Spiritual Ministry

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Spiritual Ministry (partly also Evangelical Ministry , Ministry of Preachers ) is an expression of German legal and church history. It did not designate a ministry in the modern sense, but the overall representation of the pastorate in an urban and, in particular, imperial urban Evangelical-Lutheran church system, especially before 1918.

Origin and meaning (before 1918)

The Spiritual Ministry was created in the course of the Reformation church ordinances as a self-governing body of the clergy and as a counterweight to the sovereign church government of the council.

With the elected senior at the helm, the Ministry of Spirituality ensured that the clergy's advisory and participation rights, for example in the publication of agendas and hymn books, and in matters of public morality ( church discipline ), were preserved. According to the constitution of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg State of 1870, the ministry, i.e. the clergy as a body, represented the church teaching office and theological science.

It provided for the regulation of the training and employment of the clergy and for their further training. To this end, it maintained its own libraries in some cities, such as Greifswald and Erfurt . It had its own pension fund to provide for the widows and orphans of the clergy.

With the emergence of the synodal constitutions and the end of the sovereign church regiment, the spiritual ministries lost their importance.

Today the general convention of pastorships in the Lübeck church district still bears this historical name.

Ministry of Tripolitanum

The ministry Tripolitanum , the amalgamation of the clerical ministries of Lübeck , Hamburg and Lüneburg , had particular importance in the emerging denomination . Initially on the initiative of the Hamburg superintendent Johannes Aepinus in 1548 it ensured a common understanding between the three cities against the Augsburg Interim , had a decisive influence on the creation of the concord formula and ensured the denominational unity of the three cities until the end of the 17th century.

Ministry of Venerandum in Bremen

Since the Archbishop of Bremen had lost his church supervisory right in 1541 by imperial order, the Bremen Senate exercised the church government . The first Lutheran, then Reformed preachers of the old, new and suburbs formed a convent in the course of the 16th century, which was consistently referred to as the Venerandum Ministry . Unlike in the cities, where the clergy stood in opposition to the authorities, the Bremen ministry remained subordinate to the city government: the Senate maintained its unrestricted right of episcopate and also asserted itself against the ministry in purely spiritual matters and was not bound by its decisions.

When the Bremen municipalities became independent in the 19th century, the ministry lost its importance. After the second church dispute in Bremen , it was finally ousted and existed only as a theological discussion group until the 1930s.

Pennsylvania Ministry

Following the example of the German clerical ministries, the Ministry of Pennsylvania was founded in Philadelphia by pastors of the United Congregations in 1748 under the direction of Henry Melchior Mühlenberg as the first Evangelical Lutheran church body on North American soil.

The Spiritual Ministry in the 1933 Reich Church Constitution

The constitution of the German Evangelical Church of July 11, 1933 took on the name for a completely different body: This spiritual ministry was to stand by the new Reich Bishop and to lead the Reich Church in community with him.

Article 7 stipulated: The Spiritual Ministry is called to lead the German Evangelical Church under the leadership of the Reich Bishop and to enact laws. The body should consist of three theologians and one lawyer. The Reich Bishop should be able to freely appoint the members, but in the case of the theologians should take into account the faithfulness of the German Evangelical Church . On September 27, 1933, on the fringes of the National Synod in Wittenberg , Ludwig Müller appointed the theologians Simon Schöffel , Joachim Hossenfelder , Otto Weber and the lawyer Friedrich Werner as members of this spiritual ministry. Paul Walzer was entrusted with the office of legally qualified member from February to April 1934.

Due to the events of the church struggle , the ministry was never really effective; in March 1934 it lost its church leadership functions by ordinance.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ § 29, quoted from Peter Stolt: Liberal Protestantism in Hamburg - in the mirror of the main church St. Katharinen. Hamburg: Verlag Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte 2006 (works on the church history of Hamburg 25) ISBN 3-935413-11-4 , p. 32.
  2. ^ Otto Veeck : History of the Reformed Church of Bremen. Bremen 1909, pp. 60–65 and 157–162. - Church history of Bremen from the Reformation to the 18th century , Bremen 2017, pp. 190–191.
  3. ^ Herbert Schwarzwälder : Das Große Bremen-Lexikon, 2002, p. 483. - Karl H. Schwebel: Bremische Kirchengeschichte in the 19th and 20th centuries. Bremen 1994, p. 80.
  4. ↑ Handbook of the German Protestant Churches, 1918 to 1949: Organs, Offices, Associations, Persons , Volume 1: 'Supraregional Institutions', Heinz Boberach , Carsten Nicolaisen and Ruth Pabst (Verff.), Göttingen [u. a.]: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010, (= work on contemporary church history / series A; vol. 18), p. 77. ISBN 978-3-525-55784-6 .

literature

  • Church yearbook 1933–1944. 2nd edition, Gütersloh 1976.
  • Wolf-Dieter Hauschild : Church history of Lübeck. Lübeck 1981.
  • Carl Wolfgang Huismann Schoss: The evangelical spiritual ministry in the 16th century: an investigation of north German city ministries including the ministry of preachers in Frankfurt am Main and the spiritual ministry in Regensburg. Hansel-Hohenhausen, Egelsbach; Frankfurt (Main); Washington 1994 (= Deutsche Hochschulschriften: Alte Reihe; 763) Zugl .: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 1983 ISBN 3-89349-763-3 .
  • Inge Mager : The city of Braunschweig and its spiritual ministry are facing the challenge of the interim. In: Bernhard Sicken (Ed.): Rule and constitutional structures in the north-west of the empire. Contributions to the age of Charles V Franz Petri in memory (1903–1993). Böhlau, Köln-Weimar-Wien 1994, pp. 265-274.

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