Tag Archives: German Studies Association

Conference Report: Seminar, Religion and Secularism in Germany from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 4 (Winter 2024)

Conference Report: Seminar, Religion and Secularism in Germany from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, German Studies Association, September 2024

By Mark Edward Ruff, St. Louis University

This seminar, which featured 14 participants and 6 auditors, was originally scheduled to convene at the annual meeting of the German Studies Association from September 27-29, 2024. Because of flooding and power outages caused by Hurricane Helene, however, most of the participants were unable to arrive safely in Atlanta in person. The seminar took place instead over Zoom in three sessions of an hour and fifty minutes each.

Convened by Professor Dr. Florian Bock, a church historian at the Ruhr-Universität-Bochum (RUB) and Mark Edward Ruff of Saint Louis University, this seminar explored the complex relationship between religion and secularism in the 19th and 20th centuries. This was a topic that until recently had received relatively little attention from scholars, who simply assumed that the relationship between secularist movements and organized religion in Germany was characterized by mutual hostility.

This hostility certainly existed. Freethinker and secularist movements inveighed against organized religion.  Frequently denouncing religion as little more than superstition, they also showed themselves to be rabidly anticlerical in their broadsides against established religious institutions. Predictably, they disproportionately directed their fire against the Catholic church: freethinkers disproportionately arose out of Protestant rinks. To be sure, defenders of orthodox religion often responded in kind. They met hostility with hostility, and for that reason alone, scholars were for decades apt to take as a given mutual animosity between secularism and religion.

But the relationship between religion and secularism was never quite that simple. For one, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam were anything but homogenous; significant differences existed not only between but within each over how to position oneself in politics, society and the so-called “modern” world with its default assumption of secularity. For another, secularism and secularity were not coherent concepts either. Secularism ran the gamut from laicité and anticlericalism to free-thinking, materialism, agnosticism, and atheism. Its relationship to ostensibly secular parties like the SPD was complicated, since most Germans retained formal religious affiliations through the first two-thirds of the 20th century. Not least, secular ideas emerged out of religious institutions and inquiry and vice versa; religious discussions of gender, sexuality, and capitalism were shaped by complicated interactions with secularist views.

Aiming to explore how religion and secularism defined themselves and each other vis-à-vis the other and its impact on the lives of the faithful, indifferent and skeptical, this seminar put together readings mostly from the first two decades of the 21st century. The first day’s readings sought to make sense of competing understandings of secularism and the secular.  They included portions of Talal Asad’s classic work, Formations of the Secular. Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2003) and Charles Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007) along with a set of reflection by the German sociologist, Detlef Pollack, on secularization. Taylor had famously posed the question of why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in 1500 in the West while in today’s world and especially in the “secular” academy, it is “easy,” if not “inescapable?” Participants pointed out a paradox. Although Asad published his book before Taylor, portions of it were expressly designed to counter Taylor’s arguments and framework of the secular which he had encountered in bits and pieces in the preceding decade. Many participants also noted how both works were profoundly shaped by the attacks of September 11, 2001. How much of these frameworks, they queried, remained viable more than twenty years later?

For the second day of the seminar, participants applied and historicized these theories in greater detail. They discussed Manuel Borutta’s pioneering article, “Genealogie der Säkularisierungstheorie. Zur Historisierung einer großen Erzählung der Moderne,“ which appeared in the German journal, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, in 2010. They also explored portions of Rebekka Habermas’ edited volume, Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire. Transnational Approaches (Berghahn Books, 2019), and its chapters on religion in the so-called “long 19th-century.”  The attendees also discussed the chapter by Carolin Kosuch, “Secularism and Unbelief” from the forthcoming edited volume by Anthony Steinhoff and Jeffrey Zalar, Handbook of Religious Culture in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Since Zalar was one of the participants in the seminar, he shed light on this chapter’s origins and significance. Not least, participants discussed what has become the go-to work on secularism in modern Germany, Todd Weir’s, Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany. The Rise of the Fourth Confession (Cambridge University Press, 2014.)  At stake in these readings was the question of how secularist paradigms became embedded in discourses of masculinity and became potent political and ideological weapons.

On the third and final day, participants turned to the second half of the 20th century. They read the introduction to an edited volume by Wilhelm Damberg’s, Frank Bösch, and Lucian Hölscher. Soziale Strukturen und Semantiken des Religiösen im Wandel. Transformationen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949–1989 (Klartext, 2011). Evoking the greatest discussion and controversy were readings by Joan Scott. Featured were significant portions of her short monograph, Sex and Secularism (Princeton University Press, 2018). They questioned whether her analysis, which was derived from recent French history, also applied to Germany. Some argued that she was painting with too broad of a brush. Other participants critiqued her approach of seeing secularism primarily as a political discourse and not a transcendent set of principles.

