Agenda dispute

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The agenda dispute was the conflict that broke out after 1821 between a number of protesting pastors and presbyteries on the one hand and King Friedrich Wilhelm III. of Prussia and its supporters, on the other hand, about its newly introduced agendas for the Evangelical Church in Prussia, which have been declared binding .

prehistory

King Friedrich Wilhelm III. intended with the agende he worked out a liturgical union between Lutherans and Reformed . The king's aim was to set up a uniform Protestant regional church in the state, which had expanded considerably after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. For this purpose he wrote u. a. an agenda that should be valid in all Protestant churches in Prussia and that should be used literally. In fact, this should go beyond a mere administrative union, a joint church leadership for the Lutheran and Reformed churches. The monarch, who was very interested in the church, benefited from the fact that, as a result of Pietism and the Enlightenment , parishes and pastors in Prussia were often barely aware of whether they were Lutheran or Reformed. In many cases the attitude towards life was generally Protestant , not specifically Lutheran or Reformed. The king therefore implicitly assumed the existence of a doctrinal consensus (and thus a consensus union) between the two denominations . However, the existence of the dogmatic prerequisites between the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church was disputed.

On September 27, 1817, on the 300th anniversary of the Reformation , the king issued a call for communion celebrations . However, in the opinion of the critics, neither the canonical nor the dogmatic problems had been clarified in advance. The unanswered questions resulted in the fact that in Prussia (unlike in Nassau , Baden and the Palatinate ) a teaching consensus was never reached and the so-called Prussian Union differs in this from the other church unions of the 19th century in Germany. The unification of Lutheran and Reformed congregations on the basis of the call for union only took place in a few places (for example in Unna ) - even usually not where Lutherans and Reformed people lived in the immediate vicinity.

The dispute between 1822 and 1834

The agenda drafted and printed by the king himself was based on the Brandenburg church order of 1540; the dominance of liturgical elements with the sermon at the very end provoked the protest of the reformed clergyman of the Berlin Cathedral as early as 1821.

With his attempt to enforce this work as the mandatory evangelical worship book, Friedrich Wilhelm III. a controversial point of the church constitution: Who is entitled to the ius liturgicum (right to issue orders for worship) in the Protestant church ? Some parishes in Prussia, and in particular the existing synods in the Rhine province and in the county of Mark , believed that this right belonged not to the sovereign himself, but to the synods and local parishes. The king, on the other hand, insisted on his sovereign church regiment . A number of parishes opposed the king's request in 1822. In the same year, he made the so-called Union Reverse mandatory for ordinations . In 1824 two thirds of the pastors agreed. Friedrich Schleiermacher criticized the request of the king under the pseudonym Pacificus Sincerus in the text On the liturgical law of Protestant rulers , which he tried to counter in 1827 with the anonymous writing "Luther in relation to the Prussian church agendas" . Schleiermacher reacted again anonymously with the text "Conversation of two evangelical Christians who thought about themselves about the script: Luther in relation to the Prussian agenda" .

The dispute was defused from 1827 onwards through compromises found separately for the Prussian church provinces: The so-called Berlin Agende was formally accepted, but an appendix with liturgical characteristics and traditions of the respective province could be printed and used. The cultural union in Prussia had thus in fact failed. In 1834 King Friedrich Wilhelm III. also that there is no causal link between the acceptance of the Union and the acceptance of the Agende . Accession to the Union is voluntary and does not mean that the confessional denominations that have previously been in force are abolished.

Nationwide consequences of the agenda dispute

The dispute over the agendas resulted in Lutheran confessionalism gaining strength in Prussia. Some convinced Lutherans did not join the union. In Silesia , especially in Breslau , there was the strongest rejection. Through petitions to the king, Lutherans asked for the maintenance of Lutheran worship, the independence of the church on the basis of a Lutheran constitution and the independence of the Lutheran church in doctrine and life. The initiator was the theology professor and pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Elisabeth Church in Breslau , Johann Gottfried Scheibel . But the king did not tolerate such open opposition. Scheibel was suspended and expelled from the country. As a result, independent Lutheran congregations outside the Union were formed in Silesia, as in other parts of the country. Some of them were persecuted as dissidents , expelled, expropriated and imprisoned, and some of them were prevented from using the church buildings through the use of the military. Numerous Lutherans emigrated to Australia and the USA between 1834 and 1839 . You founded the Evangelical Lutheran Missouri Synod in the USA (2.4 million members, as of 2010). The persecution of the so-called Old Lutherans ended in 1840 under King Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

In 1841 the Old Lutheran Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia organized itself under the leadership of Philipp Eduard Huschke under canon law. In 1860 it had around 55,000 members. The legal successor to the Evangelical Lutheran (Old Lutheran) Church is the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (SELK).

Consequences of the agenda dispute using the example of Hönigern

The Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Hönigern ( Silesia ) and their pastor Kellner refused to introduce the new agenda and could not be persuaded to do so by the pressure of the responsible superintendent Kelch. Pastor Kellner was then suspended by the superintendent; but Pastor Kellner did not recognize the superintendent's suspension. The district administrator demanded that the church key be handed over. The parish refused. After unsuccessful attempts by the Prussian regional church to seize the church building, the Prussian military advanced on December 23, 1834 : 400 infantry , 50 cuirassiers and 50 hussars. 200 parishioners gathered around the church. After two warnings, the military forced their way into the church with buttocks and blows. After that, a divine service took place in accordance with the regulations of the royal agendas with the uniate clergy consistorial councilor Hahn, superintendent Kelch and pastor Busch, who received a copy of the controversial union agendas .

literature

  • Jürgen Kampmann: The introduction of the Berlin Agende in Westphalia. The reorganization of the Protestant church service 1813–1835. Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 1991, ISBN 3-7858-0330-3 .
  • Jürgen Kampmann, Werner Klän (Ed.): Prussian Union, Lutheran Confession and Church Characteristics. Theological determinations of place in the struggle for the claim and range of denominational determination of the church. Oberurseler Hefte supplementary volumes , Volume 14th Edition Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8469-0157-1 .
  • Werner Klän, Gilberto da Silva (ed.): Lutheran and independent. Edition Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8469-0106-9 .
  • Hans-Wilhelm Rahe: Bishop Roß and the Rhenish-Westphalian Church - about the church constitution, union and agendas in pre-March Prussia. Düsseldorf 1984.
  • Hermann Sasse : The Century of the Prussian Church. In memory of Christmas 1834 in Hönigern. In: In Statu Confessionis. Vol. II. Verl. Die Spur, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-87126-212-9 , pp. 184-193 (Hermannsburg).

Web links

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  1. ↑ Church agendas for the court and cathedral church in Berlin , digitized version of the Greifswald University Library
  2. ↑ 2010 World Lutheran Membership Details; Lutheran World Information 1/2011 ( Memento from September 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive )