This case-study of Brisbane Seventh-day Adventists indicates that University education, for these Adventists who experience it, is a significant factor in sociocultural change, since it provides an environment where they may construct and learn dissonant perceptions of the world. Based on a phenomenological and dialectic perspective, it views man as a constituting consciousness who constructs and learns meaning from his experience of the world and his social interaction with his fellow men, and who expresses his self in social action in that world.

Within this framework, the techniques of participant observation, ethnomethodology, and content analysis have been used. They enable the searcher to investigate the subjects' perceptions of reality, the meanings which they give to the world and their prescriptions for action in it, end to observe the ways in which they express themselves in social settings. By analysis and reflection upon this information, a set of sociological meanings is refined.

Differences between university-educated Adventists and other Adventists have been investigated through a comparison of lay and scholarly journals, interviews with large and a small groups of members, and a qualitative questionnaire. As sect-member, university student, and sociologist, the writer participated in, and observed, differing Adventist social settings, and the work is grounded in his own experience and knowledge.

Through these differing methods, confirmation is obtained for the thesis. It can be seen that significant differences exist between lay Adventists and university-educated Adventists, that such differences are the consequence of changes in university-educated members, and that these changes are associated with their experience of university education.

Whereas lay members tend to be highly sectarian, and show no evidence of inner conflict, university-educated and scholarly Adventists tend to be more denominational and secular. They reveal evidence of considerable internal tension between normative and dissonant sets of knowledge and they do not fit easily into the sectarian social context. University-educated ex-Adventists appear to have resolved this conflict by leaving the sect and rejecting its knowledge and standards.

The degree of difference between these types of members is such that, at the ideal-typical level, it is appropriate to speak of two cultures in Adventism. One culture is normative, sectarian, fideistic and "closed" to the outside world. The other culture is dissonant scholarly, mere liberal and more "open" to the world. It is denominational or secular and is the culture of the Adventist university student, lecturer or scholar. It is the culture of change, as opposed to the culture of sectarian stability." The first culture is learned in the social community of Adventism, while the second is constructed at the university. Differences between them reflect the differing natures of their social arenas.

Thus the sect, as a closed social community, provides a cosmic set of meanings and divinely ordained standards for all situations. Sharing the same esoteric knowledge and using the same rhetoric its members enjoy warm social relations as Christian brethren. Their affective commitment to the community, to its knowledge and standards, and to their fellow believers, is high. Within its boundaries they experience security, stability and certainty in an uncertain and changing world. In the university, as an open institution, conflicting ideas are subjected to scholarly and scientific analysis. Through such experiences and through social interaction with non-Adventists in a secular setting, members acquire and construct a new and qualitatively different set of meanings and standards for interpreting, and acting in, the world.

These two cultures do not easily coexist, for the "rational" and empirical assumptions of the one challenge the basic fideistic presuppositions of the other. Hence scholarly Adventists experience inner tension and conflict in the sectarian community. Their attempts to resolve this conflict may lead to their apostasy from the sect or to their action as change agents within it, modifying its knowledge and standards, thus changing its identity from a sectarian group to a more denominational group. Generalizations beyond the confines of this case-study seem possible. The thesis concludes with a series of recommendations for further research.