DOCSLIB.ORG

Unspoken Sermons": Christian Preaching in British Fiction, 1979-2004

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Unspoken Sermons "Unspoken Sermons": Christian Preaching in British Fiction, 1979-2004. David Dickinson Oxford Brookes University. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the award of Doctor of Philosophy. March 2007. Dedicatiot» In appreciation of George MacDonald, the nineteenth century preacher, who found that fiction was a better pulpit than any provided by a Scottish church, in memory of Jacqueline Dickinson, with whom I shared my plans for this thesis on a walk around Buttermere, which will be an abiding memory for as long as I am able to control what I can recall, and with love for Yvette, who encourages me in all things. "Unspoken Sermons": Christian Preaching in British Fiction, 1979-2004. David Dickinson. 99,509 words . ••• Abstract Declining church attendance in pluralist Britain indicates that the Christian sermon, once a vibrant literary genre, has become an increasingly unfamiliar formto most readers and writers of fiction. Yet, as this thesis will argue, fictional sermons are still successfully used by novelists. The thesis examines sermons in three genres, and representing three Christian traditions, the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Free Church. The genres discussed are chronicles, as represented by Antonia Byatt and David Lodge, historical novels written by Geraldine Brooks and Jane Rogers and fiction by John Murray and Michael Arditti sited in specific religious, spiritual or ecclesiastical environments. The thesis develops an analytical toolkit, based mainly on rhetorical narratology and cognitive poetics, to examine the current status of fictional sermons. Five case studies follow. The first discusses issues of authority and inspiration in texts, preachers and preaching. The second considers how novelists communicate religious experience, particularly experiences of epiphany and conversion. The third describes contemporary novels' portraits of the troubled preacher. The fourth analyses the language used by novelists in their sermons and the fifth studies how sermons construct discourse communities and religious community. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the significance of memory, imagination and embodiment as agents by which readers - and hearers of actual sermons- are enabled to respond to suasory speech and engage with its proposedalternative world. The thesis is intended as a contribution to the study of religion and literature, to discourse analysis, to homiletical theory and practice and to criticism of contemporaryliterature. ii Acknowledgements Although my name stands alone on the title page and years of work on this thesis have included many solitary hours in the study, I am conscious of my indebtedness to many people without whose collaboration I would not have completed this research. Some have been with me throughout; others have made a singular contribution. From the point of view of those I am thanking, uniformgratitude must seem unfair - they must feel like vineyard labourersin the Matthean parable - but, from my point of view, the fact is that I am equally gratefulto anyone who has helpedme in whatever way. Thank you to ... - the men and women who wrote the novels on my reading list, especially John Murrayand Michael Arditti who discussed their work with me. - Miriam Morgan who transcribedmy interview with John Murray. - librariansand other staffat Oxford Brookes University whose willingness to seek books from other libraries, to track and copy articles and to advise on practical matters has made being a part-time research student living and working more than fifty miles from the university a much less frustratingexperience than I had expected. - the Methodist Church whose Continuing Development in Ministry scheme has awardeda small grant to assist with fees since 2004. It might be possibleto discerna Methodist perspectiveto this thesis: this is partly in acknowledgement of the Church's support, but it is also because I cannot avoid writing about the church I know best. I hope non­ Methodistsdo not findthis perspectivean irritatingbias. - the preachers - ordained and lay - of both the London (Harrow) Circuit and the St Albans and Welwyn Circuit, whom I consulted both formally and informallyat various stages of my research. - members of the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture with whom, at three conferences I attended while working on this research, I enjoyed