Section 19

Protestantism in Germany

Religious developments of 19^th Century Germany intertwined with other aspects of life

French revolution brought the large majority of Germans into a new empire.

Literature and music had a flowering which was admiration of the Occident.

Vitality was paralleled by religious awakenings.

Protestant scholarship

Fredrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889)

To Schleiermacher religion was “the feeling of absolute dependence”

Studied in several universities, and at Halle came under the influence of Hegelianism

Attempts at Union

Unsuccessful efforts at union had been made near the outset of Protestantism.

Actual union came in part as a result of the wakening of the old patterns by Napoleonic conquest.

Between 1815 and 1830, after the defeat of Napoleon and the opportunity for new beginning, unions of two confessions were achieved.

Resistance to the Union developed in several Landeskirchen in the 1850s and 1860s.

Party Strife

In 1849 the Prussian Lutherans formed an association.

In 1857 the more conservative friends of the Lutherans Reformed Union associated themselves with the Evangelical Alliance.

In 1860s theological liberals formed the Protestantenverein Union.

Between these various groups there was distrust which often broke out into open and bitter conflict.

Free Churches

As the 19^th Century wore on, “free churches” appeared and grew, independent of the established ones.

Some purely German, some liberals, others were by conservatives who were of strict confessional Lutherism

Those in Prussia were aided by a Law of 1908 which made it easier for members of the Landeskirche to join them.

Others of free churches arose from contracts with other countries.

The Outreach to other lands

British and American forms of Protestantism found footholds in Germany, even more did German Protestantism make itself felt in other lands.

Much of the overseas expansion of German Protestantism was through missions to non-Christian peoples.

The majority had no organic connection with the official ecclesiastical bodies.

The pioneers in German foreign missions were the Moravians.