Academic literature on the topic 'Germany; church history, religion; after the Reformation'

The purpose of this article is to investigate how memory activists from 2008 onwards used the past in their advocacy work for the restoration of the university church in Leipzig. The Paulinerkirche was built as a Dominican monastery church in the first half of the thirteenth century. In 1545, shortly after the Reformation had reached Leipzig, it was reconsecrated by Martin Luther and became the first Protestant university church in Germany. Following the demands of the GDR state, it was destroyed in 1968. In writings, demonstrations and speeches, advocates of church rebuilding made use of the Reformation, but also of other tropes in the local history to draw attention to their cause. The goal was not to create a new Reformation site; rather, the aim was to compel the university leadership to abandon its goal to build a multi-purpose value-neutral assembly hall and instead honour its cultural and religious heritage, undo some of the damage done in 1968 and allow the return of the university church.

The article deals with the topic of the school and parish catechesis in the Federal Republic of Germany. The author presents the legal basis of the catechesis, in the Church and in the State. The catechetic teaching is defined in the Code of Canon Law. Information on this can be found in the second chapter of the title “The Ministry of the Divine Word” in this code. After a brief outline of the legal basis the author proceeds to presenting the history of religious education in Germany. Its origins lie in the 16th century at the time of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. As Rainer Winkel stated, when one studies the history of education, there are seven fields of education to be distinguished: 1. pedagogy, 2. religion, 3. ethics, 4. economics, 5. science, 6. politics, 7. art. Each of them is based on the development of one of seven “athropina”, i. e. features that are characteristic for human beings. All in all, it can be said that the religious education must be an integral part of all-round education. In a further part of the article the author describes the current catechetic teaching in Germany. Since the 1960s we can observe a development from catechesis to religious studies in the religious education at school. Instead of forming and educating pupils religiously, knowledge of religions is imparted at school. It is taught that there are many equally valid systems of values. The truths of faith and the sacraments are omitted during lessons. Above all, it can be observed that the German society is misinformed about the sacrament of penance. Besides, the passion of Christ, its meaning for a Christian and the role of the Holy Virgin Mary are not among the topics in school. On the other hand, parish catechesis is not very popular. The reason for this is probably the disappointment of the young people about the institutional character of the Church. In addition, there is a high percentage of atheists (especially in the former East Germany). Therefore, the author claims that there is a need of a renewed evangelisation instead of catechesis in Germany, in order that people believe in Jesus and the Mother of God again.

The present article can be considered a contribution to the oral history and contains the description of the fields of duty that a protestant pastor’s wife had in a Transylvanian Saxon parish until the beginning of the 21st century. As an introduction there is a brief overview over the evolution of the parsonage as a religious institution beneath the church beginning with the Lutheran Reformation in the 16th century in Germany. The author is a protestant pastor’s wife herself and recounts some of her experiences living in a village parish where the pastor and his wife were seen as the father and mother of the parish. Among the wife’s duties was the organizing of the women’s association in the village, baking gingerbread for all children at Christmas and Easter, teaching religion at school but also privately (the only possibility in communist Romania), being a good host to all arriving guests, whether invited or not, and many other activities. After the fall of communism through the revolution in December 1989, almost  Dr. Sunhild Galter, Lucian-Blaga-Universität Sibiu/Hermannstadt; E-Mail: sunhild.galter@ulbsibiu.ro. 128 Sunhild Galter 90% of the German speaking population of Romania, the so-called Transylvanian Saxons, left for Germany. This historical event meant the end of the parsonage as an institution within the parishes and the Evangelical church.

Bonhoeffer's critique of American Christianity reveals how he came to see his own understanding of the church's role in political resistance as foreign to the American context in which he had found himself during his brief sojourn in the United States in 1939. Bonhoeffer's understanding of the two kingdoms, of the church's relation to the state, and of the history of American Protestantism came together in his fateful decision to return to Germany. He came to see that Americans could not understand the church struggle in which he had engaged in Germany, that he could be of no service to American Christianity, and that he would be of better use in his homeland. This article examines Bonhoeffer's short essay, “Protestantism without Reformation,” which he completed upon his return to Germany, and which was published only after his death. Reading this essay helps us better understand Bonhoeffer's motives for returning to Germany in 1939 rather than remaining in the United States in safety. Bonhoeffer did not see his own understanding of political resistance as easily applicable to the US context. His critique of American Christianity has much to teach us today.

