Voluntary Church
A voluntary church only includes members who have made a positive decision to belong to the church. The historical roots of the voluntary churches lie in the Anabaptist movement during the Reformation .
Voluntary churches in the narrower sense
The voluntary churches in the narrower sense include the Baptists , the Mennonites , the Free Evangelical Congregations and the Adventists . They therefore reject infant baptism and expect an informed decision for the Christian faith and membership in the respective church community. When this decision can be made is not specified in the voluntary churches. Some Free Church , however, movement is expected that the decision on membership at the earliest after the occurrence of statutory religious maturity takes place.
Voluntary churches in the broader sense
Voluntary churches in the broader sense are, for example, the Methodist Church and the Old Reformed Church . Although they baptize infants, they expect those baptized in this way to apply later to be accepted into the full communion of their respective churches. Certain conditions are then attached to acceptance, which vary in the respective churches.
Popular churches and voluntariness
Today nobody can be forced to remain a member of a people's church . The main difference between voluntary and people's churches in this context is that members of the people's churches who are baptized as children can only make negative decisions: after they have reached the age of 14, they are legally entitled to from the church of which they are a member based on a decision by their parents have become to resign. In the member churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany it is also customary to ask young people about their will to follow Jesus Christ as a member of their church as part of the confirmation .
See also
literature
- Hilbert, Gerhard: Ecclesiola in ecclesia. Luther's views of the national church and the voluntary church in their significance for the present . Leipzig / Erlangen 1920
- Wolfgang Marhold: Volkskirche - Voluntary Church. Sociological religion on the ecclesiastical landscape in the USA in comparison to the Federal Republic . In: Journal Science and Practice in Church and Society (WPKG) 69, 1980, pp. 341-350
- Sigurd Skirrbek: From the People's Church to the Voluntary Church. Shown using the example of the Netherlands . In: Church contemporary history. International half-yearly journal for theology and history 8, Göttingen 1995, pp. 198–202
- Hans-Martin Niethammer: Church membership in the free church. Church-sociological study based on an empirical survey among Methodists. Series: Church and Confession, Vol. 37; Dissertation; not incorporated. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1995, ISBN 3-525-56541-0