Berlin Declaration (Religion)

The Berlin Declaration is a resolution written on September 15, 1909 in the St. Michael Hospice in Berlin, in which the pietistic community movement distanced itself from the emerging Pentecostal movement .

history

Walter Michaelis , the president of the Gnadau community association , thus the head of the community movement, was encouraged by Georg von Viebahn to convene a preparatory committee for a resolution against the Pentecostal movement. Von Viebahn had expressed his concern that more and more brothers were being drawn into the tongue movement . A preparatory committee met and met for two days in the St. Michael Hospice in Berlin. The committee invited to another meeting in Berlin and then drafted this resolution in a 19-hour mammoth meeting with over 50 invited.

In the declaration, the regional church community movement sharply distances itself from the Pentecostal movement that is just emerging and its excesses, which are perceived as offensive. The resolution is a worldwide unique declaration, since no other nation has such a separation between the two movements as in Germany . It is stated in it that the Pentecostal movement is not a movement from above (i.e. from God), but one from below , i.e. from Satan , which has many elements in common with spiritualism and from which one should stay away should.

In response to the Berlin Declaration, the Pentecostal movement wrote the Mülheim Declaration on September 15, 1909 .

The Berlin Declaration resulted in a deep and long-lasting distance between Pentecostal Free Churches and the other Protestant Free Churches and community associations. Since the Berlin Declaration not only criticized individual theological views or events, but rather described the Pentecostal movement as a whole as originating from Satan, the community movement had poisoned the climate between the Christian denominations in Germany over the decades. The defamatory statements that the Pentecostal movement originated from Satan and that one should stay away from it have not been explicitly revoked until today. Only recently have increased efforts been made to successfully overcome this gap, among others through the Kassel Declaration of 1996 or joint projects such as ProChrist .

In January 2009, 100 years after the Berlin Declaration was signed, the Gnadau Community Association and the Mülheim Association of Free Church Evangelical Congregations published a joint declaration on the Berlin Declaration. These two associations are in the traditions of those two camps that faced each other in 1909, the Gnadauer Association in the tradition of the Berlin Declaration, and the Mülheim Association in the tradition of the Pentecostal movement and the Mülheim Declaration. The 2009 declaration states, among other things:

“We recognize in the 'Berlin Declaration' as well as in the Mülheim reply that there is a serious spiritual struggle to avert damage to the community of Jesus in critical times. However, these historical documents are of no significance for the current cooperation between the Gnadauer and Mülheimer Verband. We know that the Spirit of Jesus Christ is at work in the other movement. "

Furthermore, the declaration welcomes existing forms of cooperation between the two associations and confirms the intention to further deepen this cooperation in the future. Even in the declaration of 2009, however, the community movement could not bring itself to distance itself from its historical blanket judgment; reference has only been made to the current situation.

Signatory

The resolution was adopted by 56 brothers; their listed names were below the statement. Four brothers refused to give their consent:

Behren, Hanover Bartsch, Charlottenburg Sheet metal Broda, Gelsenkirchen A. Dallmeyer Dolmann Engel, Neurode Evers, Rixdorf Frank, Hamburg Grote, Oberfischbach Hermann, Berlin Heydorn Chicken, Freinwalde Ihloff

Jörn, Berlin Kmitta; Nipple Koehler, Berlin Count Korff Kühn, Gr. Lichterfelde Lammert, Berlin Tan K. Mascher Mascher, Lehe Master, Waldenburg Merten, Elberfeld Michaelis v. Patow Rohrbach

v. Rotkirch Rudersdorf, Düsseldorf Ruprecht, Herischdorf Sartorius Crowd guard Schiefer, Neukirchen Schopf , Witten Schrenk Schütz, Berlin Schütz, Rawitsch Seitz Simoleit, Berlin Stockmayer v. Thiele-Winckler

Thiemann v. Treskow v. Thummler M. Urban Urbschat, Hela Vasel v. Viebahn Guardian, Frankfurt Wallraff, Berlin Warns , Berlin Wittekindt Deserts, Gorlitz v. Zastrow, Gr. Breesen

Approval was requested from Wittekindt in Wernigerode. So the Berlin Declaration was not handwritten by the individual brothers. Today there are neither minutes nor the original certificate of that meeting.

literature

• Ernst Giese: And mend the nets . Documents on the 20th century revival history. 3. Edition. Ernst-Franz-Verlag, Metzingen 1988.
• Ludwig Eisenlöffel: until they all become one. Seventy years of the Berlin Declaration and its consequences . 1st edition. Leuchter-Verlag, Erzhausen 1979, ISBN 3-87482-078-5 .
• Flying fire of alien spirit . 4th edition. Gnadauer-Verlag, Denkendorf near Esslingen 1976.
• Walter Michaelis: Findings and experiences from 50 years of service to the Gospel . 2nd Edition. Giessen 1949.
• WJ Hollenweger: Enthusiastic Christianity, the Pentecostal movement in the past and present . Ed .: R. Brockhaus. Zwingli-Verlag, Wuppertal / Zurich 1969.
• Paul Fleisch: History of the Pentecostal Movement in Germany from 1900 to 1950 . Francke-Verlag, Marburg 1983 (first edition: 1957).
• Paul Fleisch: The tongue movement in Germany . Ed .: HG Wallmann. Leipzig 1914.
• Christian Hugo Krust: 50 years of the German Pentecostal Movement . Mission bookshop, Altdorf 1958.
• Eugen Edel: The fight for the Pentecostal movement . Humburg, Mülheim an der Ruhr 1949, OCLC 864861110 .
• Werner Beyer: After 100 years: Reconciliation among evangelicals . In: ideaSpektrum . No. 3/2009 , p. 20 .
• Johannes Seitz: memories and experiences . Linea-Verlage, Bad Wildbad 2009, ISBN 978-3-939075-33-2 .

Web links

• The Berlin Declaration and its Consequences (Mülheim and Kassel Declarations)
• Wording of the Berlin Declaration
• Wording of the Berlin Declaration in Rich Text Format (RTF)
• Joint declaration by the Evangelical Gnadau Community Association and the Mülheim Association of Free Church Evangelical Congregations on the "Berlin Declaration" of 1909. (PDF; 61 kB) January 2009, archived from the original on April 19, 2013 ; accessed on October 12, 2017 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Noble: The fight for the Pentecostal movement . 1949, p. 24 f .
2. ^ Gerhard Ruhbach: Michaelis, Walter (1866-1953) . In: Helmut Burkhardt, Uwe Swarat (ed.): Evangelical Lexicon for Theology and Congregation . 2nd volume. R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal 1993, ISBN 3-417-24642-3 , p. 1339 .
3. ↑ Michaelis: Findings and experiences from 50 years of service to the Gospel . 1949, p. 143 .
4. ↑ Giese: And mend the nets . 1987, p. 98 .
5. ↑ Giese: And mend the nets . 1987, p. 129–133 ( gottes-haus.de ).
6. ↑ Joint declaration of the Evangelical Gnadauer Community Association and the Mülheim Association of Free Church Evangelical Congregations on the “Berlin Declaration” of 1909. (No longer available online.) In: ead.de, an evangelical alliance in Germany. German Evangelical Alliance V., January 16, 2009, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved January 20, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ Giese: And mend the nets . 1987, p. 109 .