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Prussian Union of Churches

The Prussian Union of Churches (known under multiple other names) was a major Protestant church body which emerged in 1817 from a series of decrees by Frederick William III of Prussia that united both Lutheran and Reformed denominations in Prussia. Although not the first of its kind, the Prussian Union was the first to occur in a major German state.

Prussian Union of Churches

1817

Lutheran and Calvinist congregations in Prussia

It became the biggest independent religious organization in the German Empire and later Weimar Germany, with about 18 million parishioners. The church underwent two schisms (one permanent since the 1830s, one temporary 1934–1948), due to changes in governments and their policies. After being the favoured state church of Prussia in the 19th century, it suffered interference and oppression at several times in the 20th century, including the persecution of many parishioners.


In the 1920s, the Second Polish Republic and Lithuania, and in the 1950s to 1970s, East Germany, the People's Republic of Poland, and the Soviet Union, imposed permanent or temporary organizational divisions, eliminated entire congregations, and expropriated church property, transferring it either to secular uses or to different churches more favoured by these various governments. In the course of the Second World War, church property was either damaged or destroyed by strategic bombing, and by war's end, many parishioners had fled from the advancing Soviet forces. After the war, complete ecclesiastical provinces vanished following the flight and expulsion of Germans living east of the Oder-Neiße line.


The two post-war periods saw major reforms within the Church, strengthening the parishioners' democratic participation. The Church counted many renowned theologians as its members, including Friedrich Schleiermacher, Julius Wellhausen (temporarily), Adolf von Harnack, Karl Barth (temporarily), Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Niemöller (temporarily), to name only a few. In the early 1950s, the church body was transformed into an umbrella, after its prior ecclesiastical provinces had assumed independence in the late 1940s. Following the decline in number of parishioners due to the German demographic crisis and growing irreligion, the Church was subsumed into the Union of Evangelical Churches in 2003.

1817–1821: The church union was still being regulated by Prussian officials, and no official name was taken up for it yet. Informal names reported elsewhere included Prussian Union of Churches and the Union of Churches in Prussia.

1821–1845: Evangelical Church in the Royal Prussian Lands â€“ the

state church

1845–1875: Evangelical State Church of Prussia â€“ the state church besides other recognised Protestant church bodies

1875–1922: Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces â€“ the state church in the besides other recognised Protestant church bodies

old provinces of Prussia

1922–1933, 24 June: Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union â€“ an independent church among other recognised Protestant church bodies

24 June to 15 July 1933: State control abolished the freedom of religion and a -loyal leadership was imposed

Nazi

15 July 1933 â€“ 28 February 1934: Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union under new streamlined leadership

1 March to 20 November 1934: The streamlined leadership abolished the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union as an independent church body and merged it in the new Nazi-submissive

German Evangelical Church

29 May 1934 â€“ 1945: Confessing Christians declared that the imposed Nazi-inspired (so-called ) leadership had brought the church to a schism, with the Confessing Church and their newly created bodies (partially established since January 1934) representing the true Evangelical church.

German Christian

20 November 1934 â€“ 1945: The Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union restored by the verdict of the Landgericht (Berlin court), resulting in two church bodies–one Nazi-recognised and one gradually driven underground–each claiming to represent the true church.

1945–1953: The Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union partially cleansed its leading bodies of German Christians and appointed Nazi opponents and persons of moderate neutrality.

1953–2003: Evangelical Church of the Union, an independent ecclesiastical umbrella among other recognised Protestant umbrellas and church bodies.

2004: The Evangelical Church of the Union merged in the .