Abstract Lutheran Leipzig offers an excellent example for an early modern German territorial city where religion and civil culture entered into a long-lived symbiosis. This article follows Leipzig’s church history from the first arrival of the Wittenberg Reformation after 1519 to the middle of the nineteenth century. It was not before the end of the sixteenth century that orthodox Lutheranism, based on the formula of concord, was firmly established as the city’s official form of protestantism. Lutheran confessional culture reached its zenith during the seventeenth century. Religion was considered as a constituent part of public welfare. But Leipzig ran through a phase of de-confessionalization in the later eighteenth century. Religion was now understood as part of the private life, and confessional boundaries became increasingly obsolete. With respect to sociability, Lutheranism made a considerable contribution to the social life of the Leipzigers, but it had little to do with their leisure time habits.

Despite the fact that Luther was referenced in order to justify anti-Semitic hatred of Jews during the time of National Socialism it took the German evangelical churches almost forty years to get round to intensively working through Luther’s anti-Jewish Statements and their effects through history. During the first decades after World War II, intra-church discussion focused on working through its own guilt (1945–1950) and finding a new direction for theology concerning Israel (1960–1980). However, the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth in 1983 fueled a discussion about the Reformer’s attitude towards the Jews. It centered, first, on the question of how to assess the anti-Semitic co-option of Luther in the Nazi period; second, on how Luther’s friendly statements towards Jews in his early years relate to the invective of his late writings. The latest EKD statement turns away from a genetic view of Luther towards an appraisal of his theological assessment of Judaism in connection with his Reformation theology.

In the summer of 1535 Anglo-German relatios assumed a new dimension. Faced with the prospect of a Catholic alliance on the continent and the possibility of a general council in the near future, Henry VIII was forced to consider more seriously than ever before a defensive alliance with the German Protestants. In August of that year, while Robert Barnes was approaching Wittenberg via Hamburg, commissioned by Henry both to prevent Melanchthon's rumoured visit to France and to make preparations for a full diplomatic mission to the princes of Lutheran Germany, Philip Melanchthon sent copies of the latest edition of his Loci Communes to the king of England, to whom they had been dedicated. The envoy on this mission was the Scottish Augustinian, Alexander Alesius, who was lecturing at the University of Wittenberg at that time. Alesius had received his own university education in St Andrews. Upon his graduation in 1515, he had entered the Augustinian priory there and subsequently proceeded to the study of theology. As a successful student of scholastic theology he had felt himself called to refute Lutheran theology as soon as it began to be debated in Scotland. In February 1528 he was commissioned to bring about the recantation of Patrick Hamilton, but the discussions with this first martyr of the Scottish Reformation as well as the latter's steadfast death at the stake led to a profound questioning of his own convictions. In the following year Alesius emerged as a severe critic ofthe old Church, for which he paid dearly by persecution and imprisonment. After an adventurous escape from St Andrews and months of travelling he finally reached Wittenburg, where he was inscribed in the faculty of arts in October 1532. So far very litde is known about Alesius' activities in Wittenberg. Yet there are two reasons why some elucidation of his academic activities and theological development during his three years at Wittenberg is highly desirable. First, it would be surprising indeed if his first experiences at this university, and especially the direct contact with Luther and Melanchthon, had not left a mark on his thought and career as a reformer. Second, his close friendship with the English reformers and his involvement in the doctrinal debates in England during the late 1530s suggests that Alesius formed an important link between the Reformation in England and in Germany.