At the close, the scholars of religion and secularism gathered over Zoom were once again left wondering about the relevancy of frameworks published in the aftermath of September 11. How precisely did sexual emancipation become a weapon in the so-called “clash of civilizations?” Are we indeed living in a secular age or a post-religious world?  If so, how do we eschew the simple binaries and teleologies characteristic of many readings on these topics? Is our only answer to historicize?

 

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Conference Report: “Religion and Migration: Institutions and Law”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 24, Number 4 (December 2018)

Conference Report: “Religion and Migration: Institutions and Law,” Sponsored by the Religious Cultures Network, German Studies Association, Pittsburgh, PA, September 2018.

By Christina Matzen, University of Toronto

Five scholars convened a Religious Cultures Network-sponsored panel on September 29, 2018, at the German Studies Association conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The panel consisted of presenters Rebecca Carter-Chand, James Niessen, and Christopher Stohs, while Josiah Simon delivered commentary and Benjamin Goossen moderated the panel.

Rebecca Carter-Chand began with her paper, “The Transplantation of the Salvation Army to Germany, 1886-1918.” Using the horticultural metaphor of transplantation, she traces how the London-based Salvation Army took root in Germany, developing into a “noisy” but respected organization. The 1890s proved an important decade for the German Salvation Army because its newly-adopted mission to address social reform and poor relief corresponded with Germany’s ever-increasing concern with the “social question.” It soon had a sturdy presence in major German cities and received acceptance as a social and religious German movement. Indeed, the German Salvation Army, which grew into a de facto church and social welfare agency, employed innovative strategies of evangelism that reverberated with notions of the German Volk. Thus, when war broke out in 1914, the organization would be able to survive its British parent association, in large part due to the leadership’s successful efforts at presenting itself as a patriotic German movement with an internationalist mission.

James Niessen’s paper, “The Role of Christian Churches of German Europe in the Hungarian Refugee Crisis of 1956-57,” examines the Austrian-Catholic response to the nearly 200,000 people who fled Hungary in 1956 after Soviet forces suppressed the Hungarian Revolution. Niessen argues that Austria’s assistance was altruistic but also opportunistic, as the nation sought to compensate for its role in Nazi crimes. For faith-based groups, however, he maintains that an ethical imperative took precedence over opportunism, which can be understood through scripture mandating care for the homeless. Despite religious differences among these organizations, their leadership was united in the interests of the refugees. Niessen profiles four Austrian Catholic leaders who were instrumental in aid efforts: Archbishop of Vienna Franz König; Leopold Ungar; Stefan László; and Fabian Flynn, C.P. He also notes that Protestants quickly mobilized to provide aid to Hungary and its refugees. In his conclusion, Niessen makes clear that these humanitarian reactions should also be understood in the Cold War context of Christian anti-communism.

In the final paper, “Sprich, sing und bete Deutsch: The Lyrical Campaign against the Bennett Law,” Christopher Stohs traces Wisconsin’s 1889 Bennett Law and its implications for German immigrant life in nineteenth-century America. The law made English-language instruction compulsory for reading, writing, math, and U.S. history classes. Many German-Americans in the Midwest perceived this law to be an assault on their parochial schools and thus their religious, linguistic, and cultural freedoms. Stohs examines prose and poetry that opponents of the law wrote and published in Germania, a Protestant-leaning German-language newspaper and Wisconsin’s most widely circulated periodical at the time. He argues that these pieces stoked fears in Republican Lutherans, motivating them to join forces with Democratic Catholics to repeal the Bennett Law, which they accomplished in 1891.

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Conference Report: “Religious Revivals in 19th and 20th century Germany”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 4 (December 2017)

Conference Report: “Religious Revivals in 19th and 20th century Germany,” German Studies Association, 2017

By Mark Edward Ruff, Saint Louis University

Thirteen historians, religious studies scholars and literary specialists gathered at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association from October 6-8 in Atlanta to examine the impact of religious revivals in Germany in the 19th and 20th century. The seminar analyzed phenomenon as distinct as the early-to-mid 19th Century revivals, Marian apparitions, the youth, liturgical and bible movements of the late 19th and early 20th century, the political religions of the 1920s and 1930s, and the cults, sects and lifestyle movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the Federal Republic. In different ways, all of these different events and movements challenged understandings of confessional orthodoxy, hierarchy and authority.

Convened by Thomas Großbölting of the Wilhelm-Westfälische-Universität in Münster and Mark Edward Ruff of Saint Louis University, the seminar analyzed the circumstances under which these movements emerged as well as their impact. Why did the Protestant and Catholic churches contest, at least initially, all of these revival movements, sects and cults, some emerging from inside the church walls but most from outside? Why did some remain on the margins, while others were appropriated by the major church bodies? Answering these questions led the participants to grapple with definitions of religion and to examine those put forward, explicitly or implicitly, by churchmen in the past. All forced churchmen to engage with societal currents with which most would have preferred not to engage. Most unfolded against a backdrop of fear—of secularization, societal unrest, state persecution.