many usefuland stimulating conversations. jjj - Elisabeth Jay, my Director of Studies, who, as I encountered the ups and downs of research, gently showed me a clear path through the wilderness and made the rough ways smooth, and Rob Pope for his guidance as I worked on chapter 2. - friends and family whom I may have bored with accounts of fictional sermons on many occasions, some of which were intended to be parties! - and the congregations to whom I have preached. These - and others I have inadvertently failed to mention - are the people who deserve any credit for anything that is good in this work, whilst I am responsible for its inadequacies. iv Contents Chapter 1- Fictional Sermons 1 1.1- Context 3 1.2 - Hybridity 14 1.3- Scope of Study 28 Chapter 2- Analysing Fictional Sermons: A Methodological Toolkit 52 Chapter 3 - Authority in the fictional pulpit: the sermon's warrants, preacher and textual placing 81 3.1 - An authoritative text 85 3.2 - Vir bonus dicendi peritus 102 3.3. - Intratextual authority 111 Chapter 4 - Religious experience: epiphany and magical realism 113 Chapter 5 - Troubled preachers: keeping faith 143 Chapter 6 - "Words, words": the language of fictional sermons 172 Chapter 7 - Religious community as discourse community 202 Chapter 8 - Implications: Mimesis, Poiesis and Incarnation 232 8.1 - Mimesis: a living practice of memory 235 8.2 - Poiesis: Imag(in)ing godly worlds 245 8.3 - Incarnation: embodying the Word 251 References A: Primary Sources 267 B: Other fiction, poetry and plays 267 C: Secondary Criticism 270 v Table of figures Figure 1 - Sermons in Easter 38 Figure 2 - The Narrative Triptych Structure of Easter 39 Figure 3 - Audiences 63 Figure 4 - Schema Employment 65 Figure 5 - Data, warrants and claim 71 Figure 6 - A toolkit for analysing sermons in fiction 80 Figure 7 - Three-fold authority of fictional sermons 85 Figure 8 126 Between pages 67 and 68 there is an illustration of John Millais's Boyhood of Raleigh and between pages 113 and 114 an illustration of Paul Gauguin's Vision of the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel. Notes on usage and style Except for Chapter 2 where they indicate sections and sub-sections of the analytical toolkit, bracketed numbers within the text of the thesis indicate page references in primary sources. Byatt's novels are distinguished from each other by using the following abbreviations: - The Virgin in the Garden VG Still Life SL Babel Tower BT A Whistling Woman WW Not a devotee of capital letters in theological writing, I use an initial capital for 'church' and 'bible' only when referring to a particular denomination, such as the Church of England, or version of the Christian scriptures, such as the Revised English Bible. This is not only easier on the eye when reading, but also eases a discussion of authoritative and inspired texts. vi 1: Fictional Sermons In an era of revolution in communications, the ancient art of preaching is in a critical state: its status in Christian culture is lower now than perhaps it ever has been, since its inception when Peter preached his Pentecost sennon to the Jast signs of a golden age when crowds still gathered in London to listen to Free Church preachers such as William Sangster, Leslie Weatherhead, Donald Soper and the American visitor, Billy Graham. This interdisciplinary study offictional preaching addresses the pulpit crisis of late twentieth and early twenty-first century Britain which Christian ministers face as they labour over their Sunday sermons. It touches upon many theological themes including the psychology of religious experience, the nature of religious language, the creation of religious community, the question of authority and the difficulties of religious belief, but its main theological interest is in homiletics, a branch of theological studies much neglected in British seminaries and twenty-first century academia. Its literary and cultural interests are in the representation of preaching in the imagined world of popular novels. This chapter problematises contemporary preaching, describes the genre of fictional sermons and introduces the novels I have used as primary sources. 