The Practice and Understanding of the Eucharist in the United Church of Christ: A Practical Theological Study

This dissertation explores the complexity of the understanding and practice of the Eucharist in the United Church of Christ as revealed in a textual analysis of the UCC Book of Worship (1986) and a qualitative study of five representative UCC congregations. Little has been written on this topic, save for several brief articles on the history of the theology of the sacrament in the two bodies that merged to form the UCC in 1957: the Congregational Christian Churches (CC) and the Evangelical and Reformed Church (E&R). This dissertation advances the topic through a practical-theological study that brings into critical conversation contemporary eucharistic practices in five congregations and a historical theological analysis of liturgical traditions in the UCC and antecedent denominations. Through this conversation, the study articulates common themes of a UCC eucharistic theology and explores implications for ongoing theology and practice in the denomination. The introduction explicates the methodology employed in this study, guided by Don Browning's work. The first two chapters present the findings of the focus group interviews and an interpretation of those results respectively. Chapter three analyzes the eucharistic liturgies in three historic books of worship used in the E&R heritage. In chapter four, two of the antecedent resources utilized in the CC tradition are analyzed. The short-lived Hymnal of the United Church of Christ, published in 1974, includes liturgies that would find fuller expression in the 1986 Book of Worship. That hymnal is examined in chapter five. Chapter six interprets the two services of "Word and Sacrament" found in the Book of Worship. Chapter seven offers a comparative analysis of the focus group findings and the theology inherent in the Book of Worship. The final chapter offers strategic recommendations for revised theory and practice. The conclusion points toward areas for further research: it propels a critical conversation around the notion of covenant, Christ's presence in the meal, and who can receive and officiate at the Eucharist. This dissertation concludes that the UCC lives within a balance of multiple, complementary theologies and challenges the denomination to make stronger connections between the meal and mission, reconciliation, and tradition.

Clergy, crusified within the body of Christ - a challenge to pastoral care

M.A. Thesis / University of Pretoria / Department of Practical Theology / Advised by Prof M Masango

The universal mission of the church of Christ : a discourse / delivered at Hanley, Staffordshire, August 4, 1884, being the Fernley lecture of 1884, by Benjamin Hellier.

http://www.archive.org/details/universalmission00helluoft

A Christian Reading of History

This recording is part of the Marsh Chapel Audio Collection.

Bolenge : a story of gospel triumphs on the Congo by Eva May Dye

http://www.archive.org/details/bolengeastoryofg00dyeeuoft

"Not Without My Ancestors": A Christological Case Study of the Shona Ancestor Cult of Zimbabwe

The issue of ancestors has been controversial since the first encounters of Christianity with Shona religion. It remains a major theological problem that needs to be addressed within the mainline churches of Zimbabwe today. Instead of ignoring or dismissing the ancestor cult, which deeply influences the socio-political, religious, and economic lives of the Shona, churches in Zimbabwe should initiate a Christology that is based on it. Such a Christology would engage the critical day-to-day issues that make the Shona turn to their ancestors. Among these concerns are daily protection from misfortune, maintaining good health and increasing longevity, successful rainy seasons and food security, and responsible governance characterized by economic and political stability. Since the mid-16th century arrival of Jesuit missionaries in the Mutapa Kingdom, the Church has realized that many African Christians resorted to their ancestors in times of crisis. Although both Catholic and Protestant missionaries from the 1700s through the early 1900s fiercely attacked Shona traditional beliefs as superstitious and equated ancestors with evil spirits, the cult did not die. Social institutions, such as schools and hospitals provided by missionaries, failed to eliminate ancestral beliefs. Even in the 21st century, many Zimbabweans consult their ancestors. The Shona message to the church remains "Not without My Ancestors." This dissertation examines the significance of the ancestors to the Shona, and how selected denominations and new religious movements have interpreted and accommodated ancestral practices. Taking the missiological goal of "self-theologizing" as the framework, this dissertation proposes a "tripartite Christology" of "Jesus the Family Ancestor", "Jesus the Tribal Ancestor," and "Jesus the National Ancestor," which is based on the Shona "tripartite ancestrology." Familiar ecclesiological and liturgical language, idioms, and symbols are used to contribute to the wider Shona understanding of Jesus as the ancestor par excellence, in whom physical and spiritual needs-including those the ordinary ancestors fail to meet-are fulfilled.