The first day’s discussion focused on highly contested conceptions of “secularization,” “modernization” and “resacralization.” They focused on the conflicting interpretative frameworks put forward by Steve Bruce, a proponent of traditional secularization paradigms, and Grace Davie, who has championed the notion of “believing without belonging.” Bruce’s and Davie’s works from the 1990s and 2000sprimarily discussed religious changes in the post-1945 era, but the definitions they put forward are easily applicable to the religious revivals and transformations of the long 19th century because of their conflicting understandings of religious “cults” and “sects.” Seminar participants subsequently discussed excerpts from David Blackbourn’s now classic work, Marpingen, which analyzed Marian apparitions in a small Saar village. Though popular pressure mounted to have the Marpingen apparitions officially recognized by the church, church leaders refused to do so, even amid the atmosphere of fear and violence generated by the Kulturkampf and stationing of troops in this village in the borderlands.

For the second day, the seminar discussed a chapter from the Marist College scholar Michael O’Sullivan’s forthcoming book with the University of Toronto Press, Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918-1965. Participants compared his analytical analysis of the miracles associated with Terese Neumann with that of Blackbourn. Since the miracles associated with her and her circle took place in the 1930s (and later), they also took up two seemingly timeless question: To what extent did National Socialism represent a “political religion” and to what extent did movements like the German Christians represent the flourishing of a sect?

The third day brought forward some of the most intense discussions. Did the 1960s represent an era of “secularization” or of “religious revival?” What meanings and significance can be ascribed to New Age movements, occultism and esoterica? Were these movements indicative of a fundamental transformation in religion or were they in the tradition of movements and cults from earlier decades and centuries? What distinguished those movements that were incorporated into the churches from those that remained outside? The seminar closed with a discussion of a controversial document, the final report of the Enquete-Kommission from 1998 detailing the role of sects and “psycho-groups” within the landscape of the Federal Republic. The controversies engulfing Scientology in Germany were repeatedly raised as an example of a new group challenging definitions of what constituted religion.

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Conference Report: “Germany and the Confessional Divide, 1871-1989,” Seminar at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 4 (December 2016)

Conference Report: “Germany and the Confessional Divide, 1871-1989,” Seminar at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, 2016, San Diego, California

By Mark Edward Ruff, St. Louis University

On the eve of the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, twenty-five historians and theologians gathered at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association from September 30 through October 2 in San Diego to examine a confessional divide between Catholicism and Protestantism characterizing the social, political and religious landscape of Germany from the Kaiserreich through German reunification in 1990.

Convened by Thomas Großbölting of the Wilhelm-Westfälische-Universität in Münster and Mark Edward Ruff of Saint Louis University, the seminar grappled with how confessional identity is created and upheld. How and why did theologians, church leaders and politicians define themselves negatively against confessional enemies? To what extent was this process of definition influenced by geography, and in particular, the degree to which their regions were confessionally homogenous or heterogeneous? How did population shifts alter processes of confessionalization? How was this process of self-definition affected by encounters with non-Christian religions, including Jews and Muslims? And finally, which voices sought to counter such confessionalization processes and what impact did they have on received identities?

The seminar began the first day by focusing on the deepening of confessional tensions in the nineteenth century. The sociologist, M. Rainer Lepsius, spoke of the concept of “socio-moral miliuex,” borrowing the concept of a “Catholic milieu” from the Catholic publicist, Carl Amery. Some of Lepsius’ disciples, in turn, referred to a “conservative Protestant milieu.” The historian, Olaf Blaschke, calls much of the nineteenth century a “second confessional era,” one marked by the intensity of passions found in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the wake of the Reformation.  A participant in the seminar, Blaschke described the origins of his approach in his study with the renowned Bielefeld social historian, Hans-Ulrich Wehler. Seminar participants, examining Blaschke’s thesis as well as objections from his critics, nonetheless remained divided over whether parallels with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries hold up for the nineteenth. All nonetheless agreed that the era represented an era of significant and troubling confessional tensions, even if some pointed out that the forces driving these tensions varied significantly between the early modern and modern eras.

On the second day, participants examined attempts to overcome these confessional tensions in the 1920s and 1930s. The Nazis had striven to create a “positive Christianity,” a recognition of how deeply these confessional fault lines cut through German society. The discussion centered on Richard Steigmann-Gall’s classic and contested monograph, The Holy Reich. Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).  Participants focused less on Steigmann-Gall’s claims that the Nazis, contrary to later mythologizing, understood themselves as good Christians and acted on the basis of their Christian faith. They focused instead on Steigmann-Galls’s analysis of how the Nazis exploited the goals of “positive Christianity” in hopes of standing above the confessions and bridging the confessional divide.

