The Awakening and New Religious Societies for Social Reform

This chapter examines how the Awakening became a modern, popular religious movement through the foundation of hundreds of new religious voluntary societies to ameliorate the living conditions of those in poverty. Such efforts were related to awakened Protestants’ holistic understanding of evangelism, in which the physical needs of those in difficult circumstances had to be addressed in order to remove them as obstacles to their hearing of the gospel message. This chapter examines new societies and institutions that awakened Protestants created to provide care for the unemployed, orphans, and those in need of medical care. In particular, it analyzes the principal roles that Protestant women played in such new organizations. In establishing these new religious institutions to alleviate social problems, awakened Protestants rationalized the church’s historic task of charity by creating administrative bureaucracies to operate these new institutions.

The Awakening and New Religious Societies for Evangelism

This chapter examines how the Awakening became a modern, popular religious movement through the foundation of hundreds of new religious voluntary societies to support evangelistic initiatives. Awakened Protestants throughout Germany envisioned these new organizations as the means to join with like-minded Christians in working for shared evangelistic goals. They were motivated by concern over theological rationalism within their churches, indifference toward religion in their society, and the spiritual condition of non-Christian peoples. Awakened Protestants founded four main types of extra-ecclesial organizations: voluntary societies for the distribution of Bibles and religious literature in Germany and voluntary societies for sending missionaries to non-Christian regions and Jewish communities in Europe. Their presence established a new sphere of religious activity between the individual Christian and the institutional churches. In establishing these new religious societies, awakened Protestants rationalized the task of evangelism through their creation of administrative bureaucracies to operate their religious societies.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the topic of the book, the “Awakening movement” (Erweckungsbewegung) in German Protestantism, by discussing the claims that were made by many German and other European church leaders and university professors in the mid-nineteenth century that a major religious awakening had occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It then discusses the existing historiography of the Awakening movement, almost all of which has been written in German. Whereas the previous scholarship on the Awakening has been characterized by its focus on various specific regions of German-speaking Europe, this chapter concludes by outlining how this book adopts a thematic approach to the Awakening. This chapter describes how subsequent chapters will analyze the Awakening movement through how it appeared within four distinct areas of Protestant religious life: preaching, academic theology, organized evangelism, and caritative initiatives.

The Awakening and Theology

This chapter analyzes how new developments within early nineteenth-century, university-based, academic theology were expressions of religious awakenings that had occurred in Protestant communities in Germany. The respective schools of thought reflected many university theologians’ own personal religious experiences of awakening. These considerably shaped the aims and methods of their scholarship. Recognizing how university professors were influential leaders in the Awakening movement through their lecturing, writing, and roles in new religious voluntary societies underscores an important point about the social composition of the movement. It was not simply a phenomenon of popular religious culture. Rather, different theological varieties of awakened Protestantism were fostered by some of the most learned members of the Protestant churches of Germany. They used their status and authority to promote such beliefs and assumed doing so was a responsibility of the academic and ecclesiastical offices that they held.

The Awakening and Preaching

This chapter examines how many early nineteenth-century German Protestant clergy assumed that the gospel had become either neglected, forgotten, or misunderstood by most of the members of their churches. Their convictions regarding such a supposed state of Protestant religious life prompted a distinctive type of preaching. The form and contents of their messages were intended to “awaken” those who heard it to faith in Christ, repentance of sins, and a life of Christian obedience. The preachers of the religious awakening were generally characterized by an irenic ecumenical disposition. This was born out of their fears that the essence of Christian faith was in danger of being lost and, thus, that it was important for them to cooperate with generally like-minded believers from other church traditions. The unusual degree of popular resonance with which certain local pastors’ sermons were received transformed them into well-known regional religious leaders.

Religious Enlightenment and Awakening

This chapter examines how a distinctive historical consciousness informed how awakened Protestants understood their religious beliefs and activities. An intrinsic problem that is common to the historical study of all strongly partisan movements in the history of Protestantism is understanding the mentality, or worldview, of those who desired to see religious changes. To understand the Awakening movement, there is a need to understand what the Protestant activists wanted to awaken. This chapter answers this question by considering two competing interpretations of the history of modern Protestantism that appeared within the Protestant churches of Germany before and during the Awakening. The former of these narratives perceived changes in faith and theology as signs that Christianity was progressively advancing through the providential enlightenment of the church. The latter regarded these same changes as a falling away from the forms of faith and theology that were taught by the Bible.

The History of the Concept of Religious Awakening in German Protestantism

The concept of religious “awakening” was central to the identity of certain German Protestants in the early nineteenth century. However, those Protestants whose activities constituted the Awakening movement did not create this concept. Quite to the contrary, their notions of religious awakening came from how the words Erweckung, erwecken, and erweckt had been used in a wide range of Protestant texts during the preceding three hundred years. This chapter analyzes how the concept of religious awakening developed within German Protestantism. It establishes the origins of this concept in the early writings of Martin Luther. Next, it tracks how the meaning of awakening developed further through subsequent sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and early eighteenth-century texts. It then considers how the concept of awakening changed through what many contemporary commentators described as a period of momentous religious turmoil and transition in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Conclusion

This chapter concludes the book by discussing how the Awakening movement may be conceptualized in five ways. The Awakening was orthodox. It was a response against certain doctrinal and theological developments that had appeared within the Protestant churches during the religious Enlightenment. The Awakening was pietistic. It sought to reform the Protestant churches of Germany through the spiritual revival of their constituent members. The Awakening was ecumenical. Lutherans and the German Reformed worked together with like-minded Catholics, who shared their conviction that the basic Christian message had become corrupted, forgotten, or ignored in many places in Germany. The Awakening was international. Awakened Protestants in Germany and evangelicals in Britain exercised influence upon each other through the exchange of models for new religious initiatives and works of academic theology. The Awakening was modern. The Enlightenment brought new civic freedoms to Germany, which enabled awakened Protestants to pursue their religious goals.