Old Lutherans

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Old Lutheran or Old Lutheran is a collective term for certain Lutheran churches . In terms of denomination , they are counted among the old denominational churches .

development

Both the phenomenon itself and the term came up in connection with the resistance to the unions between Lutheran and Reformed congregations, which took place in various German federal states from 1817 onwards. At the same time, the Neuluth movement had formed, which wanted to enforce the strict validity of the confessional writings of the 16th century against the rationalistic tendencies in Protestant theology . In 1830 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia was founded in Breslau , which soon spread to other provinces and in 1845 received state recognition as an Evangelical Lutheran (old Lutheran) church . The term "Old Lutheran" was initially a polemical term used by the opponents and only became an official part of the name in 1955. According to their own self-image, the “Old Lutherans” represented the actual Lutheran church, which had otherwise been destroyed by the union movement .

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Baden , the Renitente Church of the unchanged Augsburg Confession in Hesse and the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hesse also belong to the old Lutheran churches, the foundation of which goes back to the resistance against the unions in their territories . Other churches of a similar type were formed in the last third of the 19th century in opposition to liberal tendencies in Lutheran regional churches; for example the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church (in which the Old Lutheran Trinity Church in Chemnitz is the only parish to have “Old Lutheran” in its name), the Hanoverian Evangelical Lutheran Free Church and the Hermannsburg-Hamburg Free Church . Most of these churches in Germany have been amalgamated to form the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church since 1972 .

In the Scandinavian countries, too, old Lutheran churches were formed in opposition to the state churches in the 19th century, such as the Evangelisk-lutherske frikirke i Danmark (1855) and the Evangelisk Lutherske Frikirke in Norway (1877); later also in opposition to the ordination of women , so the Swedish Mission Province (2003), the Suomen evankelisluterilainen lähetyshiippakunta and the Evangelisk-lutherske stift i Norge (both 2013). Old Lutheran churches that emerged through emigration from Germany are the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Wisconsin Synod in the USA, the Lutheran Church - Canada , the Lutheran Church of Australia and the Free Evangelical Lutheran Synod in South Africa . Almost all of these churches do not belong to the more liberal Lutheran World Federation , but to the International Lutheran Council or the denominational Evangelical Lutheran Conference

See also

literature

  • Werner Klän :  Old Lutherans . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 1, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1998, Sp. 379-381.
  • Werner Klän: Old Lutherans. In: Evangelical Lexicon for Theology and Congregation (ELThG). New edition. Vol. 1. SCM Brockhaus, Holzgerlingen 2017, pp. 193–194.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Old Lutheran Trinity Church Chemnitz. In: elfk.de, accessed on July 5, 2019.