High church association of the Augsburg Confession
The High Church Association of the Augsburg Confession is a non-profit association with the aim of promoting a sacramental and Catholic understanding of the church within Protestant churches. Their self-image is expressed in the concept of Evangelical Catholicity .
It was founded on October 9, 1918 in Berlin and has members from many churches, especially from German-speaking countries. The Church of St. John's Brotherhood has formed its spiritual core since 1929 .
Emergence
The Schleswig-Holstein pastor Heinrich Hansen published in 1917, similar to his compatriot Claus Harms in 1817, on the centenary of the Reformation 95 theses critical of the church “ Stimuli et clavi ”: the German Evangelical Churches should turn around and return to the catholicity determined by the gospel. The high church association (addition: Augsburg Confession, since 1938) was created on November 10, 1918 in Berlin. It was headed by H. Hansen from 1918 to 1919, from 1930 to 1962 by the religious scholar and ecumenist Prof. Dr. Friedrich Heiler , Marburg, who was accepted into the Reformation church in 1919 by Bishop Nathan Söderblom . The part of the name High Church testifies to the proximity to the English High Church and thus to the future of the Church of the Nicene Creed, non-denominational Christianity with Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox features.
Self-image
The High Church Association sees itself as a renewal movement in the Evangelical Church “in service to the One Holy Church of Jesus Christ.” This renewal takes place in the “mutual recognition of offices” and in “responsibility to ecumenism, because the church of the future will be be ecumenical or it will not be. ” Renewal also happens in personal life through confession (individual confession) and in “ fraternal handling of guilt. ” Renewal also takes place through deepening the community and through “ sacrificing time, money and help for others. “ Evangelical is the claim to the freedom of the gospel and its prophetic traits, catholic to all-embracing , to what unites the individual and the churches.
Evangelical catholicity
The Hochkirchliche Vereinigung defines Protestant catholicity roughly as follows: “Both aspects of Christian life belong together. Nobody is either just 'Protestant' or just 'Catholic'. ” To counteract a disintegration of these two aspects, the willingness to listen to one another, to speak to one another and to reflect, that is the task that the High Churches Association has set itself. None and no one, not even a church or community, is already perfect in itself. She needs to hear, learn and change. Every constituted church must be or become aware of its evangelical catholicity . The goal is the visible unity of the One Holy Church. In the office of the bishop (Petrine service), the office of the presbyter / priest, the ordination and the apostolic succession with their three elements: traditio - successio - communio , she sees the signs and forms of unity, which are found in the celebration of divine service with Holy Communion (Eucharist) realized.
activities
The Hochkirchliche Vereinigung maintains a magazine and a publishing house, Eine Heilige Kirche , holds specialist theological conferences on current ecumenical issues, and sees itself as a platform for ecumenical exchange and learning from one another.
literature
- Walter Birnbaum : The German Protestant liturgical movement. The religious problem and the liturgical movements of the 20th century. Volume II: The German Protestant Liturgical Movement. Tübingen 1970, pp. 39-46.
- Carl E. Braaten: Mother Church. Ecclesiology and Ecumenism. Minneapolis 1998, pp. 85-88.
- Johannes Halkenhäuser: Church and community. History and mission of the communitarian movement in the churches of the Reformation. Denominational and controversial theological studies. Volume XLII. Paderborn 1978, p. 207.
- Theodor Hauf, Ursula Kisker: Confessing Justification Together - Renewed Call to Evangelical Catholicity. Eighty Years of the High Church Association 1918–1998 , EHKNF No. 5, Bochum 1999.
- High Church Association of Augsburg Confession (ed.): Around the one church: Protestant catholicity . Festschrift for Hans-Joachim Mund on his 70th birthday. Werk-Verlag Edmund Banaschewski, Munich- Graefelfing 1984, ISBN 3-8040-0337-0 .
- Christoph Joest: Spirituality of Protestant Communities. Old church monastic tradition in evangelical communities today. Göttingen 1995, p. 394.
- Heinrich Kröger among others: Between vernacular and high church. On the life and work of Pastor Heinrich Hansen. North Frisian CVs 10, ed. by Thomas Steensen, Verlang Nordfriisk Instituut, Bredstedt 2011, ISBN 978-3-88007-365-4 .
- Jan Langfeldt: The high church movement in Germany and the Eucharistic celebration of the Evangelical-Catholic Eucharistic Community of 1931. With special consideration of the offertory . Grin-Verlag, Norderstedt 2006.
- Lydia Präger (ed.): Free for God and the people. Evangelical brotherhoods and sororities of the present in self-portrayals. Stuttgart, 1st ed., Pp. 272-276.
- Gérard Siegwalt: Dogmatique pour la catholicité évangélique. Système mystagogique de la foi chrétienne. L'affirmation de la foi. Cosmologie théologique: Théologie de la création , Vol. 3, No. 2, Cerf-Verlag, Paris 2000.