Even so, and spite of attempts to put aside these confessional differences through the creation of interconfessional movements of Christian Democracy, confessional fault lines persisted through the Adenauer Era in the Federal Republic—and in some regions, even longer. Only in the German Democratic Republic did these differences recede, the region being home to only a tiny minority of Catholics and under the control of an officially atheistic regime. The third session accordingly analyzed forces that ultimately closed these confessional rifts in the second half of the twentieth century. They began with a discussion of Maria Mitchell’s seminal article in the Journal of Modern History, “Materialism and Secularism. CDU Politicians and National Socialism, 1945-1949,” (67, no. 2 (June 1995): 278-308) which showed how Catholics and Protestants found common ground in the CDU through their shared hostility to materialism. Mitchell was also present and provided an overview of her article’s genesis while she was at graduate school at Boston University. Participants also examined the second chapter of Mark Edward Ruff’s forthcoming monograph, The Battle for the Catholic Past: Germany, 1945 -1980. This chapter examined the fights over the validity of the Reichskonkordat in the postwar era that culminated in a landmark case before the Constitutional Court in June, 1956. The seminar concluded with a discussion of Thomas Mittmann’s article in Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, “Säkularisierungsvorstellungen und religiöse Identitätsstiftung im Migrationsdiskurs. Die kirchliche Wahrnehmung ‘des Islams’ in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit den 1960er Jahren“ (51 (2011): 267-289).

The fruitful conversations will lead to an edited volume, likely under the title, Germany and the Confessional Divide, 1871-1989. The 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation provides the ideal opportunity to take stock of the Reformation legacy, not just in Germany but throughout the world.

 

 

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Conference Report: Panels in Honour of Hartmut Lehmann at the 39th Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 21, Number 4 (December 2015)

Conference Report: Panels in Honour of Hartmut Lehmann at the 39th Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association (GSA), Washington, DC, October 1–4, 2015

by Rebecca Carter-Chand, University of Toronto

The most recent German Studies Association conference featured a series of panels that celebrated the career of renowned historian of religion, Hartmut Lehmann. Organized by Doris Bergen, Benjamin Marschke, and Jonathan Strom, the five panels and their participants reflected the wide-ranging contributions and temporal and geographic scope of Lehmann’s career. Participants included colleagues, students, and friends from Germany, Austria, Israel, Canada, and the United States.

Lehmann PosterThe panel participants began the conference with a dinner to honour Hartmut and his wife, Silke Lehmann. James Harris spoke about Hartmut’s life and career trajectory, emphasizing his close ties to the United States, which began with a high school exchange program and continued through many visiting positions at UCLA, Chicago, Harvard, and Princeton. In 1987 Lehmann became the founding director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, returning to Germany in 1992 to serve as director of the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen. He has been professor emeritus at the University of Kiel since 2004, while continuing to visit the United States often, most recently as a visiting professor at Princeton Theological Seminary.

One thread that ran throughout the panels was Lehmann’s ability to bring people and ideas together. Sometimes it has been countries that have come together, particularly Germany, the United States, and Israel; in other cases it has been institutions, like universities, governments, and foundations. But Lehman’s own research and publications have connected different fields that typically remain separated: early modern and modern history, religious history and social history, and the history of European Christianity and global Christianity, to name but a few.

The first panel, chaired by Peter Becker and commented on by Robert Ericksen, offered a timely reflection on Luther memory and commemoration—a topic on the minds of many historians in anticipation of the 2017 Luther year. Greta Kroeker’s paper discussed Luther’s relationship with Christian humanists and the implications of their very different views on eschatology. Christopher Close examined the first centennial Luther commemoration in 1617, contrasting local commemoration in Strasbourg and Ulm. He showed how commemoration was instrumentalized to shape a particular memory of the Reformation. Manfred Gailus contextualized Luther’s “On Jews and their Lies” within German Protestantism during the Nazi period, warning us not to overemphasize Luther’s infamous tract in shaping German Protestants’ antisemitism. Thomas Brady also considered the instrumentalization of Luther by discussing three different constructions of Luther: Luther as a Protestant hero by nineteenth century liberals; Luther as a German reactionary by nineteenth century socialists; and finally Luther as a teacher of progressive politics in the GDR.

The second panel, chaired by Richard Wetzell, with a comment by Doris Bergen, engaged the notion of secularization, suggesting some level of skepticism about its pervasiveness with the title, “Secularization? Secularism, Religion, and Violence.” Carola Dietze’s paper was premised on the idea that usual narratives of secularization are specific to European history, and offered a very different narrative with the case of the American abolitionist John Brown. Anthony Roeber’s paper placed Hartmut Lehmann’s work in conversation with the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, discussing both scholars’ contributions in moving forward discussion on secularization. Victoria Barnett discussed the Kirchenkampf in a global context, considering how Christians outside of Germany viewed the German Church Struggle through the lens of a struggle between ethno-national religion and internationalism.

