A Companion to German Pietism offers an introduction to recent Pietism scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic, in German, Dutch, and English. The focus is upon early modern German Pietism, a movement that arose in the late 17th century German Empire within both Reformed and Lutheran traditions. It introduced a new paradigm to German Protestantism that included personal renewal, new birth, women-dominated conventicles, and millennialism. The “Introduction” offers a concise overview of modern research into German Pietism. The Companion is then organized according to the different worlds of Pietist existence—intellectual, devotional, literary-cultural, and social-political.

From the closing decades of the eighteenth century, German theology has been a major intellectual force within modern western thought, closely connected to important developments in idealism, romanticism, historicism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Despite its influential legacy, however, no recent attempts have sought to offer an overview of its history and development. Oxford History of Modern German Theology, Vol. I: 1781-1848, the first of a three-volume series, provides the most comprehensive multi-authored overview of German theology from the period from 1781-1848. Kaplan and Vander Schel cover categories frequently omitted from earlier overviews of the time period, such as the place of Judaism in modern German society, race and religion, and the impact of social history in shaping theological debate. Rather than focusing on individual figures alone, Oxford History of Modern German Theology, Vol. I: 1781-1848 describes the narrative arc of the period by focusing on broader intellectual and cultural movements, ongoing debates, and significant events. It furthermore provides a historical introduction to each of the chronological subsections that divides the book. Moreover, unlike previous efforts to introduce this time period and geographical region, the volume offers chapters covering such previously neglected topics as religious orders, the influence of Romantic art, secularism, religious freedom, and important but overlooked scholarly initiatives such as the Corpus Reformatorum. Attention to such matters will make this volume an invaluable repository of scholarship and knowledge and an indispensable reference resource for decades to come.

This book focuses on the national conceptualization of Judaism and Jews by German neo-Pietists from the early Restoration (1815) until the New Era (neue Ära, 1858-1861), at which point Prussia and other German states embarked on a liberal course. The book demonstrates how a certain understanding of nationalism by Awakened Christians, who were associated with political conservatism, was applied to themselves as belonging to a German nation, and correspondingly to Jews as members of a distinct Jewish nation. It argues that this kind of nationalization by neo-Pietists–among them theologians, intellectuals, and members of the agrarian aristocracy–was interwoven with their religion of the heart, and drew on a tradition of a community of kinship established by the earlier German Pietism since the late seventeenth century. The book sheds new light on the accommodation of nationalism by German Pietist conservatives, who so far were considered as opponents of the national idea. At the same time, it shows that their posture towards Jews was not merely anti-Semitic. It emerged from a specific religious-national synthesis, and aimed at an alternative solution to the Jewish Question, other than emancipation, in the form of Jewish national political independence.

What is meant by the Puritan literary tradition, and when did the idea of Puritan literature, as distinct from Puritan beliefs and practices, come into being? The answer is not straightforward. This volume addresses these questions by bringing together new research on a wide range of established and emerging literary subjects that help to articulate the Puritan literary tradition, including: political polemic and the performing arts; conversion and New-World narratives; individual and corporate life-writings; histories of exile and womens history; book history and the translation and circulation of Puritan literature abroad; Puritan epistolary networks; discourses of Puritan friendship; the historiography of Puritanism defined through editing and publishing; doctrinal controversy; and the history of emotions. This essay collection proposes that a Puritan literary tradition existed that was distinct from broader conceptions of early modern English and Protestant traditions and offers a nuanced account of the distinct and variegated contribution that Puritanism has made to the construction of literature as a concept in English. It ranges from the late sixteenth through to the nineteenth century, and spans British, European, and American Puritan cultures. It offers new analyses of well-known Puritan writers such as Anne Bradstreet, John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, and John Milton, as well as less familiar figures, such as Mary Rowlandson and Joseph Hussey, and writers less often associated with Puritanism, such as Andrew Marvell and Aphra Behn.

Lay prophets in Lutheran Europe (c. 1550–1700) is the first transnational study of the phenomenon of angelic apparitions in all Lutheran cultures of early modern Europe. Jürgen Beyer provides evidence for more than 350 cases and analyses the material in various ways: tracing the medieval origins, studying the spread of news about prophets, looking at the performances legitimising their calling, noting their comments on local politics, following the theological debates about prophets, and interpreting the early modern notions of holiness within which prophets operated. A full chronology and bibliography of all cases concludes the volume. Beyer demonstrates that lay prophets were an accepted part of Lutheran culture and places them in their social, political and confessional contexts.