2 In a recent study of sermons in American fiction and culture Melody Seymour defined a sermon in fiction as: "...a specific utterance, attributed to a particular character within a narrative and delivered tofictive listeners. who hear the discourse as purporting to give moral or religious insight or instruction in a speech formally set offfrom normal dialogue ... I Her thesis surveys sermons in the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Updike, Zora Neale Hurston and Herbert Melville, contextualising them with popular preachers such as Harry Emerson Fosdick, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham and Phillips Brooks. She demonstrates that sermons are foregrounded in American literature and, taking a cue for her imagery from Melville's Moby-Dick, says sermons in American fiction are in the prow of the boat. This can hardly be claimed for sermons in contemporary British fiction, where they are encountered as an even stranger genre than Seymour suggests American readers find them to be. Late twentieth century North American novelists, including John Updike, Toni Morrison and Jane Rule, are no less reluctant to write fictional sermons than their early-twentieth-century or nineteenth-century antecedents, such as Zora Neale Hurston, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Nathaniel Hawthorne or Herman Melville.2 Because this is an age of global reading, when travellers abroad can purchase novels in international airports before they are published in Britain, the market for a particular book may be less specific than it might once have been and novels have the capacity to cross over between cultures.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 231 BOOK REVIEWS John Pritchard
    Methodist History, 52:4 (July 2014) BOOK REVIEWS John Pritchard, Methodists and Their Mission Societies, 1760-1900. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. 318 pp. £63. Methodists and Their Mission Societies, 1760-1900, is the first part of a two-volume series by John Pritchard about British Methodist mission work around the world. The publication of this series marks the two hundredth anniversary of the first meeting of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS) in October of 1883 in Leeds. Moreover the book updates the 1913 five volume work by G.G. Findlay and W.W. Holdsworth entitled The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (Epworth). The focus of this work is further broadened and includes the mission work of four other denominations (Primitive Methodists, Methodist New Connexion, United Methodist Free Churches and Bible Christians) under the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society to become the Methodist Mission Society in 1932. Pritchard records in great detail the early Methodist mission efforts around the world including the roles of John Wesley, Thomas Coke, Jabez Bunting and other mission proponents. Beginning with the backdrop of six- teenth-century Catholic and late seventeenth-century to early eighteenth-cen- tury German Pietist mission work, the book quickly focuses on the British context. The author describes the priority of the Society for the Promotion of the Gospel (SPG) to provide for the spiritual needs of the colonists before evangelizing native peoples. William Caray’s 1792 Enquiry, which led to the creation of the Baptist Missionary Society, and Thomas Coke’s apoca- lyptic urgency heightened this priority, however the tension between empire and mission to the indigenous remained for several decades—varying from country to country.
    [Show full text]
  • Jabez Bunting
    JA BEZ B U N T I N G A GREAT METHO DIST LEA DER I D . REV. MES H RR N R G D O G . JA A IS , T HE M D ETHO IST BOO' CON C ERN . N EW 'OR ' C I CI AT I N NN . P R E 'A C E N o o ne can feel more deeply than the writer how inadequate is the little book he h a s i written , when crit cally regarded as a life - sketch of the greatest man o f middle Methodism , to whose gifts and character organized Wesleyan Methodism throughout the world owes incomparably more than to any other man , With more Space a better book might and ought to have been made . But to bring the book within reach of every intelligent and earnest Methodist youth and ’ o f every working man s family , a very cheap volume was necessary , and therefore a very small one . The writer has done his best, w accordingly , to meet the vie s of the Metho dist Publishing House in this matter . He knows how great and serious are some o f the deficiencies in this record ; especially 6 Pre fa ce o n i the side of Methodist Fore gn Missions , hi as to w ch he has said nothing , though Jabez Bunting in this field was the prime and most influential organizer in all the early ’ years of o u r Church s Connexional mission work and world -wide enterprises The subject was too large and wide , too various and too complicated , to be dealt with in a section of a small book .
