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In 2005 the British Methodist Conference adopted a comprehensive report dealing with domestic abuse, acknowledging it as a worldwide phenomenon. The Report contains general information on domestic abuse, as well as a theological reflection and recommendations as to how the Church might respond to this pandemic. A recurring phrase in the Report is that the Church's "prophetic voice" must be heard, that the Church must speak out against domestic abuse. However, the meaning and scope of such "prophetic voice" is not explained nor adequately clarified. This Report forms the policy framework within which this thesis is situated, with specific reference to the Church's 'prophetic voice', or 'prophetic witness'. Even though the church has been by and large silent on domestic abuse, there are ways in which this silence can be broken; and the Church needs to respond to the challenge in a practical way. This thesis argues that one of the ways in which this 'prophetic voice' might be heard is by preaching to congregations on domestic abuse in the context of worship. One such source of prophetic preaching is biblical prophecy, derived from both the Hebrew prophets and Jesus of Nazareth. These prophets created what Walter Brueggemann terms the 'prophetic imagination', which serves as counter-voice to the dominant voices of power, exploitation and injustice. This thesis contends that contemporary preachers should exercise a prophetic witness by speaking out against domestic abuse, although, as the data collected from the preachers interviewed demonstrate, there is a hesitation and, to some extent, a reluctance to preach on domestic abuse. One way in which preaching can harness the prophetic imagination is by viewing preaching as a theological practice characterised by "lament, truth-telling and resistance", terminology adapted from Christine Smith's triad of "weeping, confession and resistance" (1992). The role of preaching as lament is to weep in solidarity with those who suffer, but also to listen to the unheard voices of those who are the victims of domestic abuse. Truth-telling exposes the reality of 8 domestic abuse and names it as a sin, as well as telling the truth about patriarchy, which is one of the root causes of domestic abuse. Preaching as resistance entails the rejection of patriarchy and violence. A transformation comes about when scripture is read, using a feminist hermeneutic, which exposes the patriarchal nature of the Bible and how this has been used to justify the subordination of women. Ultimately, the aim of preaching is both to persuade and transform listeners, through the exercise of a practical theological prophetic imagination that envisions a world in which there is no violence.

There is a conceptual knot at the intersection of moral responsibility and action theory. This knot can be expressed as the following question: What is the relationship between an agent's openness to moral responsibility and the intentional status of her behaviour? My answer to this question is developed in three steps. I first develop a control-backed account of intentional agency, one that borrows vital insights from the cognitive sciences – in the form of Dual Process Theory – in understanding the control condition central to the account, and demonstrate that this account fares at least as well as its rivals in the field. Secondly, I investigate the dominant positions in the discussion surrounding the role of control in moral responsibility. After consideration of some shortcomings of these positions – especially the inability to properly account for so-called ambivalence cases – I defend an alternative pluralist account of moral responsibility, in which there are two co-extant variants of such responsibility: attributability and accountability. The latter of these will be shown to have a necessary control condition, also best understood in terms of a requirement for oversight (rather than conscious or online control), and in terms of the workings of the dual system mechanism. I then demonstrate how these two accounts are necessarily related through the shared role of this kind of control, leading to my answer to the original question: if an agent is open to moral accountability based on some activity or outcome, this activity or outcome must necessarily have positive intentional status. I then apply this answer in a consideration of certain cases of the use of the Doctrine of Double Effect.

Social network sites are online spaces that can be used for interaction between young people and youth work practitioners. The focus of this thesis is social network site interaction that falls outside the guidance of the local authority, through unsanctioned interaction on practitioners’ personal but also work profiles. Twenty one practitioners and fourteen young people were interviewed, using a semi-structured interview guide. Three inter-linked themes emerged through the research process; space and place; trust development and boundary management. Young people wanted to interact with some practitioners through the practitioners' personal profiles but the majority of practitioners would rather interact with young people through work profiles. Young people viewed and trusted these practitioners as friends and were willing to share their personal, but also socially intimate information with them. Most practitioners viewed their relationship with young people as a professional relationship and aimed to maintain personal and professional boundaries. However, practitioners did not extend this same awareness to the boundaries of young people. This was further confirmed by the practice of client searching through a variety of profiles to access socially intimate information of young people. Where practitioners and volunteers lived and worked in the same geographical spaces, these multiple relationships increased uncertainty with regards to unsanctioned SNS interaction. Other practitioners were either fearful or opportunistic of these relationships and used them to gain further socially intimate information about young people or turned a blind eye to these relationships due to uncertainty of how to respond. This thesis extends knowledge and theory concerning youth work practice at a time of change, and also new spaces for interaction online. Civic courage and incentives that outweigh deterrents lead to unsanctioned connections for practitioners. For young people this interaction was based on the type of friendship they perceived they had with practitioners. Studying perceptions regarding this interaction revealed cycles of perpetual negative practice, personal and socially intimate boundaries and different views on the type of relationship that young people and practitioners developed with each other.