Protestantism during the early modern period is still predominantly presented as a European story. Advancing a novel framework to understand the nature and impact of the Protestant Reformations, this volume brings together leading scholars to substantially integrate global Protestant experiences into accounts of the early modern world created by the Reformations, to compare Protestant ideas and practices with other world religions, to chart colonial politics and experiences, and to ask how resulting ideas and identities were negotiated by Europeans at the time. Through its wide geographical and chronological scope, Protestant Empires advances a new approach to understanding the Protestant Reformations. Showcasing selective model approaches on how to think anew, and pointing the way towards a multi-national and connected account of the Protestant Reformations, this volume demonstrates how global interactions and their effect on Europe have played a crucial role in the history of the 'long Reformation' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This collection of essays showcases the variety and complexity of early awakened Protestant biblical interpretation and practice while highlighting the many parallels, networks, and exchanges that connected the Pietist and evangelical traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. A yearning to obtain from the Word spiritual knowledge of God that was at once experiential and practical lay at the heart of the Pietist and evangelical quest for true religion, and it significantly shaped the courses and legacies of these movements. The myriad ways in which Pietists and evangelicals read, preached, translated, and practiced the Bible were inextricable from how they fashioned new forms of devotion, founded institutions, engaged the early Enlightenment, and made sense of their world. This volume provides breadth and texture to the role of Scripture in these related religious traditions. The contributors probe an assortment of primary source material from various confessional, linguistic, national, and regional traditions and feature well-known figures—including August Hermann Francke, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards—alongside lesser-known lay believers, women, people of color, and so-called radicals and separatists. Pioneering and collaborative, this volume contributes fresh insight into the history of the Bible and the entangled religious cultures of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Along with the editors, the contributors to this volume include Ruth Albrecht, Robert E. Brown, Crawford Gribben, Bruce Hindmarsh, Kenneth P. Minkema, Adriaan C. Neele, Benjamin M. Pietrenka, Isabel Rivers, Douglas H. Shantz, Peter Vogt, and Marilyn J. Westerkamp.

This book is the first encompassing history of diasporas in Europe between 1500 and 1800. Huguenots, Sephardim, British Catholics, Mennonites, Moriscos, Moravian Brethren, Quakers, Ashkenazim... what do these populations who roamed Europe in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries have in common? Despite an extensive historiography of diasporas, publications have tended to focus on the history of a single diaspora. Each of these groups was part of a community whose connections crossed political and cultural as well as religious borders. Each built dynamic networks through which information, people, and goods circulated. United by a memory of persecution, by an attachment to a homeland—be it real or dreamed—and by economic ties, those groups were nevertheless very diverse. As minorities, they maintained complex relationships with authorities, local inhabitants, and other diasporic populations. This book investigates the tensions they experienced. Between unity and heterogeneity, between mobility and locality, between marginalisation and assimilation, it attempts to reconcile global- and micro-historical approaches. The authors provide a comparative view as well as elaborate case studies for scholars, students, and the public who are interested in learning about how the social sciences and history contribute to our understanding of integration, migrations, and religious coexistence.

This Handbook offers a systemic approach to the notion of revelation in its various theoretical contexts. It provides in-depth coverage of the theoretical and historical fields in which the notion of revelation is discussed.

Although the Petersens' name is quite known among specialists of Pietism, their work, their ideas and the development of their thought remain mostly unresearched. Elisa Belucci aims to shed more light on their works, analysing and interpreting them in relationship to the theological and socio-political context. In so doing, she fills some gaps present in the research on these authors: firstly, she analyses the positions presented in the Petersens' work until 1703 at length; secondly, she tries to unearth sources and influences; thirdly, she seeks to comment on the Petersens' ideas and positions in relationship to the historical context. The result is an entangled picture which questions the traditional distinction between "church Pietism" and "radical Pietism", "orthodoxy" and "radicalism/separatism", showing, instead, that these categories are sometimes too narrow to describe the position of certain authors, such as the Petersens.