ABSTRACT The contribution is connected to earlier research by the author (Reichsbund und Interim. Die Verfassungs- und Religionspolitik Karls V. und der Reichstag von Augsburg 1547/48, Köln, Wien 1971) and takes it farther by means of the critical incorporation of editions and discussions that have appeared more recently. The focus of the study is upon the history of the rise of the Interim within the framework of the religious politics of Charles V during 1547-48, which because of the extraordinarily difficult state of the sources has only been partially clarified. More far-reaching historical aspects of theology, by contrast, are only summarily treated. The most important results of the essay are as follows: 1. The Interim that Charles V carried through the Diet of Augsburg was an attempt at a temporary settlement between the religious parties in Germany expiring definitely after the Council of Trent would have solved all controversial items. The unity of the church within the Empire was thereby to be preserved or achieved again, and at the same time the outward peace in Germany assured. Charles V wished to see guaranteed the essentials of the Roman Church - whatever might pertain to them. Nevertheless, the Interim made substantial concessions to the Protestants, in teaching just as in ceremonies and ecclesiastical order (the marriage of priests, lay reception of the chalice). Thus, the Interim stood in close continuity with the religious politics of Charles V after 1530. In contrast, the specifically new aspects of the imperial politics of religion consisted above all of the close unity between this attempted settlement between the religious parties and the effort at intra-ecclesiastical reform. This tie informed the first draft of the Interim late in 1547 and showed itself finally in the proximity of the Interim and the Formula reformationis of June 1548. To this may be added the high personal engagement that the Emperor was able to bring to bear as a result of his enormously increased political authority after the Schmalkaldic War. Yet Charles V tried very effectively to restrict as much as possible outward awareness, especially in the publicity surrounding the Imperial Diet, of the dominant influence that he exerted on the shaping of the Interim. That seems initially surprising but had its good reasons: above all, the Emperor strove to counter the reproach that he attempted to be an authoritarian universal monarch, at the expense of the imperial estates - and also at the expense of Pope and council. 2. The Interim politics of Charles V. was severely contested from the beginning, and not only among the religious parties at the Imperial Diet, but also at court among the closest advisors of the Emperor. Above all, Pedro de Soto, the confessor of Charles V, pleaded for an unyielding Counter-Reformation course for the imperial politics of religion, while Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, the foremost advisor of the Emperor, represented an ecclesiastically mediating and at the same time more pragmatic position. The controversy was fundamental; it remained virulent throughout the imperial Diet, and left personal bitterness in its wake. Charles V finally made an end to the strife in August 1548, when he dismissed his confessor. The decisions in religious politics made by the Emperor continued to arise out of these conflicts. This could well explain the fundamental decision that the Emperor took in rejecting the uncompromising anti-Reformation draft of his first Interim commission in December 1547 and the appointment of a new commission under the leadership of the Bishop of Naumburg, Julius Pflug, who was inclined toward a conciliatory theological position. The Interim policy of Charles V was far more filled with tension than it appears in most historical presentations. 3. Conditioned by the strongly political - not only ecclesiastical - tensions between Charles V and Pope Paul III, in 1547-48 the Emperor completely excluded the Pope and his representative at the imperial court from all negotiations over the Imterim, and in general over religion, at the imperial Diet of Augsburg. Even the originally anticipated confirmation of the Interim by the Pope seemed from early in 1548 to be dispensable. Nonetheless Charles V made a vigorous effort to bind the Pope to his Interim policies. Above all the demand of the Emperor that the Pope send legates or nuncios to Germany who could be helpful in the inner reform of the church - who were empowered to grant dispensations for the marriage of priests, for giving the chalice to the laity, and for moderating the privations of Lent - was virtually a papal legitimation of the concessions to the Protestants made by the Interim, and simultaneously a recognition of the membership of the Protestants, under the terms of the Interim, to the Roman Church. As a matter of fact, Paul III initially acquiesced to the imperial demand but postponed complying until long after the adjournment of the Diet at the end of June 1548; in September of the same year, he finally gave the faculties of dispensation such restrictive wording that this must have appeared completely unacceptable to the Protestants. Thus, from an early date an important part of Charles V’s Interim politics became, and remained, unattainable.