    [Show full text]
  • Durham Research Online
    Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 14 September 2018 Version of attached le: Accepted Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Higton, Mike (2018) 'Rowan Williams.', in The Oxford handbook of ecclesiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 505-523. Oxford handbooks. Further information on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199645831.013.15 Publisher's copyright statement: Higton, Mike (2018). Rowan Williams. In The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology. Avis, Paul Oxford: Oxford University Press. 505-523, reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199645831.013.15 Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk ROWAN WILLIAMS MIKE HIGTON ABSTRACT Rowan Williams' ecclesiology is shaped by his account of the spiritual life. He examines the transformation of human beings' relationships to one another driven by their encounter with God's utterly gracious love in Jesus Christ.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Welcome to the Methodist Church Here at High Street
    Introduction Welcome to the Methodist Church here at High Street, Maidenhead. We hope that your visit to this long - established and continuously active church will be both be for you an architectural interest and an appreciation of the lives of some of the people associated with it over the past 150 years or so. There has been a Chapel on this site since 1841 which was built for the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion. Originally it was a rectangular shape measuring approximately 65 ft x 35 ft. A partition across its width allowed about three quarters of the building at its north end to be used for worship whilst the remainder consisted of two rooms one above the other. A gallery at the northern end (above today’s vestibule) also housed the organ. The foundation stone was laid on 30 March 1841. The property and grounds (about one third of an acre) were purchased by the Methodist Church on 8th October 1858 and redeveloped. Consequently the partition and two rooms were removed and the worship extended to south wall. New pews were added, basic heating installed and the gallery repaired. The normal seating capacity was therefore increased to 400 with space to accommodate 550 “at a push” should circumstances require. A Vestry and Schoolroom were built on the southern end of the site. Since then the church interior has had considerable alteration the most significant of which have been the addition, and subsequent removal, of galleries along the side walls and the addition of the two transepts. The last major refurbishment of the interior took place in 1991 when the whole of the church interior was gutted, the pews removed, the ceiling woodwork grit-blasted, the walls re- plastered, galleries rebuilt, organ re-positioned, floor re-carpeted, new lighting installed and more glass incorporated into the main and side entrances.
    [Show full text]
  • Turbulent Priests
    February 1986 Marxism Today 11 TURBULENT Few would have predicted, in 1979, that the Church of England would assume the mantle of the moral voice against Thatcherism. PRIESTS 'Many members of the Church of Eng­ Kenneth Leech to become Archbishop of Canterbury, land are socialists and would establish a became archbishop) and had claimed, in wrote, in his first book in 1936, that commonwealth whose people should an article in 1908, that the choice before 'individualism. has no place in Christ­ own the land and the industrial capital the church was between socialism and ianity, and Christianity verily means its and administer them cooperatively for heresy. In that article he referred to 'evolu­ extinction.'4 the good of all. Such public ownership tionary socialism'. But in a book published they regard as urgent and as a necessary The recent report Faith in the City, as its deduction from the teachings of the in 1927 he made it clear that what he was authors themselves point out, 'proceeds church.'1 arguing for was gradual conservative from a long tradition of Christian social reform.3 Temple was in fact a believer in concern.'5 Those critics who have referred This unlikely passage comes from the capitalism with a human face. the church back to its 'spiritual' role, colourful Anglican revolutionary Conrad There were many more openly socialist thinking that in so doing they were repre­ Noel, vicar of Thaxted, Essex, in the early groups within the Church of England from senting 'orthodox' opinion against some years of the century. Noel (1869-1942)
    [Show full text]
  • Jabez Bunting
    8 EARLY CORRESPONDENCE OF JABEZ BUNTING In 1826 the Leeds circuit was divided, and there was great ill-feeling over the division of the Sunday school, which was not in origin a circuit or even a Methodist institution, and from the radical leaders of which serious trouble was expected. The explosion in fact came over the proposal to install an organ in the Brunswick chapel which was new, fashionable, and reputed the largest in the connexion. The law was clear that the organ might be introduced only with Conference consent after an investigation and approval by a District Meeting, and clear on almost nothing else. The Brunswick Trustees applied for the organ by a majority of 8 votes to 6 with one neutral; the Leaders' Meeting, viewing the organ as a middle-class status symbol, and thoroughly irritated by the new arrangements in the circuit and by the itinerants' refusal to entertain any representations from the local preachers, opposed it by a majority of more than twenty to one, and were upheld by the District Meeting. Bunting nevertheless persuaded a Conference committee largely composed of the same preachers who had met in the District Meeting to reverse their ver- dict. When serious opposition developed in Leeds, Conference sovereignty was demonstrated by the summoning of a Special District Meeting (attended by Bunting as President's special adviser) to settle the affairs of the circuit. This court expelled members in large numbers without trial before a Leaders' Meeting from which palatable verdicts could not have been obtained. This exercise of central authority and personal influence turned the radicals into inveterate defenders of circuit rights, led in 1828 to the formation of a secession connexion, the Leeds Protestant Methodists, and estab- lished their view of Bunting as the Methodist Pope.