The third panel turned its attention to Pietism in a transnational context. Chaired by Kelly Whitmer and commented on by by Simon Grote, this panel included papers by Benjamin Marschke, Jonathan Strom, and Manfred Jakabowski-Thiessen. Marschke revisited the question of how to define Pietism, questioning whether we should speak of Pietism as one reform movement, and making a plea for “many pietisms.” Strom considered the role of British conversion narratives in eighteenth century German Pietism, noting that influence flowed in both directions, although more strongly from Britain to Germany. Jabobowski-Thiessen discussed the importance of networks among Pietists, in this case Württemberg Pietists in Denmark. Several of the panelists reflected on Lehmann’s contribution to Pietist studies, praising his transnational approaches.

The fourth panel, titled “Germany and America,” was chaired by Silke Lehmann; the comment was given by Andreas Daum. Martin Geyer spoke about nation building and international technical standards (including currency and standards of measurement), and the meanings that people infused into them in the nineteenth century. James Melton gave a paper on slavery, Johann Martin Bolzius, and the German-speaking Pietists who migrated to Georgia in 1734. Claudia Schnurmann’s paper explored Martin Luther in the American biographical imagination from 1799 to 1883, bringing together many of the themes from the series of panels, including Luther memory and transatlantic exchange.

The fifth panel considered Harmut Lehmann’s works and influences and was chaired by Roger Chickering. Doug Shantz offered a reassessment on Lehmann’s 1969 work, Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Würrtemburg. Frank Trommler spoke about “the Lehmann era in Washington” (1987-1993) and Irene Aue-Ben-David’s paper spoke to the contribution of the Max Planck Institute for History in German-Israeli research cooperation. Hartmut Lehmann concluded the panel with some brief remarks, expressing his gratitude to all of the participants and the organizers of the series of panels.

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Conference Report: Religion in Germany in the 20th Century: Paradigm Shifts and Changing Methodologies

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 20, Number 4 (December 2014)

Conference Report: Religion in Germany in the 20th Century: Paradigm Shifts and Changing Methodologies. Seminar at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, September 19-21, 2014

By Mark Edward Ruff, Saint Louis University

More than two dozen historians and German language and literature scholars from North America, Germany and Great Britain traveled to the annual meeting of the German Studies Association in Kansas City to take part in this seminar from September 19-21, 2014. The seminar was convened by Thomas Großbölting of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster and Mark Edward Ruff of Saint Louis University.

This group of scholars made their focus the changing methodologies in the field of German church history. Undergirding this seminar was the assumption that old models of church history have been superseded. Whereas an earlier generation of church historians typically painted a narrow picture of theologies and old men in church towers, younger scholars have sought to broaden the canvas. In their picture of the German religious landscape, both Protestant and Catholic, they now analyze social forms of organization, political networks, societal relationships, gender, religious vocabularies and alternatives to Christianity that range from Islam to political religions, cults and new forms of religious spirituality.

Yet these younger scholars, critical of old orthodoxies, have been unable to achieve any sort of consensus. This lack of consensus stems, at least in part, from the lack of a methodological common denominator. Sociologists, confessional theologians, scholars of religious studies and historians have long often used different vocabularies and definitions of the transcendent, the immanent, the spiritual and religion. Such problems of definition are familiar to anyone entering the field of religious studies today but they have posed a particular challenge to the historiography of German religious history in light of the fact that so many more scholars have recently entered the field.

This seminar was intended to take stock of these fundamental transformations in the historiography and point to new directions for the future. The first day of the seminar explored traditional models of church history that predominated well into the second half of the 20th century. Participants analyzed portions of classic primer for Catholic Church historians, Kirchengeschichte, by Karl Bihlmeyer and Hermann Tüchle. They turned to an article from 1981, “Christ und Geschichte” by the profane Catholic historian, Konrad Repgen, a long-time director of the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte who put forward his vision of Christian scholarship in this lecture-turned-essay. They concluded with an overview and critique of these approaches by the Professor for Mittlere und Neuere Kirchengeschichte in Tübingen, Andreas Holzem in an article entitled “Die Geschichte des ‘geglaubten Gottes’: Kirchengeschichte zwischen ‘Memoria” und ‘Historie.’”

The second day of the seminar was devoted to an analysis and critique of the classic model of the the Catholic milieu from 1993, “Katholiken zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Das katholische Milieu als Forschungsaufgabe” by the Arbeitskreis für Katholizismusforschung in Münster, Germany. One of the participants, Christoph Kösters of the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, had served as one of authors of this pioneering article and provided an account of this article’s genesis. Participants subsequently examined a recent and powerful challenge to these models posed by Benjamin Ziemann of the University of Sheffield in his article, “Kirchen als Organisationsform der Religion: Zeitgeschichtliche Perspektiven.”

