An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

people were superficially friendly, they were mostly unwilling to volunteer to beinterviewed.I am still rather surprised at the reception that I received from the Pentecostal church. Istarted by approaching the Director of the Bible School on the premise that as the churchhouses an education department, the majority of the church members have a commitmentto education. The Bible School Director and the Pastor were very receptive on a superficiallevel, but I made several attempts to meet with both of them on a one to one basis withvery little success. I overcame some of this isolation by joining a voluntary research groupwhere all the group members were studying at PhD level and we had similar experiences.In contrast to my usually self sufficient approach to life, I had to learn to select appropriatepeople to ask and to keep asking for assistance. There were those who were apparentlywilling to help but for reasons known best to themselves were not actually helping. Thejourney of this research means that I had to set new goals, make new friends and find newand different levels of support as an individual and a researcher.1.4 Introducing the chaptersThe thesis comprises 10 chapters. In Chapter 2 the literature review is presented insections; firstly, on health and health promotion models, next on illness behaviour andhealth seeking behaviour, thirdly, an exploration of the complexity of conceptions ofspirituality and spiritual healing within a context of culture, the spiritual concepts of health,and folk medicine. Finally, the discourse of sociology of religion provides a framework tolook at the development and history of the Pentecostal movement in Britain and to contrastit with the URC.14