The work offers a critical reevaluation of the Mission of the Old Catholic Church in Britain, following the Episcopal consecration of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Arnold Harris Mathew in 1908, by the Old Catholic Church Episcopal See of Utrecht employing the methodology of historical theology. The original contribution this thesis makes to scholarship is in the analysis of Mathew's Mission and its heirs from a postmodern perspective. I argue that Mathew's movement can be understood and, indeed, is best understood as a postmodem phenomenon. Furthermore, that the contemporary 'school' of theology known as Radical Orthodoxy can provide a lens through which to make sense of this movement, particularly as it developed into Liberal Catholicism and can provide a critical theological interface with the movement. I further argue that the contemporary emerging Church movement bears a 'family resemblance' with the independent Catholic movement Mathew did much to generate and provides an additional postmodem movement with which to make sense of Mathew's Mission and its heirs. The thesis begins with an introduction in which key terms are defined, the methodology established and a literature review conducted. A great deal has been written about Mathew and the independent Catholic movement, most of it critical, but no scholar has approached the phenomenon explicitly from a postmodern perspective. A biographical sketch of Mathew is provided.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:642935 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Palmer, Richard Arthur |
| Contributors | Stuart, Elizabeth ; Mounsey, Chris |
| Publisher | University of Winchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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