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The Waters of Rebirth: The Eighteenth Century and Transoceanic Protestant Christianity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2010
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In a provocatively titled 2005 book, Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom wondered Is the Reformation Over? While not presuming to answer their query, the present essay argues that a self-understanding of European Protestants inherited from the Reformation had to die in the 1740s in the process of giving birth to the rapidly spreading version of western Christianity that became known as evangelicalism. Protestants, of both the radical and magisterial sort had cherished since the sixteenth century a sense of themselves as the true, ancient, and apostolic church. The Reformation, however, in its theological, as well as its socio-political and economic dimensions, had long “left its heirs no settled comprehensive system, only with many unresolved questions of principle and usage, not least in decisions relating to the body.”
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References
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43 My prosopography is gleaned from Erikson and Nylander, eds., Erik Benzelius' Letters; See letters at 144 to 151 for the early sentiments, and the letter of 26 April 1727 to Ernst Salomon Cyprian at Gotha, 95–96 at 96. See Erikson, Alvar, ed., Letters to Erik Benzelius the Younger Vol. 1: 1697–1722 (Göteborg: Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhället, 1979)Google Scholar, at 22–23 (1698) and for Halle's reputation, 166–67. For Benzelius's concerns about the influence of the Riksdag over church affairs, see Pleijel, Schwedische Pietismus, 124–26.
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45 AFSt/ Cudelierische Correspondenz 1743–44 M: 2K 12:26 letter 26 from Johann Zacharias Kiernander to Andreas Bergner in Stockholm, 14 January 1744.
46 See Anders Jarlert, “When the Bishop and Chapter of Gothenburg Censored the Writings of Martin Luther,” and Nordbäck, Carola, “Children of God: The Swedish Radical Pietists, 1725–45,” in Pietism, Revivalism and Modernity, 1650–1850, ed. Lieburg, Fred van and Lindmark, Daniel (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), 174–84 and 132–60Google Scholar. On Benzelius, Henrik, Pleijel, , Das Kirchenproblem der Brüdergemeine in Schweden: Eine Kirchengeschichtliche Untersuchung (Lund: Gleerup, 1938), at 26–27Google Scholar.
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55 Acrelius, , The History of New Sweden, trans. Reynolds, William M. (Philadelphia, 1874), 245–47Google Scholar; see also Craig's discussion in “Relationship,” 118–22, at 119.
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59 Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 2004), 67–86Google Scholar at 68, 69, 79.
60 Cohen, Charles L., “The Colonization of British North America as an Episode in the History of Christianity,” Church History 72, no. 3 (September 2003), 553–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 568, 566.
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63 Peter Vogt, “Zinzendorfs Verständnis des geistlichen Amts,” in Ein Leben für die Kirche: Zinzendorf als Praktischer Theologe, ed. Peter Schilling (Göttingen: Vandenboeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming). I am grateful to Dr. Vogt for permission to read and cite the unpublished version of his essay.
64 Conser, Walter H. Jr., Church and Confession: Conservative Theologians in Germany, England, and America, 1815–1866 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; on the shift to biblicism, Noll, Mark A., America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 238–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brooks Holifield, E., Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 245–51Google Scholar. On the social emphais in the “New Protestantism,” see Albert, Jürgen, Christentum und Handlungsform bei Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808–1881) Sudien zum sozialen Protestantismus (Heidelberg: Heidelberger Verlagsanstalt, 1997)Google Scholar.
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68 Hamilton and Hamilton, History of the Moravian Church, 99.
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71 Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 124–32; 217–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Did Jesus Wear Designer Robes?” Christianity Today Magazine, http://www.christianitytoday.com/globalconversation/november2009/ (accessed November 30, 2009).
An earlier version of the essay was presented at the Fifth Annual New Sweden History Conference, “New Sweden and its European Neighbors, 1638–1786,” November 19, 2005. The author thanks Arthur Manukian, Rüdiger Kröger, Paul Peucker, Kim-Eric Williams, Hermann Wellenreuther, Mark Noll, and Craig Atwood for critical readings.
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