Anders Jarlert

Pietism And Community In Magnus Friedrich Roos’s Dialogue Books

The emphasis on the equal and eternal responsibility of subjects of different gender and social positions in M.F. Rooss dialogue books promoted a special combination of radical equality in anthropology and a conservative understanding of society. A Pietist teaching on salvation permeates the Orthodox principles on vocation in such a way, that the vocation to community life as a Christian farmer, soldier, or housewife forms a synthesis of both theologies.The final volume to appear from a series of three conferences begun in 2004, this set of essays reflects Fred van Lieburg’s attempt to “push scholarship on Pietism beyond narrow national and disciplinary boundaries” (preface). In eighteen chapters, the authors range over an expansive field providing examinations of Pietist understandings of the church that included experimental communities; efforts to found Jewish Christian communities; internalized notions of a hidden church; explicitly institutional reforms of the existing confessional traditions, and Pietism understood as a socially and politically critical indictment of existing Protestant customs and traditions. Three of the essays touch on the Moravian Brethren. The Moravians, however, appear without the authors tackling the question of whether and how Moravians should be identified as Pietists—a label they themselves seem to have rejected during the internal battles within this variegated reform movement. Wolfgang Breul’s essay singles out marriage as a key (and neglected) form of community in the Pietist writing of the major figures Philipp Jakob Spener, Gottfried Arnold, and Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Both the Halle and Württemberg varieties of Pietism appear for examination, as do Swedish and Norwegian examples. Germanspeaking Pietists understandably enjoy pride of place on both sides of the Atlantic, but somewhat surprisingly, Dutch and Swedish Pietists in the North American context do not appear. Recent emphasis on the importance book reviews

Bureaucratic resistance, acceptance, or enthusiasm in Sweden and elsewhere

To many Swedish citizens, their everyday contacts with the Church of Sweden in matters of civil registration and impediments of marriage created their strongest im pressions of the Church. Thus, as an example of ecclesiastical history of everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte), my study is of great interest from the point of view of Church history. It illustrates how the performance of the civil duties by the Church of Sweden was directed by Swedish governmental policies, often applied from an administrative level only, and handled without theological considerations. Towards the application of the Nuremberg Laws according to the Hague Convention of 1902, the Swedish clergy and laymen showed varied attitudes of bureaucratic resistance, reluctance, or acceptance. (Less)

Kontinuität und Aufbruch – die grundlegenden Phasen der Kirchenreform in den skandinavischen Ländern

Abstract in German A.J. spannt in seinen Reflexionen zu den Phasen der Kirchenreform in den skandinavischen Landern einen weiten Bogen, der die Ausgangslage seit der fruhen Neuzeit bis in die Gegenwart anhand der Wandlungsprozesse im Verstandnis der staatskirchlichen Ordnungen in Schweden, Danemark und Norwegen nachzeichnet. Herausfordernd ist u.a. seine These, dass die schwedische Kirche trotz einer Neubestimmung des Staat-Kirchenverhaltnis im Jahr 2000 aus historisch gewachsenen strukturellen Bedingungen weiterhin von politischen Parteien instrumentalisiert werden kann.