    [Show full text]
  • John Wesley's Eucharist and the Online Eucharist
    John Wesley’s Eucharist and the Online Eucharist By KIOH SHIM A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Theology and Religion College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham March 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract Since the late 20th century information technology has changed the lives of individuals and relationships at local, nation and even global levels. In particular the internet is used by many religious groups for theological and spiritual purposes. Some parts of Christianity have confronted the issue of how to deal with the use of internet. As a result, an internet church has emerged, offering Eucharistic services online across the globe. Even though the numbers of internet churches/Eucharistic groups have sharply increased in the last two decades, the attitude of the established churches does not appear to have taken account of this change yet. To achieve this it is necessary for such initiatives to be guided by certain theological norms or church regulations. This may relate to the definition of church, Eucharistic theology, or how to deal with emerging cultures.
    [Show full text]
  • Collection on Methodism in the United Kingdom and Ireland
    Collection on Methodism in the United Kingdom and Ireland A Guide to the Collection Overview Creator: Bridwell Library Title: Collection on Methodism in the United Kingdom and Ireland Inclusive Dates: 1740-1917 Bulk Dates: 1790-1890 Abstract: The letters, images, and other documents in this manuscript collection were created or received by Methodist leaders who lived in Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Materials in the collection date from 1740 to 1917. The collection contains information about the lives of ministers, Wesleyan Conference presidents, and their correspondents. Accession No: BridArch 303.74 Extent: 3 boxes (3 linear feet) Language: Material is in English and Welsh Repository Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University 1 Bridwell Library * Perkins School of Theology * Southern Methodist University Historical Note The British Isles are the homeland of Methodism, a religious and social holiness revival movement that began within the Church of England during the 1730s. John Wesley (1703- 1791), whose theological writings and organizational skills drove the movement, traced Methodism’s origins back to the Holy Club, a worship, study, and benevolent service group founded at Oxford University by his brother, Charles Wesley (1707-1788). In the summer of 1738 both John and Charles Wesley underwent dramatic conversions that resulted in a newfound religious enthusiasm that offended many fashionable churches in London. Excluded from their pulpits, John Wesley found a more receptive audience among the poor and laboring classes of England when he adopted field preaching at the urging of George Whitefield. John Wesley’s theology emphasized the work of the Holy Spirit in awakening a desire for God, assuring the Christian of God’s grace, and perfecting one’s love for God and neighbor.
    [Show full text]
  • Troublesome Priests: Christianity and Marxism in the Church of England, 1906-1969
    Troublesome Priests: Christianity and Marxism in the Church of England, 1906-1969 A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Master of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2014 Edward Poole School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Table of Contents Abbreviations 3 Abstract 4 Declaration and Copyright Statement 5 Introduction: The Church of England and Marxism 6 “Proud Socialist Parson”: Robert William Cummings 29 Catholic Crusader: Conrad Noel 59 The Red Dean: Hewlett Johnson 91 A Priest in the Party: Alan Ecclestone 126 Conclusion 159 Bibliography 166 The total word count for this thesis is 48,575. 2 Abbreviations Alan Ecclestone Papers, Sheffield Archives AEP Christian Social Union CSU Church Socialist League CSL Conrad Noel Papers, Hull History Centre CNP Guild of St. Matthew GSM Hewlett Johnson Papers, University of Kent at Canterbury HJP Independent Labour Party ILP Labour History Archive and Study Centre, People’s History Museum LHA Lambeth Palace Library LPL Tameside Local Studies and Archives TLSA Working Class Movement Library WCML 3 Abstract This thesis argues that the relationship between Anglican Christianity and Marxism in Britain between 1906 and 1969 has been far more complex than is commonly understood. It is often assumed that the relationship between religious organisations and Marxism has often been acrimonious, the latter famously rejecting religion as the ‘opium of the people’, and religion resisting the revolutionary nature of Marxism. Taking a biographical approach, examining four Church of England clergymen, Robert Cummings, Conrad Noel, Hewlett Johnson and Alan Ecclestone, this thesis shows that some Anglicans saw a philosophical connection between Christianity and Marxism.