The third day analyzed the current state of fragmentation in the field. Participants began by examining a plea for embracing cultural history and the linguistic turn by the Swiss historian, Franziska Metzger, in her article, “Konstruktionsmechanismen der katholischen Kommunikationsgemeinschaft.” They subsequently turned to an essay, “Further Thoughts on Religion and Modernity” by the Harvard sociologist of religion, Peter Berger, who since the 1990s has largely repudiated his writings from the 1960s on secularization. They also drew upon a survey of recent literature, “’Sag: Wie hast Du’s mit der Religion?’: Das Verhältnis von Religion und Politik als Gretchenfrage der Zeitgeschichte” by the London-based historian, Uta Andrea Balbier.

Almost all of the participants agreed that the paradigms that have long dominated the field – paradigms of church history, secularization and “social-moral milieux” – suffer from distinct weaknesses. These include undue teleologies and the fact that the social-moral milieux were as heterogeneous as they were homogeneous.

But it was probably inevitable that the group of two dozen scholars did not agree on precisely where the field is heading – and should be heading. The assembled represented a diverse group including graduate students, freshly-minted Ph.D.s, junior faculty, associate professors and senior scholars in the field. Some taught at religiously-affiliated colleges and university, others at secular institutions. The majority focused on the twentieth century, but even there, their interests were diverse. Two-thirds were scholars of Catholicism, one-third scholars of Protestantism, the inverse of the confessional balance in Germany through from 1870 through 1945. Some focused on the Weimar era, others almost exclusively on the Nazi era and its immediate aftermath; others focused on the Federal Republic, including the Vatican II era. With such diversity in the seminar, perspectives naturally – and refreshingly – differed.

Why else was there such a lack of consensus?

The lack of consensus stemmed the fact that not all participants were willing to throw the baby out with the bath water. Many sought to retain the most valuable insights from these earlier models, while jettisoning their outdated features. While all of the participants agreed that “salvation history” (Heilsgeschichte) was dead, for instance, not all participants were willing to a priori reject the notion of Christian scholarship as defined out by such distinguished scholars as the Notre Dame historian, Mark Noll. In response to criticisms that the model of the Catholic milieu papered over the very real diversity within, some participants pointed out that there was a coherence to the Roman Catholic milieu (how could there not have been during eras of religious persecution!) The models of the Catholic milieu, they observed, had always taken into account the social, economic, political and intellectual diversity within the flock and fact that the Catholic milieu had been anything but static. Religious organizations, their social-forms, and even their message changed with the times – and had to out of necessity. And no one would deny that the major churches today show far lower rates of membership, church and mass attendance and cultural influence than they did even as late as the 1960s.

The lack of methodological consensus also arose out of a lack of agreement over how to describe the contemporary German religious landscape. Conscientious observers of the religious landscape of modern Germany disagree over what religious forms took hold following the era of religious upheaval in the 1960s. Are Germans even religious today, or even spiritual? If so, where are their religious and spiritual roots, if they are no longer anchored in the established churches? Do existing religious and spiritual practices even exert any significant claim over daily lives of Germans or have they become utterly diffuse? These questions become all the more important for historians today, since most inevitably read the past through the lens of the present. If it is unclear which methodological tools are needed to make some sense of a muddled German religious present, how can we grasp the transformative processes from fifty years ago that ushered it in?

Where was there widespread agreement? Most participants agreed it was necessary to integrate religious history into mainstream narratives of German history. They also concurred that religious history would profit from the insights and methodologies gleaned from cultural history. All agreed on the need for additional comparative studies, in which the German religious experience would be placed alongside that of its neighbors and those from the other side of the Atlantic. Finally, all recognized that the field of contemporary German religious history has become a much more vibrant place since having been freed from often stifling methodological orthodoxies and a narrow focus on churchmen and dogmas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Conference Report: German Studies Association Conference, October 4-7, 2012, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 1 (March 2013)

Conference Report: German Studies Association Conference, October 4-7, 2012, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

GSAOnce again this past year, the German Studies Association conference included a number of interesting panels or papers devoted to contemporary church history.

