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Literary and artistic sources from the era of the Thirty Years War provide vivid accounts of the destruction and desecration of churches. This essay looks beyond these highly emotive descriptions and explores the fate of churches in Electoral Saxony, one of the worst-affected areas of the Holy Roman Empire. It considers patterns of destruction and argues that the plundering and desecration of Lutheran churches by Swedish troops was especially shocking to contemporaries. After the war, the reconstruction and refurbishing of churches was a key part of recovery. Records emphasize the importance of local communal endeavours in restoring what had been lost, from whole buildings to furnishings such as altarpieces and liturgical vessels. Wartime destruction reinforced the Lutheran proclivity for well-ordered and ornate places of worship. The essay ends with a consideration of wartime commemoration, investigating how the traumas of the period registered in the material fabric of Saxony's churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines what it meant to be Lutheran in the early modern Middle East. Its point of departure is a letter in which Stephan Gerlach, a sixteenth-century Lutheran chaplain to the imperial ambassador in Istanbul, asked his superiors about the type of behaviour that befitted him as a Lutheran. Was he allowed to wear a Turkish turban to see mosques and learn about Islam? Was it permissible for him in exceptional circumstances to accept communion under both kinds from a Roman Catholic monk? Was he allowed to postpone the Sunday sermon to attend Greek Orthodox ceremonies? Reconstructing how sixteenth-century Lutherans who had business in the early modern Middle East tried to resolve such issues not only affords new insights into the Lutheran experience in the Ottoman Empire; it also raises a set of fundamental questions about late sixteenth-century Lutheranism itself. Did Lutherans in this period develop forms of religious accommodation similar to those of early modern Catholics? Did travel in the Eastern Mediterranean demand a more flexible and more fluid form of Lutheranism? Could one even adhere to Lutheranism's core principles so far away from the place where the movement had first taken root? Through an examination of various Lutheran treatises and travelogues, I show that sixteenth-century Lutheranism did not develop an official policy of accommodation. Instead, Lutheran responses to questions about accommodation, (dis)simulation and conformity were often makeshift and idiosyncratic, because Lutheranism formulated little to no official guidance on the movement as a lived religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a rich body of scholarship in recent years that challenges the accepted idea of the spread of nationalist thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by highlighting the flexible, ambiguous, opportunistic or instrumental ways in which the inhabitants of central and eastern Europe engaged with ideas about nationhood. However, so far these discussions of 'national indifference' have not extensively examined the crossovers with flexible and ambivalent attitudes and actions regarding matters of religion, such as oscillating religious commitment, hybrid forms of religiosity and conversion. This article examines cases of conversion and reconversion (apostasy) between Lutheranism and Orthodoxy in the Baltic provinces of the Russian empire in the second half of the nineteenth century, in order to deepen our understanding of how institutionally determined forms of religious ascription often became blurred at the level of everyday activities as people exercised choice over matters of faith for various personal, social and economic reasons. By extending the concept of national indifference through an examination of religious indifference, the cases under consideration elucidate how confession became entangled with ideas about national and imperial belonging in the late nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Connection between structural (long-term) unemployment and long-term social assistance with number of ELCF poverty relief clients, share of working-age ELCF poverty relief clients, and ELCF financial assistance, pooled regression 2007-2013. ELCF's poverty relief clients (% of total population) 7.9 6.7 2.0 25.7 Working-age ELCF poverty relief clients (% of total population) 4.2 3.6 0.6 18.0 Annual amount of financial assistance in Euros 38,120 17,695 55 56,121 Long-term social assistance recipients (% of total population) 1.8 1.1 0.2 5.2 Rate of structural unemployment, % 3.9 3.7 0.5 9.1 Population 45,858 21,962 10,010 612,664 ht There is no single measure of poverty. In Finland, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, which was responsible for preparing the NAP's, invited the ELCF to contribute to the process as a legitimate partner, indicating a move toward a deeper partnership between church and state in the social policy field.[34] The ELCF's poverty relief activities were also welcomed by the great majority of ELCF members. Our results confirm the earlier finding on the ELCF's accelerated poverty relief action both to alleviate poverty resulting from both economic recessions and to demonstrate a welfare mix provision of poverty relief in Finland. [Extracted from the article]

