UNION, ECCLESIASTICAL, IN GERMANY.
Ecclesiastical Situation Before Union (§ 1). Literary Advocacy of Union (§ 2).
Beginnings in Nassau, Prussia, and Elsewhere (§ 3) Development in Prussia (§ 4).
Present Situation (§ 5).
By ecclesiastical union is meant the uniting of churches of diverse creeds into a single communion without change of denominational peculiarities, such union being distinctively Protestant, and in this discussion especially German. For such movements in England and America see CHURCH FEDERA- Trion. The attempts to unite the Roman Catholic Church and other religions are not, strictly speaking, unionistic, since the Roman Church insists upon acknowledgment of the supremacy of the pope, which itself involves change of doctrine and loss of denominational characteristics.
The Reformation resulted in two confessions distinct in doctrine, organization, and worship, as opposed to each other as both were to the Roman
Church. In Switzerland, Holland, 1. Ecclesi- Scotland, and France the Reformed
astical became supreme; in the Scandinavian Situation lands Lutheranism was triumphant; Before in Germany alone did the two exist Union. side by side. Here the Lutherans were
more opposed to union than were the Reformed, the divergency being essentially doctrinal and eucharistic. Orthodoxy forbade all union during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but when orthodoxy’s supremacy was shaken by Pietism and broken by rationalism, thoughts of union, hitherto confined to individuals, gained wide currency. Pietism, laying all its stress on intensity of piety, personal experience, and Christian life, saw too clearly the virtues of other denominations and the faults of its own to have sympathy with denominational distinctions. Rationalism, as opposed both to orthodoxy and to Pietism, which were at one in their adherence to revelation, denied that religion was specifially Christian and was, therefore, indifferent to sectarianism. At the same time, the rationalists, when they advocated union, aimed at the furtherance of toleration and the consequent development of Christianity into a universal religion. Here began the revival of Biblical Christianity in
Union, Ecclesiastical Unitarians
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 80
a
the early nineteenth century. This new piety, however, had no sectarian bias, Lutherans, Reformed, and Roman Catholics feeling themselves essentially one. The two Protestant bodies considered themselves as belonging to the same church, external differences were felt to be undesirable, and the denominational spirit that, a century earlier, had been maintained for truth’s sake, was now held blameworthy, again for truth’s sake.
This was manifest in the domain of literature. In 1703 Winkler [inspector at Halle], by his Arcanum regium [a plan of union which he suggested to Friedrich I., according to which no one could be installed as pastor who had not studied at Halle!], had roused a storm of protest; in 1803 such a work as G. J. Planck’s Ueber die Trennung und Wiedervereinigung der getrennten christlichen Hauptparteien
(Tiibingen, 1803) found general ap- 2. Literary proval when it advocated the cautious
Advocacy introduction of union into at least a
of Union. limited area. Schleiermacher, in his Zwei unvorgreifliche Gutachten in Sachen des protestantischen Kirchenwesens, zundchst in Beziehung auf den preussischen Staat (Berlin, 1804), urged the abandonment of sectarian antagonisms, though not of denominational distinctions. Such union, however, he deemed advisable only where its necessity was distinctly and generally felt, as in Prussia; and he maintained that it was to be effected without interference with doctrine or liturgy and should come about under the mandate of the State. Some years later appeared the Ueber die Vereinigung der beiden protestantischen Kirchengemeinden in der preussischen Monarchie of F. 8. G. Sack (Berlin, 1812), who had, in 1798, proposed a joint liturgy for Lutherans and Reformed in Prussia. Unlike Schleiermacher, Sack held that a creed was necessary for the united church, the Apostles’ Creed and the Augsburg Confession being suggested for this purpose; and he likewise substituted for State authority the consent of the clergy of the two churches and the approval of the great majority of their members.
Plans for union received an important impulse through the tricentennial of the Reformation in 1817. The beginning was made in Nassau, where,
at the suggestion of the government,
3. Begin- asynod of thirty-eight clergy delegated
nings in by the State convened at Ildstein and
Nassau, determined that the most fitting cele- Prussia, and bration of the event commemorated
Elsewhere. would be the union of both Protestant bodies in the duchy under the name
of the Evangelical Christian Church. Their proposal was welcomed both by the synod and by the people, nor was it until later that a number of Lutherans separated from the national church and formed a distinct Lutheran church at Steeden. In Prussia the introduction of union was connected with the same event as in Nassau, though here there was a long preliminary development. Since early in the sixteenth century Lutherans and Reformed had enjoyed equal privileges in the electorate of Brandenburg; and the desire of reconciling the religious differences of their subjects and of uniting the Protestants in their domains had made the Hohenzol-
lerns advocates of union. Frederick William III. was, therefore, only true to the traditions of his house when, in his proclamation of Sept. 27, 1817, he urged the union of Lutherans and Reformed in one new Evangelical Christian Church. The royal appeal was gladly followed, especially in the western portions of Prussia, encountering only sporadic opposition, even outside the kingdom. A series of smaller German states followed the example of Prussia. The first general synod of the Rhenish Palatinate at Kaiserslautern in 1818 resolved upon union; from 1817 to 1822 union was realized in a great portion of the grand duchy of Hesse, and in 1818 in Hanau and Fulda, exclaves of the electorate of Hesse; in Baden and Waldeck union was decreed in 1821; and of the Anhalt principalities Bernburg accepted union in 1820, Dessau in 1827, and Koéthen in 1880, though in all these states the organization of the union and its relation to the doctrinal standards of the denominations varied. In Prussia, meanwhile, efforts were being made, after 1814, to reorganize the church, and in 1817 and the following years a synodo-presbyterian system was actually introduced, but soon proved impracticable. The king was, according- 4. Develop- ly, obliged to take matters into his own ment in hands in greater measure than he had Prussia. originally planned. Under the conditions then prevailing, the realization of union was almost entirely restricted to the liturgy, especially as, from the very first, the acceptance of a common communion service was held to imply the acceptance of union. Hitherto, during the rationalistic period, caprice had been dominant in the liturgy, but Frederick William, filled with affection for time-honored usages and realizing the advantages of orderly worship, now urged the necessity of a new liturgy for the Prussian church. Himself a fervent admirer of Luther, the liturgy was modeled essentially on Lutheran lines; and the king felt that, though unable and unwilling to force union, he could yet, in virtue of his ecclesiastical power, command the acceptance of a new liturgy. But the results were most unsatisfactory —too Lutheran for the Reformed, and suspiciously non-Lutheran for the Lutherans. Even Reformed presbyteries eager for union refused this liturgy; and opposition to the ritual led to opposition to union itself, and then to separation of a portion of the Prussian Lutherans from the united national church. Such a spirit of resistance to the new liturgy would not have arisen had there not been a momentous change in religious convictions. The power of rationalism, with its religious indifference, had been broken, and a return to the teachings of the Church was everywhere perceptible. As a consequence, various tendencies arose which construed the nature and purpose of union in very different ways. Some valued union as abrogating sectarianism; others, as representing the common elements of Protestant teachings; others still, as denying neither the validity of Lutheran doctrines in churches historically Lutheran, nor of Reformed teachings in analogous Reformed bodies. The change here indicated is reflected in official utterances respecting union. In 1817 union meant the