In the century when heretics in the Netherlands were persecuted, the Dutch Revolt occurred, and events took place that ultimately led to the National Synod of Dordrecht (1618–19), religion and society were clearly interwoven. Research on this period is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach, such as the one used, to remarkable effect, in the recent studies on the cities of the Reformation (Städteforschung). In the Netherlands, the study of the Reformation in urban settings has also become an important field, one in which both church and “secular” historians have made valuable contributions. Historical work on the period after the Synod of Dordrecht displays, however, far less interest in the relationship between religion and society. Despite this shift in historical focus, religion remained a formative factor in the public life of the Dutch Republic long after 1620. The established church retained its central position in society and continued to influence the design and the development of Dutch culture. The religious community regarded its norms as the basis of civil society. The church wanted to create a social practice in which religion played an influential role in urban life and in the ethics of everyday living.

In Emlyn Williams's play,The Corn is Green(1938), an Englishwoman arriving in Wales is asked an important question: ‘Are you Church or Chapel?’ Since the seventeenth century, when non-Anglican places of worship made their appearance, this question has indeed been important, sometimes momentous. ‘Church’ has had one kind of resonance in religion, politics and society; ‘chapel’ has had another. Even in unreligious households, people may still opt for ‘church’ when the bread is cut (the rounded end) or ‘chapel’ (the oblong part). The distinction is far older than the seventeenth century, however, by at least five hundred years. There were thousands of chapels in medieval England, besides the parish churches, when religion is often thought of as uniformly church-based. Although these chapels differed in some ways from those of Protestant nonconformity, notably in worship, they also foreshadowed them. Locations, architecture, social support and even religious diversity are often comparable between the two eras. Arguably, the creation of chapels by non-Anglicans after the Reformation marked a return to ancient national habits.

Abstract This chapter offers a tentative sketch of features and figures in Dutch (Reformed) Protestantism that usually are embedded in the history of Pietism (including the waning of the so-called Nadere Reformatie movement), but also could be incorporated in a (pre)history of Evangelicalism. Starting in the late seventeenth century, when the religious landscape of the Northern Netherlands had stabilized with a majority of Reformed people in the public church, the story of inner and outward piety in theological discourse and popular practice tells about emotional forms of preaching, reading, and believing in a context of growing openness to the world beyond local congregations and private meetings. After 1760, the breakthrough of Enlightenment in mainstream culture facilitated initiatives for religious sociability, missionary action, and Bible distribution, paving the way for a culture of moderate orthodoxy and civil piety which characterized Dutch Protestantism well into the nineteenth century. All the time, parallel to German Lutheran as well as Reformed Pietism (as described in this volume by Jan Stievermann), personal contacts and correspondence with British and American fellow spirits marked the international space of evangelicalism.

The Mary theme has been a central part of our Scandinavian history and occurs both on rune stones and in art from the 900s and 1000s. When Christianity was introduced, many earlier customs were adapted to conform with the new religion. Although the view of Mary changed after the Lutheran Reformation, the cult of Mary remained in folklore for several centuries. Through the spread of Christianity, this tradition also came to the Nordic region. Christianity was combined with established religious practices that were partly applied in tandem. The Old Norse goddess Freya, like the Sami Sáráhkká, was replaced – or in many cases supplemented – by the Virgin Mary. This article provides examples of music relating to the cult of Mary in various cultural expressions in Scandinavia: the Birgitta Order’s Our Lady’s divine office, as well as Mary joiks and Mary hymns in various Scandinavian hymn books from more recent times. Issues discussed include why certain perspectives have had a greater impact on the writing of history than others, who writes history, and what consequences this has for the dissemination of knowledge. With the Reformation, the cult of Mary was restricted in the Lutheran Church. The Lutheran Church has periodically had a complicated relationship to Mary but in recent decades has increasingly opened up. As an overview, the occurrence of Mary hymns in Swedish and Norwegian hymn books in modern times is described in comparison with previous centuries.