The panel “Questioning Nazism as a ‘Political Religion'” offered new research relating to debates around the questions: was National Socialism a fundamentally anti-Christian political movement?  Was Nazism itself a political religion, a rival to traditional forms of Christianity?  Or, as Richard Steigmann-Gall has argued, was the Nazi Party led by politicians who understood themselves as Christians and even attempted to forge an unorthodox partnership with German Protestants and (to a lesser extent) German Catholics?  Three papers approached these questions from complementary directions. Beth Ann Griech-Polelle examined how Nazi ideologues viewed one of Germany’s allies, General Francisco Franco, whose collaboration with the Spanish Catholic Church inspired commentary which was sharply critical of “political Catholicism.”  Daniel A. McMillan argued that secularization constituted a significant cause of the Holocaust, in part because the concept of Nazism as a political religion helps explain why the Holocaust, more than any other genocide, was driven by ideology divorced from “practical” considerations.  Kyle Jantzen explored the efforts of a Berlin Protestant pastor to fuse Christianity and National Socialism, provoking opposition from both Nazi Party activists and leaders of the pro-Nazi German Christian movement, in the process revealing the many complexities of the relationship between National Socialism and organized religion.

In all, four members of the Contemporary Church History Quarterly editorial team presented papers in three panels scattered throughout the conference. Along with Griech-Polelle and Jantzen, mentioned above, Robert P. Ericksen presented “Antisemitism through the Lens of Denazification: Examples from Göttingen University,” as part of a panel which considered postwar assessments of pro- or anti-Nazi activities during the Third Reich. Here Ericksen continued to develop his recent research on the failings of the denazification process, highlighted by cases concerning  German academics. Finally, Steven Schroeder presented “‘The World Will Not Leave Us Alone’: Reconciliation and Peacebuilding in Germany, 1945-1949,” one of the papers in a panel on “Discourses of Victimization and Reconciliation Amid the Rubble.”

Another panel of interest was “The Work of the State and the Work of God: Religious Groups, Social Vocation, and State Violence.” Martina Cucchiara of the University of Notre Dame presented her paper, “Beyond the Concordat: Women’s Religious Negotiation of Free Spaces in Hitler’s Germany.” She discussed the notion of selective accommodation–complying with externals such as the Hitler Greeting and embracing the Nazi vision of community, nationalism, and heroism, while downplaying racial and antisemitic aspects of the regime. Stephen Morgan, also from the University of Notre Dame, contributed the paper “Between Reservation and Extermination: Rhenish Missionaries and the Herrero Genocide,” which explored the complex and compromised relationship between the German missionaries and the Herrero people. Missionaries approved of the reservation system, because it made the Christianization of the African people somewhat easier to accomplish. When the Herrero War ended this experiment, missionaries adapted to the changing conditions, but in the process lost credibility both with Europeans who found them too friendly to the Herrero and with the Herrero, who did not appreciate the missionaries’ encouragement to cease their rebellion. In the end, the missionaries were caught between their Christian interest in evangelism and the government’s interest in mobilizing colonial labour. Suzanne Brown-Fleming, another member of the Contemporary Church History Quarterly editorial team, commented ably on the papers, noting the common process of Christian adaptation to state interest and ideology and pointing out that–at some point–selective accommodation simply turns into assent.

One other paper of interest was James McNutt’s “‘They sought world domination … so he died’ Adolf Schlatter, Deicide, and Der Stürmer.” McNutt compared Streicher’s and Schlatter’s racial and theological attitudes towards Jews, noting linkages between racial hatred and religious antipathy. He argued that Schlatter was an important figure in German Protestantism, and that his social alienation of Jews contributed to their defamation as the evil other, enemies of God, and allies of Satan.

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Conference Report: “Understanding Religious Freedom in Germany, Poland and the United States”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Conference Report: “Understanding Religious Freedom in Germany, Poland and the United States,” German Studies Association Conference, Washington, DC, October 11, 2009.

By Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University

This session, organized by Professor Gerhard Besier, Director of the Institute for European Studies at the Technical University of Dresden, included his paper on Germany; a paper on Poland by Katarzyna Stoklosa, also from the TU Dresden; and a paper on the United Statesby Derek Davis of Baylor University. Rebecca Bennette of Middlebury College moderated, and Robert Ericksen of Pacific Lutheran University provided commentary.

Besier began with a brief overview of church and state relations throughout Europe, noting the state church model to be found in places such as Great Britain, Denmark, Greece and Finland; the cooperative model of church and state to be found in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Austria and Portugal; and the separation model to be found in France. He then focused on Germany, noting that the nominal principle of religious freedom appeared in the Weimar Constitution and again in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. Despite that, however, the two main churches in Germany, Catholic and Protestant (EKD), have managed to secure their position of dominance. For example, in the FRG these two churches are “statutory corporations.” This grants them legal rights normally reserved to the state, such as raising taxes from their members, and privileges, such as filling positions on bodies created to monitor radio and television. Free churches (Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers, for example) have also received recognition as statutory corporations, assuring them some rights, though not certain privileges reserved for Catholics and EKD Protestants, such as the right to be appointed to a theological faculty in public universities. Beneath the Free Churches, one finds a scale of reduced privilege and respect, running from “sects,” such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists, through “New Age” groups, Hare Krishna, and, at the very bottom, “psycho-organizations,” such as Scientology. Besier then focused his attention on the effort of Jehovah’s Witnesses to be designated a statutory corporation. As is well known, this group suffered heavy persecution within the Nazi state. They have also faced considerable difficulties in postwar Germany, including various obstacles to their protracted effort from 1995-2009 to secure official status. This effort seemed to culminate in 2000, with a Federal Constitutional Court victory. However, since the individual German states have the right to administer their own cultural affairs, the battle had to be fought again and again, culminating in apparent victory in the spring of 2009. Throughout the process, the two main churches and their political allies fought against this development, arguing that a religious community which rejects blood transfusions, for example, “cannot be regarded as being loyal to the constitution.” Besier described religious liberty in Germany as simply the right for members of minority groups to worship as they choose. However, they will struggle to attain official recognition and they are likely to suffer social stigmatization. Legal privilege and political power reside primarily in the two mainstream churches.

