sectarian
Confessionalist is derived from confession (lat. Confessio) or from confessionalism . This is a trailer of the confessional parties since the age of confessionalization , the schism by those of Martin Luther outgoing Reformation was preceded. In doing so, one's own denomination is instrumentalized in the sense of a denominational party against people with a different denomination . It is about a clear delimitation of groups of people or individuals with a different creed. In addition to Catholicism, there is Protestantism with the Evangelical Lutheran or the Lutheran Reformed creed. In Bohemia there were also the Utraquists .
The theory of confessionalism on which the term is based states that the term confessionalist by no means only refers to people who are to be counted in the age of religious schism . Instrumentalizations of one's own denomination can be found e.g. B. in Neo-Lutheranism . In terms of conceptual history, this is not free from anachronisms , since the "second denominational age" is derived from that of the 16th century. The confessionalist inevitably has to follow this in terms of content. In the "first confessional age" of the 16th and 17th centuries, formal legal distinctions were made not in denominations but in the form of the Christian religion as "old" or "new", "true" or "false". So there is in truth in the 16th century a member of an "old" or "new", "true" or "false" religious community at least in their understanding, but not a denominationalist in the narrower sense, because there is still the formal legal assignment to a denomination not there. What is effective, however, is the strict delimitation of people of other religions from oneself. It should also be noted that Lutheran Orthodoxy also split over the question of enforcing the Lutheran faith. This is how one differentiates the Philippists from the Gnesiolutherans in this conflict process .