the formation of an Indigenous and Evangelical church. These findings are significant because they point to new understanding of mission, conversion and Aboriginal-missionary relations and cultures and of the role played by female faith missionaries in the shared mission history of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Western Australians.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 102-104).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Covenant Theological Seminary, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-287).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of English, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 323-367).

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic University of America, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 286-294).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-108).