Unionism (Protestantism)
Unionism (from church lat .: unio unity; from unus one) is a term that is used in the context of European church history , especially in connection with the Reformation .
The term unionism describes the endeavor to establish a church fellowship between Lutherans and Reformed churches . Unionism was realized in the form of the Uniate Churches - the most important was the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union, formed in 1817 (under this name from 1922) in Prussia . In Anhalt , Baden (1821), Bremen (1877), Hessen-Darmstadt , Kurhessen , Nassau and the Palatinate (accepted there by referendum by church members), the respective Lutheran and Reformed regional churches were institutionalized . A distinction is made between regional churches whose parishes maintain an unified denomination (e.g. Baden and Palatinate ) and those which merely represent an organizational amalgamation between Lutheran, Reformed and Uniate parishes which nominally continue to maintain their parish-specific denomination (e.g. Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia , Bremen , Rhineland ).
The problem behind unionism arose from the fact that in the course of the Reformation there was a very rapid theological split within the evangelical camp . Already in the first years there was an effort to overcome theological contradictions; but especially the Marburg Religious Discussion of 1529, at which u. a. Luther himself, Philipp Melanchthon and Ulrich Zwingli participated, brought consensus on 14 out of 15 points, including the doctrine of justification; the crucial question of the interpretation of the Lord's Supper could not be resolved: while Zwingli saw the Lord's Supper as a purely symbolic commemoration, the Lutherans insisted that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are really the body and blood of the risen Christ through the consecration (see: Sacrament controversy ). The theological contradiction in this one question led in the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and in the subsequent period to many Lutherans and Reformed people accusing one another of heresy up to the 17th and 18th centuries; In particular, the Reformed was denied the status of a recognized denomination until the Peace of Westphalia .
It was only in the 19th century, when the denominational wars had long since passed, that at least the institutional divisions were largely overcome, while theological differences persisted. There have been attempts to find an approximation here, too, by z. B. Separated core elements of belief from supposed "trivialities" and thus reached compromises. Larger attempts at rapprochement in the sense of unionism repeatedly encountered fierce resistance in both camps up to the second half of the 20th century, who feared for their respective denominational independence and for "falling away" from "pure doctrine". In 1973, however, the Leuenberg Agreement led to the achievement of the unionist goal of full church and communion communion between a large number of Lutheran and Reformed church bodies in Europe. The resulting union is called the Community of Evangelical Churches in Europe (CPCE) . Nonetheless, denominational Lutheran churches such as the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church have refused to join the CPCE or the Evangelical Church in Germany , as a union of German regional churches, due to their commitment to the Lutheran confessions .
Since 2003, the formerly Old Prussian Evangelical Church of the Union and the other Uniate and Reformed regional churches of the Union of Evangelical Churches joined together in the Arnoldshain Conference . In other countries, too, there are more or less far-reaching alliances between Lutheran and Reformed churches.
A similar basic attitude as in unionism (emphasis on commonalities in faith), without the explicit goal of a common church, can be found in the evangelical alliance and the ecumenical movement .
See also
- Agenda dispute
- Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church as the successor church to the Old Lutheran Church
- Evangelical Church in Germany
- Evangelical Reformed Churches in Switzerland
- Protestant churches
- Hanau Union
- Saarbrücken Union
Individual evidence
- ↑ Description on Zentralarchiv-speyer.de
- ↑ Gert Kelter: The SELK and the "Leuenberger Agreement" - or the difference between friendship and marriage. Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church, 2017, accessed April 11, 2020 .