The study examines how place meanings have been recontested, recontextualised and renewed through the Cook Islands’ coral churches continued use. The study supports earlier scholarship and local perspectives suggesting that churches were conceptualised and constructed as the island’s “new marae,” their presence physically restating tribal rights to land.

This thesis offers a reappraisal of Earth as presented in Gen. 1:1-2:4a from a Samoan gafataulima (accomplish/fulfil/capable) hermeneutical perspective. The inspiration for the study arose out of a personal dilemma concerning my religious beliefs and the reality that I am experiencing in the world today, specifically, the tensions between Earth's perfect portrait in Gen. 1:1-2:4a...

An investigation into New Zealand-born Samoan identity in the Congregational Christian Church Samoa.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), have a long history of involvement as unofficial third party conciliators in world conflicts. Speaking truth to power, they walk the delicate line between advocating for the disempowered whilst building relationships with the adversary. Considerable scholarly ambivalence exists regarding religion's dual agency in contributing both to violence and to...

This thesis is a work in practical theology that examines the tension between two realities. On the one hand, there are the stated policies of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand (PCANZ) that encourage its members to live out a diverse life together. On the other hand, there is the reality confirmed in my...