From early in the Reformation, Protestant leaders viewed music as a powerful tool not only for educating their followers, but also for forging unity within diverse and dispersed communities. Such a belief found expression in official and unofficial religious contexts, and left its mark on printed devotional material, congregational hymn books, public policies of church authorities, and the musical activities of individual churches. At the same time, the manner in which a person accessed, experienced and produced music in a Reformation urban environment was conditioned as much by social factors such as age, gender, social station and personal contacts, as by confessional affiliation and policy. Using a corpus of previously unexploited sources from the Protestant city of Heidelberg, this article challenges the rhetorical and outdated binary notions of social 'harmony' and 'discord'. It argues that music in a Reformation city — whether congregational song in churches, secular song in taverns, inns and streets, or domestic devotional song — could function as a powerful platform for emphasizing rather than dissolving a range of meaningful social differences, even as it created new kinds of unity across urban society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the survival strategies of Lutheran dissenters in the eighteenth-century Dutch Cape Colony. The Cape Colony was officially a Reformed settlement during the rule of the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.) but also had a significant Lutheran community. Until the Lutherans received recognition in 1780, part of the community chose to uphold their faith in secret. The survival of Lutheranism in the Cape Colony was due to the efforts of a group of Cape Lutheran activists and the support network they established with ministers of the Danish-Halle Mission, the Francke Foundations, the Moravian Church and the Lutheran Church in Amsterdam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1571 mapmakers Johannes Mellinger and Tilemann Stella produced a map of the county of Mansfeld, Luther's birthplace. This article considers this map as a complex printed material object: it is far more than a straightforward representation of place as it is covered with historical details, quotations, writing and references to Luther's life, the Reformation and Mansfeld's history. It created a notion of Lutheran space and used this space as a form of memory-making and memorialization at a critical time in Lutheran history. The decades following the death of Luther, in 1546, were a time of crisis, when Lutheranism grieved the loss of the Wittenberg reformer while also inscribing its presence on the confessional map of sixteenth-century Europe. Mellinger and Stella's map of Mansfeld reveals how second-generation Lutherans reconceptualized the landscape to provide an alternative way of writing Luther's life, and how Lutherans could integrate pasts and places which were not specifically Lutheran into a providential narrative. The map addressed the tensions of tradition and novelty with its composite, hybrid form that combined space, events and person, and it historicized and reimagined space. This map demands that we think about how space functioned within a culture which wanted to remember Luther's life and write histories in a way that could validate Lutheranism and its future, and in particular it focuses our attention on how memory-making at this specific point of existential concern shaped the Lutheran Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article enhances our understanding of the development and dynamism of early modern witch stereotypes by focusing on the stereotype of the witch-cleric, the Christian minister imagined by early modern people as working for the devil instead of God, baptizing people into witchcraft, working harmful magic and even officiating at witches' gatherings. I show how this stereotype first developed in relation to Catholic clerics in demonology, print culture and witch-trials, then examine its emergence in relation to Protestant clerics in Germany and beyond, using case studies of pastors from the Lutheran territory of Rothenburg ob der Tauber from 1639 and 1692 to explore these ideas in detail. I also offer a broader comparison of beliefs about Protestant witch-clerics and their susceptibility to formal prosecution with their Catholic counterparts in early modern Germany, showing that cases involving Protestant witch-clerics were part of a cross-confessional phenomenon that is best understood in a comparative, Europe-wide perspective. In addition to showing how the witch-cleric stereotype changed over time and spread geographically, I conclude by arguing that three distinct variants of this stereotype had emerged by the seventeenth century: the Catholic 'witch-priest' and Protestant 'witch-pastor' (who were supposedly witches themselves) and the overzealous clerical 'witch-master', who was thought to do the devil's work by helping persecute innocent people for witchcraft. Despite these stereotypes, however, relatively few clerics of either confession were tried and executed as witches; overall, patriarchy worked to protect men of the cloth from the worst excesses of witch persecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the case of the controversial seventeenth-century theologian Jacob Reihing. In 1621 Reihing fled Pfalz-Neuburg, where he had played an instrumental role in re-Catholicizing the territory, to seek asylum in Württemberg. His defection provoked shock and dismay in political, religious and academic circles in Pfalz-Neuburg and Bavaria. In Stuttgart Reihing was granted the protection of the duke and sent to the University of Tübingen. Jesuits and Catholic princes made a series of interventions, first in an effort to encourage Reihing to return to the fold and then to blacken his name. In spite of these pressures, the endorsements of the duke of Württemberg continued apace: Reihing was allowed a very public ceremony of conversion and was appointed professor of theology in Tübingen. The task of rehabilitating the former Jesuit fell largely to the University of Tübingen. Its professors attempted to refashion Reihing as an archetypal Lutheran scholar and carefully tended his public image over the remaining years of his life. For their part the Jesuits intensified their attempts at character assassination. The battle over Reihing's reputation continued until and, indeed, beyond his death. This article explores the controversies generated by Reihing's conversion and subsequent life and career and examines in particular the struggle over his reputation. In doing so it addresses a wider clash of ideals governing academic identities, lifestyles and behaviours in which scholars and institutions divided by confession participated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of Lutheran culture by Roman Catholics Upper Lusatia, Germany during the Reformation era. Topics include the relation of Catholic and Lutheran practices of baptism and communion in the region, the theology of administrative official Johann Leisentrit in relation to the notion of syncretism, and the use of Lutheran songs in Catholic worship.