Katarzyna Stoklosa described a very different situation in Poland. By the late 19th century, Catholic faith had become a vital component of rising Polish nationalism. By the 1930s, a nationalist slogan described (with approval) a “new middle ages” to be found in the “Catholic State of the Polish Nation.” After 1945 this homogeneity tightened further, with the deportation of most non-Polish ethnic groups (Germans, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, etc.) and, of course, with the disappearance of three million murdered Jews. Non-Catholic religious groups gradually attained some rights in the 1970s and 1980s–for example, access to radio stations in 1982 and a legal status for Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1989. During the communist era, the Catholic Church nurtured its reputation as an opponent of the regime, especially in the 1980s. It thus emerged as a powerful force in Poland post-1989. The new constitution has a formal statement in support of religious freedom, and the rights of religious minorities have improved somewhat. But there is also a formal place for the Catholic Church built into the constitution and it plays a powerful political role. For example, in the political campaign of 2005, the right wing Catholic “Radio Maria” openly endorsed Lech Kaczynski’s “Law and Justice” party—and also attracted attention for making antisemitic statements. Given the powerful place of the Catholic Church, religious minorities in Poland continue to be marginalized. Stoklosa concluded that the practice of religious freedom in Poland simply does not match the ideal advocated in the West.

Derek Davis presented a paper on “the interplay of law, religion and politics in the United States,” describing four interconnected aspects: “separation of church and state, cooperation between sacred and secular, integration of religion and politics, and accommodation of civil religion.” This four-part scheme represents his attempt to explain what otherwise seems inconsistent in the American experience, for example, the refusal to allow organized prayer in public schools alongside the public prayers which open daily sessions of Congress, or the alleged “wall of separation” between church and state alongside the slogan, “In God we Trust,” printed on American money. Davis argued that separation of church and state is indeed an important part of the American system and a phrase taken seriously by the Supreme Court, but he added that it represents a “colossal overstatement” of the actual, complicated circumstances. For example, the Court assumes that children are impressionable, making it important to avoid any form of state-sanctioned religious expression in public schools. Presumably this means that members of Congress are considered old enough to ignore religious rituals in their chamber, if they so choose. He described court cases involving questions of tuition support to attend private (mostly religious) schools, whether to provide bus service, computers, or books, and whether religious charitable organizations can receive state contracts or support. He also described the pervasive rituals of civil religion practiced in America and the widespread belief that membership in and support for the nation has a divine component. In all of these matters, Davis endorsed the complexity found in practice and his belief that apparent contradictions and vigorous arguments are part of the healthy democratic experience in the questions of church and state.

Ericksen noted that one conclusion to be drawn from these three diverse examples is that churches are loath to give up power and influence. This seems most obvious with the Catholic Church in Poland and the two major churches in Germany. It also can be seen in the United States, however. For example, the banning of prayer and Bible reading in public schools has been widely resented by many churches. Even the principle of separation of church and state, which goes back more than two centuries, can perhaps be best understood as a pragmatic necessity, rather than expression of an ideal. The multiplicity of religious denominations in the Thirteen Colonies would have made the prospect of a state church quite contentious. On the other hand, is not freedom of religion an essential element of real democracy? We can see this historically in the gradual increase of voting rights and other legal rights granted to religious minorities as the idea of democracy progressed. It seems hard to imagine that the political or legal privileging of one religion over others can be consistent with equal political rights. Is this okay with churches? Can religious groups with the power to enforce their place of privilege accept the democratic implications of pluralism? A related question involves the development of secularization. If we note the trajectory from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, we see a general pattern of more religious liberty and less church attendance. Will a similar trajectory mark the twenty-first century? If so, will that be a good thing? Alternatively, can religion retain its vigor and still contribute to the “good life” in a pluralistic and democratic society, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “world come of age?” How do we expect Poland,Germany, and the United States will understand these issues fifty years from now?

 

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