World Congress for Free Christianity

Book for the 5th World Congress in Berlin in 1910

The World Congress for Free Christianity and Religious Progress was founded as the Council of Unitarian and other Liberal Thinkers and Workers on May 25, 1900 in Boston on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the American Unitarian Association . The first meetings were in Boston in 1900, London in 1901 , Amsterdam in 1903 , Geneva in 1905 , Boston in 1907, Berlin in 1910 and in Paris in 1913 .

The world congresses before the First World War

In the first few years since its founding, general interest in world religious congresses increased so that from congress to congress more and more liberal theologians from the most varied of Protestant schools, but also Catholic and Jewish theologians and Buddhist monks, as well as liberal and free-thinking ones Scientists and public figures took part.

Greeting card for the 5th World Congress 1910

The preparation of the congress in Berlin in 1910 already required enormous organizational effort. The preparatory committee consisted of 14 people, consisting of two members of the Reichstag (K. Schrader and Friedrich Naumann ), three professors (D. Baumgarten, D. Rade, Geffcken), a senior councilor (Erler), six pastors (Fobbe, Max Fischer, Alfred Fischer, Michael Schiele, Schneemelcher, Traub), a district judge (Rehse) and a free theologian ( Paul Rohrbach ). The invitation to the congress was signed by 82 non-theological university professors (including celebrities such as Adickes, Aschoff, Eucken, Lipps, Natorp, Schrempf, Schücking, Spitta, Spranger, Tönnies), 102 theological university professors, 42 teachers, 135 clergy, 47 doctors, officers , Lawyers or judges, 45 artists, poets, writers and representatives of the press, 109 representatives of trade and industry, 67 MPs, members of municipal etc. corporations and 27 women. The list of participants showed 2086 entries.

The most famous speakers were:

Adolf Harnack (Berlin), Francis G. Peabody (Harvard), G. Bonet-Maury (Paris), HY Groenewagen (Leiden), Georg Wobbermin (Breslau), Friedrich Niebergall (Heidelberg), Otto Baumgarten (Kiel), Ernst Troeltsch ( Heidelberg), Benjamin W. Bacon (Yale, New Haven), Hans von Soden (Berlin), H. v. Merczyng (St. Petersburg), Emil G. Hirsch (Chicago), Martin Rade (Marburg), Hermann Cohen (Marburg), Rudolf Eucken (Jena).

The Berlin Congress of 1910 was of particular importance for the Unitarian movement in Germany, above all because Rudolf Walbaum , the pastor of the free Protestant congregations on the left bank of the Rhine , was a participant and lecturer in Berlin, and especially with the North American Unitarians , and that he established close contact From then on, the Free Protestants in Germany called Germans Unitarians , even though they had previously had no historical relationship with Unitarianism or anti-Trinitarianism .

literature

• Max Fischer and Friedrich Michael Schiele (eds.): Fifth World Congress for Free Christianity and Religious Progress. Berlin August 5-10, 1910 - Minutes of the negotiations. Verlag des Protestantische Schriftenvertriebs, Schöneberg, Berlin 1910.

Web links

German side of the international successor organization Religions for Peace (RfP)

Remarks

1. ↑ Cf. Max Fischer and Friedrich Michael Schiele (eds.): Fifth World Congress for Free Christianity and Religious Progress. Berlin August 5-10, 1910 - Minutes of the negotiations. Verlag des Protestantische Schriftenvertriebs, Schöneberg, Berlin 1910, p. 7.