The article discusses the role of prodigious signs and wonder books in Lutheran culture in relation to the 1597 book "WiderNatur und Wunderbuch," by Andreas Engel. Topics include the roles of the Devil and blood in apocalyptic imagery, differences between Lutheran and Calvinist wonder books, and imagery related to monstrous births in Engel's work.

The article discusses the role of music in 16th century Lutheran homes. Topics include the relation of music to material culture and imagery among Lutherans, the domestic performance of sacred music such as hymns, and the influence of the Protestant Reformation on domestic and familial life in relation to multisensory aspects of music.

The article discusses the sensory aspects of early modern Lutheran culture. Topics include the historiography of sensory culture, the impact of orthodoxy on Lutheran sensory culture, and the significance of the ringing of a church bell in Ulm, Germany in relation to Lutheran theology. Different views of the sense of smell by businessman Joseph Furttenbach the Elder and town superintendent Conrad Dieterich are noted.

The article discusses the historiography of Lutheran culture in relation to the history of the Reformation. Topics include the relation of religious leader Martin Luther to Reformation historiography, the focus of historians on theological and intellectual aspects of the reformation, and the historiography of Protestant confessionalism.

Latin polyphony played a significant role in Lutheran liturgical music in the mid-16th century in major churches. Nevertheless, many musicological studies still gloss over the Latin repertory in order to paint a musico-liturgical picture clearly distinct from Roman Catholic services. It seems overdue to determine not only the place Latin polyphony actually held in Lutheran worship, but also the specifics of the repertory in use. This article examines the musical practices at the church of St. Marien in Wittenberg, as documented by a table of liturgical music for the greater part of the church year, written around 1543/44. First, I will consider which bodies of repertory were accessible at Wittenberg in the 1530s and 40s. Within this scope I will then identify, with varying degrees of certainty, the pieces to which the entries in the table may refer, starting with Mass Ordinaries followed by Mass Propers and motets. I shall also cover questions of origin and the means by which repertory was transmitted. Finally, I will consider the specifics of Lutheran figural services in the 1540s and account for possible changes they subsequently underwent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents highlights of various papers published in previous issues including one by Henri Hauser on the French Reformation and French people in the 16th century, one by James Harvey Robinson on the study of the Lutheran revolt, and one by Herbert Darling Foster on the social and political context of the Reformation.

The article discusses the role that father confessors and confession played in the 1692 witch trial in the Lutheran city of Rothenburg ob der Taube, Germany of the accused attempted murderer Barbara Ehness. An overview of Ehness's attempt to murder her lodger Hans Georg Rupp and his family through poisoning is provided. The Rothenburg cleric and Church Superintendent Sebastian Kirchmeier's efforts in witch hunting is discussed.

The largest cache of medieval liturgical furnishings that survives is in Protestant Germany. This survival has sometimes been attributed to Martin Luther's doctrine of the 'indifference' of objects. Using several examples, one from south Germany (the altar at Rothenburg ob der Tauber) and two from women's convents in the north (especially some devotional statues and their dresses from Kloster Wienhausen), this article argues not only that religious objects are far from indifferent but also that they alter our standard opinions about the Observant Reform of fifteenth-century Germany and the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and suggest new understandings of continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role that Lutheran Church played in developing Finland's welfare state from the 1940s through the 1960s. The impact that issues concerning Finnish families had on the relationship between church and state in Finland, including in regard to faith-based services for marriage counseling and divorce, is discussed. An overview of the relationship between the Church and social legislation in Finland is provided.

The article discusses the relationship between the the Lutheran Church and the reform of the Danish welfare state during the mid 20th century. An overview of voluntary religious organizations' charitable social work in Denmark is provided. The relationship Lutheran theology and ethics, including in regard to social services, is discussed.