Christ versus Krishna : a brief comparison between the chief events, characteristics & mission of the Babe of Bethlehem Judµa and the Babe of Brindabun Mathurapuri : with a concise review of Hindooism, proving its derivation from Christianity / by L.A. Sakes.

http://www.archive.org/details/christversuskris014648mbp

Upon the earth; the mission of God and the missionary enterprise of the churches.

http://www.archive.org/details/upontheearththem013276mbp

A proposal for the better supplying of churches in our foreign plantations, and for converting the savage Americans to Christianity, by a college to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda.

http://www.archive.org/details/proposalforbette00berkrich

Singing Through Struggle: Music as a Mode of Cultural Exchange in African American Border City Churches After Emancipation, 1862-1890

This project investigates how religious music, invested with symbolic and cultural meaning, provided African Americans in border city churches with a way to negotiate conflict, assert individual values, and establish a collective identity in the post- emancipation era. In order to focus on the encounter between former slaves and free Blacks, the dissertation examines black churches that received large numbers of southern migrants during and after the Civil War. Primarily a work of history, the study also employs insights and conceptual frameworks from other disciplines including anthropology and ritual studies, African American studies, aesthetic theory, and musicology. It is a work of historical reconstruction in the tradition of scholarship that some have called "lived religion." Chapter 1 introduces the dissertation topic and explains how it contributes to scholarship. Chapter 2 examines social and religious conditions African Americans faced in Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC to show why the Black Church played a key role in African Americans' adjustment to post-emancipation life. Chapter 3 compares religious slave music and free black church music to identify differences and continuities between them, as well as their functions in religious settings. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 present case studies on Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Baltimore), Zoar Methodist Episcopal Church (Philadelphia), and St. Luke’s Protestant Episcopal Church (Washington, DC), respectively. Informed by fresh archival materials, the dissertation shows how each congregation used its musical life to uphold values like education and community, to come to terms with a shared experience, and to confront or avert authority when cultural priorities were threatened. By arguing over musical choices or performance practices, or agreeing on mutually appealing musical forms like the gospel songs of the Sunday school movement, African Americans forged lively faith communities and distinctive cultures in otherwise adverse environments. The study concludes that religious music was a crucial form of African American discourse and expression in the post-emancipation era. In the Black Church, it nurtured an atmosphere of exchange, gave structure and voice to conflict, helped create a public sphere, and upheld the values of black people.

An Historical and Theological Analysis of Campus Crusade for Christ's Evangelistic Practice in Two American University Contexts

This dissertation, an exercise in practical theology, consists of a critical conversation between the evangelistic practice of Campus Crusade for Christ in two American university contexts, Bryan Stone's ecclesiologically grounded theology of evangelism, and William Abraham's eschatologically grounded theology of evangelism. It seeks to provide these evangelizing communities several strategic proposals for a more ecclesiologically and eschatologically grounded practice of evangelism within a university context. The current literature on evangelism is long on evangelistic strategy and activity, but short on theological analysis and reflection. This study focuses on concrete practices, but is grounded in a thick description of two particular contexts (derived from qualitative research methods) and a theological analysis of the ecclesiological and eschatological beliefs embedded within their evangelistic activities. The dissertation provides an historical overview of important figures, ideas, and events that helped mold the practice of evangelism inherited by the two ministries of this study, beginning with the famous Haystack Revival on Williams College in 1806. Both ministries, Campus Crusade for Christ at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and at Washington State University, inherited an evangelistic practice sorely infected with many of the classic distortions that both Abraham and Stone attempt to correct. Qualitative research methods detail the direction that Campus Crusade for Christ at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and Washington State University have taken the practice of evangelism they inherited. Applying the analytical categories that emerge from a detailed summary of Stone and Abraham to qualitative data of these two ministries reveals several ways evangelism has morphed in a manner sympathetic to Stone's insistence that the central logic of evangelism is the embodied witness of the church. The results of this analysis reveal the subversive and pervasive influence of modernity on these evangelizing communities—an influence that warrants several corrective strategic proposals including: 1) re-situating evangelism within a reading of the biblical narrative that emphasizes the present, social, public, and realized nature of the gospel of the kingdom of God rather than simply its future, personal, private, and unrealized dimensions; 2) clarifying the nature of the evangelizing communities and their relationship to the church; and 3) emphasizing the virtues that characterize a new evangelistic exemplar who is incarnational, intentional, humble, and courageous.

Ben Marais (1909-1999): The influences on and heritage of a South African Prophet during two periods of transformation

University of Pretoria / Dissertation / Department of Church History and Church Policy / Advised by Prof J W Hofmeyr