Older liturgical movement

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The later so-called older liturgical movement was a reform movement of the liturgy in the Protestant churches in Germany at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. She was associated with the two professors Friedrich Spitta (1852-1924) and Julius Smend (1857-1930), who taught in Strasbourg .

Period

After individual liturgical studies, which were already characterized by the endeavor to “reform the evangelical cult” in the sense of modernization, the actual collecting basin of the older liturgical movement was the monthly magazine for worship and church art founded by the two Strasbourg professors in 1896 (MGkK ), which was published by Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht in Göttingen. Just one year after the magazine was founded, it had 320 employees.

Already during the First World War the importance of the older liturgical movement waned and came to an end with the death of the two protagonists at the latest. The MGkK continued to exist until 1941, but no longer had a uniform character. In addition, a so-called younger (also: second) liturgical movement emerged from the 1920s , which was to determine what happened from then on.

issue

The older liturgical movement turned against the compulsory agenda , which prevented the renewal of worship more than made it possible. For this reason, everything that is merely conventional should be discarded and people's current experience and experience should be asserted. The movement was guided by the concern: "Our worship service must become more modern!"

The focus was on:

  • a church building corresponding to the life of worship today,
  • the introduction of daily open churches and daily worship services,
  • the redesign of the Lord's Supper with individual goblets,
  • the recovery of church music,
  • new forms of worship.

theology

The older liturgical movement took up the liturgy of Friedrich Schleiermacher , a festival theory that dealt with the "representation of the faith" of a community, and developed it further. The form of the worship service should “grow out of the worship life and feelings of the community”. The criterion for this modernization is "truthfulness", which was understood as the conformity of religious feeling with the liturgical form.

literature

  • Konrad Klek : Divine service experience. The liturgical reform efforts at the turn of the century under the leadership of Friedrich Spitta and Julius Smend . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-525-57196-8 .
  • Jochen Cornelius-Bundschuh : Liturgy between tradition and renewal: Problems of Protestant liturgical science in the first half of the 20th century presented in the work of Paul Graff . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1991, ISBN 3-525-57184-4 .