Union of Evangelical Churches

The many changes in the Church throughout its history are reflected in its several name changes. These include:

Doctrinal sources[edit]

Belief and teaching were based on a number of confessions accepted by the church. These were the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcaldic Articles, Luther's Large Catechism as well as his Small Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism.[180] Some Lutheran congregations within the Church also accepted the Formula of Concord.[180] Whereas congregations of French Reformed tradition agreed to teach in harmony with the Gallic Confession and the Church discipline.[181] Through the Polish annexation and expulsion of parishioners the Pomeranian Evangelical Church had lost all its united Protestant and Reformed congregations, thus having become purely Lutheran. Among its accepted confessions of faith were only Lutheran ones.[182]


After the ecclesiastical provinces had assumed independence between 1945 and 1950 they characterised themselves differently. Berlin-Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia conceived themselves as churches of the Lutheran Reformation, with the Saxon provincial church comprising core places of Luther's life and work (Wittenberg, Eisleben).[64] The churches of Berlin-Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia comprised mostly Lutheran congregations, some Reformed congregations (Silesia after the Polish annexation and expulsion of parishioners a single one) and few united Protestant congregations.[64]


In Berlin-Brandenburg the Reformed congregations formed an own deanery (Kirchenkreis) not delineated along territorial boundaries but confessional differences.[64] The Reformed deanery continued to exist after the merger of Berlin-Brandenburg with the church in Silesian Upper Lusatia now also including the Silesian Reformed congregation. The Evangelical Church in the Rhineland and that of Westphalia are churches united in administration according to the self-conception.[64] Whereas many Rhenish congregations are indeed united in confession, the Westphalian church sees Lutheran and Reformed traditions as equally ranked.[64] The Evangelical State Church of Anhalt again is a church united in confession with all its congregations being united in confession too.[64]

1817–1840: , before supreme governor of the separate Lutheran and Reformed churches since 1797

Frederick William III of Prussia

1840–1861:

Frederick William IV of Prussia

1861–1888:

William I of Prussia

1888:00000

Frederick III of Prussia

1888–1918:

William II of Prussia

Bigler, Robert M. The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church Elite in Prussia, 1815-1848 (Univ of California Press, 1972)

Borg, Daniel R. The Old Prussian Church and the Weimar Republic: A Study in Political Adjustment, 1917-1927 (University Press of New England, 1984)

Clark, Christopher. "Confessional policy and the limits of state action: Frederick William III and the Prussian Church Union 1817–40." Historical Journal 39.#4 (1996) pp: 985–1004.

in JSTOR

Crowner, David, Gerald Christianson, and August Tholuck. The Spirituality of the German Awakening (Paulist Press, 2003)

Groh, John E. Nineteenth century German Protestantism: the church as social model (University Press of America, 1982)

Lamberti, Marjorie. "Religious Conflicts and German National Identity in Prussia 1866-1914." in Philip Dwyer, ed., Modern Prussian History: 1830–1947 (2001) pp: 169–87.

Lamberti, Marjorie. "Lutheran Orthodoxy and the Beginning of Conservative Party Organization in Prussia." Church History 37#4 (1968): 439–453.

in JSTOR

Landry, Stan Michael. "That All May be One? Church Unity, Luther Memory, and Ideas of the German Nation, 1817-1883." (PhD, University of Arizona. 2010).

online

Drummond, Andrew Landale. German Protestantism since Luther (1951)

Gordon, Frank J. "Protestantism and Socialism in the Weimar Republic." German Studies Review (1988): 423–446.

in JSTOR

Hope, Nicholas. German and Scandinavian protestantism 1700-1918 (Oxford University Press, 1999) , With highly detailed bibliography

online

Latourette, Kenneth Scott. Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, II: The Nineteenth Century in Europe: The Protestant and Eastern Churches. (1969)

Steinhoff, Anthony. The Gods of the City: Protestantism and religious culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914 (Brill, 2008)

Ward, W. R. Theology, Sociology and Politics: The German Protestant Social Conscience 1890-1933 (Berne, 1979)

Williamson, George S. "A religious sonderweg? Reflections on the sacred and the secular in the historiography of modern Germany." Church history 75#1 (2006): 139–156.

"", Westerhaus, Martin O.

The Confessional Lutheran Emigrations from Prussia and Saxony Around 1839

"", Catholic Encyclopedia, J. Wilhelm

Evangelical Church (in Prussia)