This chapter considers expressions and views of conversion in two major evangelical movements in two locales—Pietism in Germany and Methodism in England. Pietism, whose spirituality informed nearly all aspects of British and American evangelicalism, emerged in the seventeenth century as one of the most important Protestant renewal movements after the Reformation. Pietists stressed that assent to formal doctrine fell far short of true Christianity. Critical of “nominal” religion and dissatisfied with the way that Lutheran pastors preached and carried out their pastoral duties, Pietists located true religion in the heart. Their language of “rebirth,” “regeneration,” and the “new man” stressed the experiential, emotional, even mystical side of the faith. In England, the conversions of John and Charles Wesley were indebted to the influence of Pietist Moravians. John’s itinerating preaching, and organizing skills and Charles’s hymn-writing would profoundly shape England’s Evangelical Revival.

This essay takes a close look at the "power of attorney" document drafted in 1531 by a group of German princes and cities in which they appoint two lawyers to represent them collectively in all disputes in which "one or more of us is sued on account of our holy faith, religion, ceremonies, and what attaches to them." In the 1530s and '40s, this power of attorney was invoked in dozens of civil and public law disputes that had arisen from local reformations-concerning church property, jurisdiction, and the land-peace. Many regard the case files of these highly politicized Reformation cases as the "wrong place" to look for law. This essay illustrates that even in the most apparently formalistic and legalistic documents of a case file, such as the power of attorney, we can identify moments of juridical experimentation that operated as unexpected proxies or even prerequisites for larger constitutional questions of status and recognition. In particular, the study shows that long before the Protestants, as a group, and Lutheranism, as a confession, were given legal status in the Holy Roman Empire in 1555, the "protesting estates" had achieved ad hoc legal legibility in the shuffle of courtroom disputes.

Abstract If anything characterizes the modem state, it is its hatred and concern which emerge as soon as it has to tolerate a religion which is tied to other countries and to a general whole that the state in question does not dominate. Until the eighteenth century the state nevertheless pretended to adhere at least to that religion whose church it had integrated into its administrative system. Since then, however, the situation has changed ... The enormous power of the state over the church suddenly became obvious in the sixteenth century. Nobody was able to set limits to it ... Protestantism came into existence on the state-church principle, and when the state becomes indifferent, it [that is, Protestantism] is in a precarious position.’ This statement is to be found in Jacob Burckhardt’s lectures on the history of early modem Europe which he gave at the University of Basle several times after 1859. I have not prefaced my chapter with his words out of local pride or because I felt the need to provide a historiographical ‘identification tag’ for my own remarks.

Chapter 1 analyses the first important moment at which the issue of anti-democracy rose to prominence: the 1570s–1590s. It all blew up around the contentious question of the organization of the Church, and the role of ministers and their election in it. Holders of the status quo—including intellectual bigwigs such as John Whitgift and Richard Bancroft—strenuously opposed Presbyterianism. They denounced Presbyterian exponents like Thomas Cartwright for promoting ‘popularity’, which here meant the search for direct democracy and its practices (‘popular government’). The kernel of this diatribe, and of subsequent ones, mirrored the Admonition Controversy’s debates on Church government in post-Reformation England. More specifically, Church establishment representatives such as Richard Cosin, Thomas Cooper, and Matthew Sutcliffe identified Presbyterian principles and practices with those set up in democratic Athens, Anabaptist Germany, and Calvinist Geneva. Besides singling out the Presbyterians as subversive fanatics who made cunning use of religion to rally the most ignorant portions of the population behind their democratic agenda, the fierce ecclesiastical disputes between people like Whitgift and Cartwright and their followers not only revealed the pivotal place of questions concerning democratic government, popular power, and people’s obedience at this time. They also set the tone for a great of deal of subsequent anti-democratic polemics that were to shape the history of the Jacobean and Caroline reigns. Finally, Chapter 1 argues that anti-Presbyterianism did not run counter to what Patrick Collinson has called ‘republicanism applied to the Church’. Instead, it pointed to something much more sinister and treacherous than republicanism: this was the menace of plebeian democracy.