While the majority of donations to Lutheran churches during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was made by locals, foreigners not living in the parish contributed gifts, too. There were, firstly, donations made accidentally to the parish in question such as funeral monuments in the case of sudden death. Secondly, a large group of donations reflected attendance of a particular church, be that through economic connections, through former ties or family ties to the parish, or through prayers granted in the case of votive churches. A third group is characterized by attempts to stress the status of individuals or institutions, underlining, for instance, chartered rights of foreigners, territorial dependency of a village or the role of a church patron. Royal gifts, burial monuments in churches of central importance and war trophies should also be placed in this group. A fourth group might be termed charity for parishes in need. These groups partly overlapped. The donations discussed also contain examples of unintended and unacceptable gifts, while anonymous giving obviously does not betray much of its background. Since scholars have preferred to study parishes in local or regional perspectives, donations by foreigners have mostly been overlooked. When studying all Lutheran countries, however, it becomes evident that donations by foreigners occurred regularly and that parishes interacted lively with the wider world. They were not the self-contained units as they have often been portrayed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the role of art in early modern German history and historiography, with commentary from historians Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Barbara Uppenkamp, Bridget Heal, and Larry Silver. Topics include the role of visual culture beyond art history, research projects on political iconography in cities and courts, and the visual history of the Protestant Reformation. Also noted are the influence of philosopher Jürgen Habermas, the relation between art and its audience, and the role of religious doctrines in early modern German art.

Based on the example of drastic landscape changes caused by flooding on the German North Sea coast, this article examines the details of parochial reorganization in the seventeenth century. It presents a wide range of newly discovered material from archives in the region of Schleswig. Several well-documented case-studies from the area provide the basis for discussing the important topics that come with such a reorganization of the religious landscape due to flood destruction. These details illustrate the workings of the ecclesiastical structures in early modern Germany. The main topics covered are the accessibility of churches and the financial aspects of parish reorganization, the latter pointing to the twofold role of the parish as both an ecclesiastical and a secular administrative unit. Moreover, the cases in this region provide examples of the overall approach to religion in early modern society. It emerges that, custom and legal requirements notwithstanding, people considered it important and desirable to have a ready access to a place of worship. In this context, parishioners’ decided advocacy of parochial rights is interpreted as an expression of the Lutheran idea of parochial self-government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an examination into the views of the 18th-century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach regarding antisemitism. Analysis is offered particularly considering the choruses of Bach's two Passion oratorios, discussing whether or not they showcase an uncharacteristic level of anti-Jewish sentiment in their settings. Details are given overviewing the broader social views regarding Jews in Hamburg and Leipzig during Bach's age. Contrast is offered between the treatment of Jews in the works of Bach, in the contemporary poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes, and in German Lutheranism on the whole.

This article argues that Lutheran images moved from being adiaphora, matters of indifference to salvation, to being confessional markers under the pressure of Calvinist iconoclasm. This was particularly true in Brandenburg, where Lutheran traditionalism was reinforced by Johann Sigismund’s ‘Second Reformation’ and the iconoclasm that it engendered in 1615. It was also true, however, in Albertine Saxony, where there was a cultural backlash against Christian I’s attempts to purify the Lutheran church (1586–1591). Conflicts within Protestantism, the article suggests, played an important role in embedding images in Lutheran culture and therefore contributed towards the flourishing of ecclesiastical art that occurred in Lutheran Germany during the later seventeenth century. The final section of the article asks how far Lutheran image use differed from Catholic. Concerns about idolatry never entirely disappeared from Lutheran discussions of images, and patrons and pastors sometimes came dangerously close to a return to works righteousness in their commemorations of the donation and adornment of churches. Yet during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Lutheran church successfully assimilated even the theatricality and illusionism of baroque art into its devotional life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Provided is information about several papers discussed at a workshop sponsored by Peter Wilson and Michael Schaich and the German History Society and the German Historical Institute on religious, political, administrative, medical, and cultural history from various perspectives. Topics include the development of the Rhine River in Germany, how cultural elites could be used to create a national identity, and Lutheranism.