    [Show full text]
  • The Life of Jabez Bunting
    ™ TMI HFI ©if? '/77 V,*- P. *«S4^i§^g n-uaJKs. 'The just and. lawful sovereignty over mens irnderstaiaahnsSTjy force of truth, rightly interpreted, is that which approacheth nearest to the sjuxihtu.de of the Divine rule ; 'THE LIFE JABEZ BUNTING, D.D., WITH NOTICES OF CONTEMPORARY PERSONS AND EVENTS. BY HIS SON, THOMAS PERCIVAL BUNTING. VOL. I. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, & ROBERTS SOLD ALSO BY JOHN MASON, 66, PATERNOSTER ROW. EDINBURGH : ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK. 3859. LONDON: PUIKTKD BT VII.MAH MCH01.S, Jl, LONDON WALL. TO " THE PEOPLE CALLED METHODISTS," TO WHOM JABEZ BUNTING OWED SO MUCH, AND IN- WHOSE FELLOWSHIP AND SERVICE HE LIVED AND DIED, THIS RECORD OF HIS LIFE AND LABOURS IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. PREFACE. Toward the close of my Father's public life, it was his intention, frequently expressed, to look over his papers, and to destroy all which might furnish materials for his biography ; and, when casual allusions were made to the possibility of such a record, he often threatened that he would haunt the man who should attempt it. As age crept upon him, however, and he felt himself un- equal to heavy labour, other thoughts took pos- session of his mind. He gradually resigned himself to the conviction that the story of his life and labours must be told ; and, after much hesitation, he took steps accordingly. By his "Will, dated in 1852, he desired his two elder sons to examine all the papers, letters, and correspondence in his possession, at the time of his decease, and privately to destroy such portion thereof as, in their judgment, it might be expe- dient so to dispose of ; leaving his executors to M PKt exorcise their discretion as to what use should be made of the remainder.
    [Show full text]
  • To View This Issue
    Proceedings OF THE Wesley Historical Society Editor: E. ALAN ROSE, B.A. Volume 51 October 1997 ALL TOGETHER NOW! THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 1907 -1932 The Wesley Historical Society Lecture for 1997 f the inspiration of the United Methodist Church came from the Big Idea of its day, Methodist Union, then its constitution came from I endless meetings by wealthy and well meaning men. It is easier to examine administration than inspiration so this paper looks at the United Methodist Church as the creation of committees and conferences - what it inherited and what it made of its inhepitance. In other words what it meant in 1907 and the following twenty five years to be 'All together now'. The people who were moved about on the chess board of ecclesiastical politics in 1907 were people who took their religion seriously and, facing daunting problems within and without, they did their best to make their church a microcosm of united Methodism. Their real achievements were overshadowed by the preparation for the next move in 1932 and we are still teased with the unanswered question 'How would the United Methodists have survived if Methodist Union in 1932 had not happened as it did?' In this short paper many aspects of the life of the church have to be omitted including its work amongst the young and its overseas missions. Now - September 1907 For the half-century from 1857 until 1907 there were five major Methodist denominations, all of which had been cast in the same mould, but up to 110 years of separate development had encouraged individual emphases and viewpoints.
    [Show full text]
  • THE JUBILEE GROUP Ïn Teie CHURCH of ENGLAND: the Prophetlc VOICE of a COMMUNITY in Eggzesl4
    THE JUBILEE GROUP ïN TEiE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: THE PROPHETlC VOICE OF A COMMUNITY IN EggZESL4 Richard Toews B.A., Waterloo Lutheran University, 1973 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFIUMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology O Richard Toews 1997 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY May 1997 AI1 cights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. nie Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or seil reproduire, prêter, distri'buer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la fonne de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains owirership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des exhaits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. The focus of this thesis is prophetic communities with a special reference to the Jubiiee Group in East London. To date, prophetic communities have been exarnined within the context of theology, specificaiiy Liberation theology but within the field of the social sciences, such as sociology and anthropology, there has been a lacunae on prophetic cornrnunities.
    [Show full text]