Though Johannes Bugenhagen instituted the structures for Lutheran reform in 1530, the impetus for reform in Lübeck came foremost from a specific stratum of 'unofficial' culture. Lübeck, a powerful trading city in modern-day Germany on the Baltic Sea, and head of the transnational Hanseatic League, was controlled by a wealthy and influential merchant class. The participation of this merchant class in the reconfiguration of the city's churches attests to its enthusiasm for the Lutheran cause and also belies the rigidity of the social hierarchy that organized Lübeck's society. As a result of this enthusiasm, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the addition of candleholders, pews, and tombstones to the architecture of Lübeck's churches. A further look at the key features of a Lutheran service, particularly where the Word figured prominently in the sermon and in the music, leads to the discovery of the elaboration of the pulpit and organs. Lutheran art in sacred spaces primarily testified to the faith of a pious and wealthy burgher community in Lübeck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study suggests that the institutional capacity of communities and civic organizations to fester new and inclusive spaces for interaction across traditional cleavages involves both the initial impetus toward social inclusion and the strengths and limits of the cultural style that provides the rationale for inclusive practices. I ground this understanding in a study of how two churches, one liberal Lutheran and one fundamentalist Baptist, adapted to racial changes in their community. After a period of severe decline, both congregations developed a multi-cultural, multi-racial identity, attracting new members and eventually thriving. Theology did not drive this change; rather, in both cases the initial impetus came from implementing common institutional practices, specifically a similar strategy of locally-oriented church growth. Then, both congregations mined their religious traditions for metaphors of community that, when institutionalized broadly in both symbolic ways (rituals, sermons) and pragmatic ways (new decision-making routines, new programs) helped them achieve their transformation into racially inclusive public spaces. At this turning point, they defined the "problem" of race in a distinctive way, and developed a style of moral rhetoric that shaped the nature of their future public discourse on a variety of issues of social inclusion, as well as their capacity for issue-based activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses religious conflict among the Rwa (or Meru) people of northern Tanzania that was characterized by the efforts of some Rwa to secede from the Tanzanian Lutheran Church in the early 1990s. The author begins by explaining the socialist Tanzanian government's role in the conflict, with focus given to its promotion of religious tolerance, and goes on to trace the history of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania, beginning with the arrival of a mission in 1892. The origins of the conflict are traced to a lack of equality between the Rwa and Chaga peoples within the Church, the election of church officials, and the ownership of church property. The Church's criticism of the Rwa for their alleged alcohol consumption and polygamy is also detailed.

According to the author the clergyman is the proper person to give premarital instruction. Most young couples come to him. He should have an integrated outlook on all of life. In an effort to answer this question a study was made in the summer of 1940 to show the practice of the pastors of the Lutheran Church with regard to marriage instruction. Nine hundred preliminary postcards were sent to as many pastors in 30 different states and also Washington, D.C., asking whether they give premarital instruction and whether they would cooperate with the study. The study received replies from 242 pastors. Of these, 28 indicated no desire to cooperate with the study; 135 pastors revealed that they had no courses of instruction but, realizing the need for such instruction, indicated their willingness to cooperate; while 79 pastors, ten of whom were not Lutheran-indicated that they had courses of instruction and that they would be willing to cooperate with the study. Among the men who did not have formal instruction but who cooperated with the study it was evident that most of them, with the exception of the rural pastors, felt that public opinion did not prevent such a program.

This essay focuses on the dramatic seventeenth- and eighteenth-century history of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Schneeberg Altarpiece (1539). The altarpiece was looted by imperial troops during the Thirty Years’ War, recovered by Schneeberg’s congregation and reinstalled in 1650. In 1709, however, it was dismantled during the baroque refurbishment of the church. Parts were then reset in an elaborate frame. The altarpiece’s history testifies, the essay argues, to images’ importance in Lutheran confessional culture. Moreover, its eighteenth-century setting, which deployed the visual idioms of the Italian baroque, challenges the still-powerful paradigm of a Protestant aesthetic of plainness. The central Crucifixion panel of Cranach’s altarpiece was now presented as a relic, held aloft by angels. This transformation was driven in part by changes in taste, but also by a changing devotional context, in particular by a renewal of highly affective Passion piety within Lutheranism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment -- Unfair dismissal -- Discrimination -- Employer church and school training and holding out 'called teachers' as 'ministers of religion' -- 'Called teachers' having minimal religious leadership or instructional responsibilities but having role distinct from that of 'lay teachers' and most of churches' members -- Employer dismissing 'called teacher' on grounds of 'insubordination and disruptive behavior' and for threatening to take legal action -- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suing employer on grounds that called teacher unfairly dismissed -- Employer claiming suit barred by First Amendment since claim concerned employment relationship between religious institution and its minister -- Whether Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of First Amendment barring suits brought on behalf of ministers against their churches claiming termination in violation of employment discrimination laws -- Whether called teacher with minimal religious duties 'minister' falling within 'ministerial exception' doctrine -- Whether called teacher's suit barred by 'ministerial exception' doctrine -- Whether Americans with Disabilities Act controlling as 'neutral law of general applicability' -- USCA Const Amend 1; Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 104 Stat 327, 42 USC § 12101 et seq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the synod held by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Dresden, Germany in 1992 which called for church employees to be investigated for possible contacts with Stasi, the state security service of the former German Democratic Republic.